Willard (1971) & Ben (1972)

          Easily one of the strangest wide-release pictures of the early ’70s, Willard starts off as the character study of a deranged individual, and then it gradually morphs into a horror movie. Oh, and it’s also a love story of sorts between the lead character, a twentysomething misfit, and an extraordinary rat named Ben. The film’s sequel, Ben, pushes the formula even further by putting the titular vermin together with a new human, a horribly ill young boy who considers Ben a terrific pal even though the rat frequently leads thousands of rodents on murderous rampages. The inherent weirdness of these two films is encapsulated by the most noteworthy element of either picture, “Ben’s Song,” a gentle ballad that’s sung over the closing credits of Ben by Michael Jackson at the height of his early Jackson 5 fame. Like the song, both films approach bizarre subject matter with complete sincerity, which makes for singular viewing experiences.

          Based on novel by Stephen Gilbert titled Ratman’s Notebooks and written for the screen by Gilbert Ralston, Willard compounds the oddity of its premise with a fairy-tale narrative approach. Willard Stiles (Bruce Davison) works for overbearing businessman Al Martin (Ernest Borgnine), who played a role in the business failure and death of Willard’s father. Meanwhile, Willard lives with his aging but smothering mother, Henrietta (Elsa Lanchester), in a stately house. Forgetful, introverted, and nervous, Willard makes an easy target for Al’s bullying and Henrietta’s nagging. One afternoon, Willard meets a group of rats in his backyard, subsequently adopting them as playmates. Then, once he moves the rodents into his basement and starts teaching them tricks—even as the group expands through breeding to include thousands of critters—Willard realizes he can use the rats to exact revenge against his oppressors.

          The movie takes a long time to reach the point when Willard leads his skittering soldiers into combat, but Davison gives such a twitchy performance that it’s interesting to watch Willard spiral into madness. (Good luck shaking the image of Davison hanging out in the basement with a rodent on his shoulder and dozens of other rats literally crawling the walls around him.) As directed by studio-era helmer Daniel Mann, whose so-so filmography includes the Oscar-winning Elizabeth Taylor vehicle Butterfield 8 (1960), Willard evolves from campy to gruesome, so it’s impossible to take the film seriously. Nonetheless, the protagonist is quasi-sympathetic until he goes too far, so the character’s arc is similar to that of Norman Bates in Psycho (1960). Better still, the film’s final act is a tastefully photographed bloodbath sure to cause shudders among even the hardiest of viewers. That said, it’s a mystery why composer Alex North scored most of the movie with bouncy comic cues and triumphant marches—although the music certainly adds to the overall peculiarity.

          Ben, which was directed by action specialist Phil Karlson, is an almost completely different type of film from its predecessor. In fact, Ben is really two movies in one. The main relationship story, about Ben’s new friendship with fragile youth Danny (Lee Montgomery), is so gentle that it includes comedy and music scenes. Yet the main action story, about Ben’s nocturnal adventures immediately following the events of the first film, is bloody and violent. Ben’s four-legged army starts claiming victims within the first 10 minutes, and the movie is filled with shots of grown men screaming as their bodies are swallowed by hordes of rodents. Later, once officials track down the culprits for various deaths and incidents of property damage, all-out war ensues. (Key image: City workers advance through sewer tunnels wielding flamethrowers, killing rats by the score.) Yet somehow, these disparate elements hang together in a ridiculous sort of way. As he did with his next film, the redneck-vigilante classic Walking Tall (1973), Karlson keeps things moving so fast that viewers can’t stop to smell the insanity.

          The cast of Ben is strictly C-grade, with future TV mom Meredith Baxter playing Danny’s sister and journeyman players including Norman Alden, Joseph Campanella, Arthur O’Connell, and Kenneth Tobey filling out the various upporting roles. (Although Stephen Gilbert penned Ben as well as Willard, the writer’s character work is much more slack on the sequel.) Since Ben is basically a creature feature, however, the acting is much less important than the work of the animal wranglers and FX technicians who make the murderous monsters look convincing. FYI, Willard was remade in 2003, with eccentric actor Crispin Glover in the lead, though a revamp of Ben has yet to emerge. And in a particularly odd footnote, actress Sondra Locke, who costars in the original Willard, later made her directorial debut with a film titled—wait for it!—Ratboy (1986).

Willard: FUNKY

Ben: FUNKY

Walking Tall (1973) & Walking Tall Part II (1975) & Final Chapter: Walking Tall (1977)

          The Walking Tall franchise provides an object lesson in diminishing returns. The first picture has a certain crude but undeniable power, meaning follow-ups were inevitable. Yet critical lashings and meager box-office returns for the second and third pictures did not deter the films’ producers from generating a TV movie, titled A Real American Hero, about the same real-life historical figure who inspired the franchise. Later, a different company picked up the reins by creating a short-lived Walking Tall TV series in 1981. And then, decades after it seemed as if the Walking Tall brand was exhausted, a remake of the original film was released in 2004 (with Dwayne Johnson as Pusser), and the remake begat straight-to-video sequels (enter Kevin Sorbo). What gave the series its staying power? Well, if you believe the self-mythologizing of the late Buford Pusser, the subject of all of these stories, he was a real-life action hero. A former wrestler who became the sheriff of Tennessee’s McNairy County, Pusser took on organized crime and won, purging McNairy of moonshiners, prostitutes, racketeers, and so on. Yet justice came at a terrible price. Pusser’s wife was murdered, and he died under mysterious circumstances just a year after the first Walking Tall movie was released.

          Or at least that was the perception until a 2025 investigation unearthed evidence suggesting Pusser killed his wife. One imagines the next cinematic treatment of Pusser’s life, if there ever is one, will bear little resemblance to the pulpy sagas of the ’70s.

          The first movie, simply titled Walking Tall, was based on a nonfiction book about Pusser. At the beginning of the story, Pusser (Joe Don Baker) gives up wrestling for a quiet life in his native McNairy County, only to discover the area is overrun with crooks. Idealistic and stubborn, Pusser gets into hassles with the area’s criminal element. Before long, he’s beaten, mutilated, and left for dead. Unable to exact justice via the legal system after his recovery, Pusser runs for sheriff and wins, becoming a one-man vengeance squad. The title relates to his signature weapon, a four-foot wooden club that he uses to beat evildoers (as in, “Walk tall and carry a big stick”). One of the most interesting elements of the movie is Pusser’s gradual education about things like search-and-seizure laws and suspects’ rights; he evolves from recklessly kicking ass to slyly trapping bad guys through their own misdeeds. Meanwhile, he tries to build a stable home life with his wife, Pauline (Elizabeth Hartman), and their two kids.

          As directed by competent journeyman Phil Karlson, Walking Tall moves along at a good clip even though it runs 125 minutes; call it the Citizen Kane of fascistic southern-fried vigilante pictures. Plus, by the time the movie slides into its final act—during which Pusser metes out bloody justice while half his face is masked in bandages following a near-fatal assault—Walking Tall becomes just a little bit deranged. (How deranged? The plaintive theme song is performed by, of all people, Johnny Mathis.) Baker is in his natural element here, exuding badass ’tude and cornpone charm, so it doesn’t really matter that the rest of the cast is largely forgettable; only crusty character actor Noah Berry, Jr., as Pusser’s papa, makes an impression. The aesthetic is pure Me Decade garishness, the FX team is generous with the fake blood, and every narrative point is made with the subtlety of a hammer to the forehead. The amount of sweat pouring from actors seems to reflect how hard they're working to generate lurid entertainment.

          The real-life Pusser’s death cast a morbid pall over Walking Tall Part II, in which the statuesque Bo Svenson assume the leading role. Lacking Baker’s charisma, Svenson struggles through emotional moments and relies on his intimidating physique to sell action scenes. Further, he seems too gentle to play a man who’d rather crack skulls than read suspects their rights. It isn’t giving much away to say the original Walking Tall ends with Pusser killing the men who murdered his wife, or that Walking Tall: Part II dramatizes his attempts to arrest the crooks who ordered the hit. The sequel adds swampy flavor, with supporting characters bearing names like “Pinky Dobson” and “Stud Pardee,” and the caliber of the supporting players is a slight improvement on the first film. Reliable actors including Luke Askew and Richard Jaeckel add energy, though leading lady Angel Tompkins is largely decorative as a temptress hired to ensnare Pusser. And while periodic car chases and shootouts keep things lively, there’s too much aimless yakety-yak—not exactly Svenson’s strong suit as a performer. Worse, the way the movie addresses the real Pusser’s death is highly unsatisfying.

          The last of the ’70s Pusser flicks, the oddly titled Final Chapter: Walking Tall, is as interminable as it is unnecessary. Fabricating a thin story to depict what happened to Pusser between the climax of the previous film and his death—while, of course, presenting a wholly unsubstantiated conspiracy theory in order to name Pusser’s killers—Final Chapter: Walking Tall mostly features Pusser (Svenson again) fretting about his troubles. A long scene of Pusser weeping over his wife’s grave represents the nadir of Svenson’s acting in the series; he tries mightily but can’t conjure anything genuine. Weirdly, the makers of Final Chapter: Walking Tall often forget they’re cranking out an exploitation flick, instead trying to generate wholesome family drama. Pusser saves a kid from an abusive father, romances a girl-next-door secretary, and generally tries to set a positive example for his kids—yawn. Literally an hour of screen time elapses before serious action occurs.

          Anyway, one last item for trivia buffs—two performes who appear in all three ’70s Walking Tall movies are teen idol Leif Garrett, as Pusser’s son, and character actor Bruce Glover, as Pusser’s deputy. Best known for playing a gay hit man in the 007 romp Diamonds are Forever (1971), Glover also sired oddball actor-director Crispin Glover.

Walking Tall: GROOVY

Walking Tall Part II: FUNKY

Final Chapter: Walking Tall: LAME

Framed (1975)

          Drive-in pulp done right, Framed puts Southern-fried star Joe Don Baker into his most comfortable role: a tough-talking everyman pushed to violent extremes by horrific circumstance. Offering a shady spin on Buford Pusser, the lawman Baker played in Walking Tall (1973), this picture casts the actor as Ron Lewis, a gambler who ends up in the wrong place at the wrong time. Driving home from a big game one night, he comes across two cars parked on a country highway, and exits his own vehicle to offer assistance. When an unseen person shoots at him with a gun, Ron dives back into his car and makes tracks. Later that night, a cruel small-town deputy shows up at Ron’s doorstep, ostensibly to make a bust but really to start a fight. Realizing he’s been set up to die, Ron defends himself and kills the deputy. Then, thanks to collusion between various corrupt local officials, Ron’s railroading is made complete when he’s sentenced to a four-year stint in jail. And that’s the just first third of the movie: After all this happens, Ron makes surprising alliances inside the big house before coldly seeking revenge (and the truth) upon his release.

           Briskly written by Mort Briskin and directed with meat-and-potatoes economy by Phil Karlson (both of whom worked with Baker on Walking Tall), Framed delivers the B-movie goods from start to finish. The characterizations are clear and purposeful, the dialogue is pithy and sometimes clever, and the violence is nasty. In particular, the close-quarters fight between Ron and the deputy in Ron’s garage is a bone-crunching brawl with persuasive stunt work and plentiful splatter; it’s hard to watch the scene without flinching. The rest of the movie is just as intense, even though the picture follows a somewhat leisurely pace (106 minutes is lengthy by revenge-flick standards). Baker is a quintessential ’70s lead, a hulking good ol’ boy in a leisure suit cracking wise and kicking ass, so it doesn’t matter that the rest of the cast is largely anonymous. The great Brock Peters shows up for a smallish role as a cop who recognizes Ron’s innocence, and Gabriel Dell is funny as an easygoing hit man who drifts in and out of Ron’s life. Ultimately, it’s all about the crime and the grime, and Framed has those elements in abundance.

Framed: GROOVY