I almost want to push this to a 4/5 review, but there's just a little too much "this is a 1971 backlot" look to this movie. But oh, what an effective and almost beguiling performance by Bruce Davison here. I have a phobia when it comes to rats and yet in this movie I totally got what Willard saw in these disgusting little creatures and why he wanted to make them his friends and then his weapons. It's been written about a lot how this is the beginnings of the monster/nature horror movie boom of the 1970s and you can certainly feel it, all the way down to "man must not tamper with god's work" that would show up again later in things like Food Of The Gods. The movie isn't terribly successful (Ernest Borgnine is his usual great self but half the time in the movie he's stuck playing hanky-panky in the office in a subplot that goes nowhere, for instance) but there's such an odd, tragic feel about Willard and his murderous rats that I can see why this was a surprise hit (making the equivalent of $87,000,000 today).
★★★ 1/2
1963 - Directed by Daniel Mann and written by Gilbert Ralston.
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