Word: willard
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...Willard is a low-budget chiller about a revengeful young man and his army of lethally trained rats (TIME, July 26). The rumor goes that when one executive heard that his company was involved with the film, he was furious. "You're nuts!" he exploded, and demanded that the bloodiest rat scenes be cut. Grislier heads prevailed, the scenes remained, and last week on the Variety box-office chart, Willard was not only in the top spot but was outgrossing Love Story by almost...
Gilbert Ralston, who wrote the screenplay, sees Willard as "a rat morality play. It's based on the concept that man carries within him the seeds of his own destruction. The evil he does will turn back on him." That it certainly does. Willard (Bruce Davison) is an underachiever in his 20s who likes rats but is also something of a rat fink. He stands by spinelessly when his mean-minded boss (Ernest Borgnine) kills Socrates, one of his pets. Socrates' best friend, a rat named Ben, witnesses the act. It is thus easy, when Willard gets fired...
...goings on in an English boarding school, where the boys of lower 5-B casually inform their new master (David Hemmings) that they have murdered his predecessor. It is a basically unbelievable premise that nevertheless makes for some nice, subdued thrills. That is exactly the sort of thing that Willard sorely lacks. It is a movie with a good idea-a young man who uses rats to avenge the oppressions of his elders-but it would have needed a combination of Bunuel and Hitchcock to carry it off. Instead it has Daniel Mann (I'll Cry Tomorrow), who manages...
...lawyer on the Boston firm of Ropes and Gray (Harvard's own lawyers, if anyone should pose the question.) There are a sprinkling of established writers-critic John Simon (of Andrew Sarris Fame); novelist Julian Moynihan ( Pairing Off ); screenwriter Frank Pierson ( Cat Ballou and Cool Hand Luke ); psychiatrist Willard Gaylin ( In The Service of Their Country: War Resisters in Prison )-and a number of veteran newspapermen (two from the Christian Science Monitor others from the Boston Herald and the Globe ), but, again, there are also an equal number representing the field of corporate journalism, working for Time/Life and Newsweek -including...
...woman, too, she feels herself a Jew. "Every woman adores a Fascist, the boot in the face, the brute Brute heart of a brute like you." When her square boyfriend, Buddy Willard, takes down his pants for her benefit she says, "The only thing I could think of was turkey gizzards and I felt depressed." Hating her virginity she gets a man to give her the rack and the screw and hemorrhages violently. Her suicides are novel...