Ben just wants to be loved, but if he won't be loved, then he'll at least for being in charge. There is more open hostility between Ben & Willard than in the original, but as in the original, that things go badly is because Willard rather than Ben is finally crazy. That scene is not repeated, & they also did not use the bigger budget to show more animal torture, it's brushed through - really nearly every possibly disgusting moment of animal abuse in the film is underplayed, & only the death of Socrates is particularly graphic. In the original film, when Willard went rabid, he killed many of the rats by drowning them. Many changes from the original film version, but the storeroom slaughter of innocent Socrates is unchanged, & very unpleasant for those of us who love rats. Stephen Gilbert is the pen name of Gilbert Ralston, who wrote many teleplays in the 1950s & 1960s, & the Willard screenplay based on his own book, as well as the sequel Ben. The new film gives credit mainly to the previous movie script version.

The films were based on the 1968 novel The rat Man's Notebook (reprinted as Willard after the 1971 film) by Stephen Gilbert.

For the few who may not have noticed, the original Willard, as played by Bruce Davison, appears in the oil painting & photographs of the remake as Willard's dad. He out-did the original Willard for personal strangeness. Bruce played Willard as socially inept & lonely, but Crispin refashions the character as exaggeratedly neurotic & a speck less sympathetic.Ĭrispin is enough of a Goth in his actual life that playing Willard wasn't a big stretch. I loved Crispin Glover as Willard, but I had also loved the young Bruce Davidson in the role.

Willard by Stephen Gilbert