Willard (1971) on Netflix
Willard Stiles is a social misfit with rats he raised at home. His boss Al Martin, who took the company from Willard's father, refuses him a raise and wants his house.
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- Netflix2.8/5
- IMDb6.2/106,593 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes50%
Trailer
Plot summary
Willard Stiles, a meek social misfit, lives with his cranky, decrepit mother Henrietta. On his 27th birthday she throws him a surprise party; he slips out in embarrassment and tosses pieces of cake to a rat in the backyard. She tells him to get rid of the rats, so he lures them into a pit with food and a plank bridge, then lets them escape. A white rat he names Socrates becomes his best companion, and a bigger black one is Ben. At the office his boss Al Martin refuses him a raise and presses him to sell the house.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Willard (1971)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Willard and its sequel Ben inspired three imitation films: Stanley (1972), which used trained rattlesnakes, Kiss of the Tarantula (1976), with a young woman and trained tarantulas, and Mako: The Jaws of Death (1976), with a misfit telepathically linked to sharks.
- The film served as the opening anecdote to the chapter "Becoming-Intense, Becoming-Animal, Becoming-Imperceptible..." in Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari's philosophy book A Thousand Plateaus.
