WILLARD (1971) APRIL 29TH 8 PM at ANTHOLOGY FILM ARCHIVES

 

It's the FIRST in a series of SEMINAL PSYCHOSIS Presents!

 

 



YES folks - it's SEMINAL PSYCHOSIS' FIRST OFFICIAL FILM SCREENING! Tuesday April 29th at 8PM JOIN US to support our obsessive careless decisions and bask in the 35mm glow of the 1971 ratsterpiece WILLARD! Did we mention there will be SPEC...IAL SURPRISE GUESTS???

SUPPORT SEMINAL PSYCHOSIS; your $10 will fund another madcap screening so DON'T MISS THIS!

NOTE: This is a privately funded event created by CO-OP 87 RECORDS and SEMINAL PSYCHOSIS - it will not be listed on Anthology Film Archive's site, SO DON'T BE CONFUSED WHEN YOU DON'T SEE IT THERE KIDS!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For kicks, here's an old, REJECTED review that I wrote for Bloody Disgusting:

WILLARD (1971)
For our next installment, let’s look at one of my absolute favorite American films of the 70’s - Gilbert Ralston’s revenge fantasy masterpiece WILLARD, directed by Daniel Mann and starring Bruce Davison in one of the finest roles of his career, title-lead Willard. The film accurately appropriates the book’s internal mania; it twists the audience’s ethics into shambles as we begin to cheer on the insane outsider as he begins an elaborate scheme to cross off every name on his shitlist.

In the book version, “Ratman‘s Notebooks” (extremely required reading for BloodyDisgusting.com fans, so do yourself a favor and put down that goddamned Stephen King book …), the story unfolds through the words of protagonist Willard, as written in his journal. The film works similarly, painting cartoonish portraits of Willard’s antagonists through his own skewed point of view. His mother is right outta Hitchcock’s PSYCHO (played by the sexiest Universal Monster of all time, Elsa Lanchester), his boss is dumb and evil (wonderful performance from Ernest Borgnine) and generally, everyone seems to treat lil’ Willard like a real weenie. Everyone at his job laughs at him, and his boss frequently insult’s Willard’s deceased pop, whom Borgnine stole the business from. At home it’s no better, he worships his crotchety old mom, and she treats him with venomous contempt for it. There is one person that doesn’t laugh at him however, his foxy blonde co-worker Joan, played by that skinny 70’s sexpot Sondra Locke. I always hear Locke was “a bad actress that got roles only because of her relationship with Clint Eastwood”, but WILLARD is excellent evidence that she’s got some real chops, as she pretty much drools over her astoundingly meek introverted co-worker Willard .

As Willard comes across some of his home’s rodentian inhabitants, the brilliant idea to train them dawns on him. At first it’s slow-going, but before long Willard has a small army of dozens that does his bidding, and not long after that they’ve bred into hundreds and the boy’s ideas get darker and more violent. At Willard’s command, rats tear apart the flesh of human jerkwads; a sea of dirty fur enveloping them and leaving nothing behind but bloody bones. WILLARD satisfies the hunger for revenge implanted upon its audience, and in a way that’s both genuinely thrilling and laugh-out-loud funny. Bruce Davison’s portrayal of Willard is passionate and endearing, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t moments of camp at swirling fever pitch. Perhaps it’s why WILLARD works so well, it really has everything one could want in a murderous trained rat revenge film - it’s total fun, there’s a few big shocks, great performances … heck, even the remake is good!