Rat Toss

Ms. Spenser is a bit of a rat lover - you might remember us trying to sneak them into and out of hotels on our last big trips to FL. She has always wanted to watch Willard (1971), but the closest we got was the 2003 Crispin Glover remake. Now we've seen the original.

Bruce Davison plays Willard, a wimpy young man who is a clerk at a manufacturing company. He goes home to a small mansion where his sickly mother, Elsa Lanchester, is throwing him a surprise birthday party, attending by only her older friends. We learn that his father built the company that he works for, and his tyrant boss, Ernest Borgnine, took the company over, possibly leading to the father's death. His mother smothers him with affection, but demands that he spend more time doing maintenance on the house.

One of his chores is to take care of the rats in the backyard. He prepares to drown them, but at the last minute leads them to safety down in the basement. He begins talking to them and training them. His favorites are a little white rate he calls Socrates and a big brown rat he calls Ben.

But he stat to consider Ben a troublemaker, maybe taking his frustrations out on him.

At work, he gets an assistant, Sandra Locke, who is sympathetic. She sees him humiliated by Borgnine, when he makes Davison send out invitations. to a party without inviting him. Davison's reaction is to get his rat army to attack the party, leading to chaos. A very Three Stooges scene. 

One day, Borgnine lets him go home on time - he had a call that morning, something about his mother. When he gets home, he finds out that his mother has died. All alone in the world now, he takes refuge with his rats. He takes Locke out for a little date, but comes back to find that the feds are threatening to take his house for back taxes. So when he hears that a salesman is withdrawing a large sum of cash, he sends his rat army to scare him at night, so he can rob the guy. 

But Davison has been taking Socrates and Ben to work, and someone spots Ben in the storeroom. Borgnine kills Socrates with a stick while Davison looks on in horror. So now he decides to let his rats kill Borgnine.

Ms. Spenser was not as happy with this as I had hoped. She liked the rats, but all the humans were awful. Of course everyone around Willard is awful, but he's no innocent. Besides his casual attempts to drown the rats, he does seem to give Ben a hard time, while pampering Socrates. In the end, Ben does turn evil, but is that nature or nurture?

In conclusion, many of the rat swarm attacks feature rats flying through the air. The difference between a rat leaping on someone and being tossed on them is very obvious.