HALLOWEEN HORRORFEST 2021/RATAPALOOZA NIGHT TWO: Willard (2003)

The Festival of The Rat Continues!  And our sponsor on this second day of Ratapalooza is my very own lab rat, Chris Honeywell!  You can hear Chris' monthly travails over at The Honeywell Experiment, where I force him to watch and discuss a different Grindhouse film.  Chris chose 2003's remake of one of the milestones in rodent cinema, Willard.

Willard Stiles (Crispin Glover) feels suffocated by his life.  Between caring for his aged mother (Jackie Burroughs) who may be suffering from dementia and being bullied by his boss Frank Morgan (the great R. Lee Ermey) who resents him but can't fire him due to the conditions in his agreement to buy out Willard's father, he lives a miserable, grey life.  His life takes a change when he bonds with the rats who live in his basement; before too long, he's adopted a white rat he names Socrates and has trained the rats to do some impressive things.  But things get darker when another rat he names Ben vies for supremacy while Morgan seems to scheme to finally push Willard out...needless to say, Willard is about to snap.

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Since I took Of Unknown Origin to task for this, let me get it out of the way...Willard is obviously shot in Canada and trying to convince us this is New York City.  At first I assumed 'New York' meant Long Island (Morgan's address is supposedly in 'Irvington, NY), but there are references to the subway, the Yankees and Bellvue that makes it clear that generic Vancouver landscape is supposed to be my home town.  I call rat shit on that. 

Other than that...I really dug this film when I saw it at the Ridgewood Fiveplex, lured into the theater by the names of producer James Wong and writer/director Glen Morgan, and I still dig it today.  If you're unfamiliar with the team of Morgan and Wong, they were the team that breathed life into the first few years of The X-Files before striking out on their own and finding their way to a feature film career thanks to the success of Final Destination.  Of course, an argument can be made that this was the beginning of the end of their feature film career, as the success of this led directly to the two being offered the remake of Black Christmas...and the less said about this the better.  Morgan and Wong specialize in unorthodox, sometimes humorous storytelling and Willard shows their style clearly with callbacks to The X-Files (poor Scully The Cat) and the way the film 'casts' the original Willard Bruce Davison as Willard's father through photos and paintings.

Of course, Morgan and Wong recognized that they could have the best rat wranglers around, but the greatest special effect lay in who they cast as their Willard.  And Glover, who looks sort of rat-like to begin with, is more than up to the challenge.  It's a marvelous performance, which includes some great moments of physicality (compare Glover's business with the pillow to Rebecca DeMornay's in The Hand That Rocks The Cradle, and it's night and day).  Glover's true genius is in making it clear that Willard is already deeply on the spectrum while still allowing us to feel sympathy for him...making what would have been silly moments have gravitas.  Granted, he may be the shining light, but Glover's performance isn't the only one worth noting; I liked how R. Lee Ermey takes what could have been a cardboard monster and gives him some depth while still making sure we hate him.  Laura Herring, who should have had a bigger career, has a thankless role as a co-worker who sympathizes with Willard...and yet, manages to bounce off Glover well enough that we can see WIllard misinterpreting her attention without having it spelled out for us.

Poor, Poor Scully The Cat

The majority of the big rat stunts are done practically, although I certainly appreciate how they hid the few moments of CGI (and we couldn't have the stunning moment of an elevator of rats disembarking in waves to reveal a grinning Glover standing in the middle without CGI).  And the humor, one overlong sequence aside (poor Scully The Cat), manages to avoid the digging-the-elbow-in-the-ribs overstating of the jokes.  

While I don't know if it is necessarily better than the original, this is super-recommended as the last glimpse of what a Morgan and Wong film career could have been, and features a great eccentric performance by a great eccentric actor.

Ratapalooza Rolls On To Day Three, as Dread Media mainstay Rich 'The Monster Movie Kid' Chamberlain drops off a 1959 black and white saga of a bunch of people sitting around drinking martinis while cute doggies in rodent masks lay siege to the island hut.  Join me as I examine the case of The Killer Shrews

...look, the scientist guy in this film explains how shrews are close relations to rats, so I'm going to say it counts.  

Rich is representing The Mid America Chapter of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society!

There are presently fourteen open slots for this year's festival, and if you'd like to be included, there are four ways to get your share of the spotlight:

1) You can become a Domicile of Dread Patreon at any level.  Patreons always get a free slot, as well as advance access to podcasts and other goodies!

2) You can buy me a coffee at Ko-Fi.  Suggested donation is $3

3) You can make a donation to Queens Community House Covid-19 Relief and Recovery Campaign.  Suggested donation is $10.  Please forward your receipt to me as proof.

4) You can choose to make a donation to the charity chosen by a sponsor on his/her/their day. Like with the third possibility, please forward me proof of donation.

It is not necessary to choose a rat-based horror film.  However, if you do, I will forward you a special Ratapalooza banner you can display on your website.