Bad Reputation, Part I: Blame it on Ratman’s Notebooks and Willard?
Mother says there are rats in the rockery. “‘You’ll have to do something about them,”’ she says, “‘or they’ll over-run the whole place.” - Ratman’s Notebooks,1968
Rats have been represented throughout popular culture with about as much vitriol as can be placed on one species. Whether the fear most humans have of rodents is well-founded or not, one celebrated novel cemented the idea. With the 1968 publication of Ratman’s Notebooks and the subsequent film Willard based on it, writer Stephen Gilbert would usher in a hugely successful genre of man-eating, evil intentioned animals as public enemy number one. Giant mutant ants crawling across the silver screen, fire-starting cockroaches from the depths of the earth, rabid dogs and of course piranhas would have audiences glued to their seats in terror.
Kim Newman discusses the influence Gilbert’s book and the film[1] on the entire horror genre in her introduction to the 2013 reprint of Ratman’s Notebooks[2]. Willard “made rampaging vermin a major horror theme of the 1970s and ‘80s” and led the way for the huge success of future books and films that would explode into the mainstream. It inspired numerous movies with animals as unemotional predators preying on unsuspecting humans. The best example would be the mega hit Jaws in 1975, which would break all box office records at the time and inspire numerous low budget animals-as-the-enemy TV and film productions.
Who hasn’t fantasized about delivering revenge upon those who have slighted them in some personal way? Rats, with their reputation for destruction, fit these dreams of retribution perfectly: a malevolent animal ideal for delivering the wrath of the underdog onto a deserving oppressor.
In Ratman’s Notebooks, Willard, the perennial outsider who has suffered a lifetime of abuse, suddenly discovers a special ability to control rats and wreaks vengeance on his tormentors. This lonely character eventually loses control of this extraordinary power, ironically bringing on his own demise, but not before several innocent people have suffered the same fate. After driving his sadistic boss to a gruesome death, the very rats whom Willard enlisted as his minions in his quest for gory redress turn their sights on him. In the book, Willard’s fate is left unclear, however a final confrontation with the very beings he made to do his bidding is inevitable:
Not quick enough. The rats had come after me. A solid mass of them crossing the landing. Just got the door shut in time.
I can’t reach the skylight. Too high. Have to sit out and hope.
Leave that door alone, damn you. They’d gnaw the door down if I didn’t keep yelling. Maybe somebody will hear me
The reader knows Willard’s violent fate is sealed with the oncoming tsunami of rats gnawing at his door.
The influence of Ratman’s Notebooks can be seen in the contemporary works of popular horror writers such as Stephen King, who has made a career of mainstreaming people’s most intimate fear of ‘wild’ animals. How can the gentle and misunderstood rat overcome this bad reputation?
Low Budget and Big Impressions Low-budget horror films are often more terrifying for just how bad they are: their terrible effects, even worse acting, flimsy plots, silly rubber monster costumes and impossibly static dialogue. However, a few made a big impression on my young psyche.
One film that would surprisingly find a wide audience despite its low budget, perhaps because it stars a young Joan Collins, is the 1977 adaption of H.G. Wells’ short story Empire of the Ants. The plot involves a group of prospective land buyers lead by Ms. Collins to an isolated island only to be attacked by giant mutant ants.
Stephen King would find great success with the film adaption of his novel Cujo (1983), where a rabid frothing St. Bernard and rampages through a community killing lots of people, ultimately trapping a young mother and child in a decrepit Ford Pinto. For two terrifying and ultimately anti-climatic movie hours we witness their attempted escape and efforts of the canine to consume the sweaty pair. Perhaps the most affecting movie to send chills up many an adolescent spine during the weekly Creature Double Feature Saturday afternoons is Bug. This 1975 horror movie stars mutant cockroaches that can create fire by rubbing their legs together. Based on the 1973 novel The Hephaestus Plague by Thomas Pane, the cockroaches terrify an isolated town after an earthquake releases these small but lethal killers from their home found deep in the inner regions of the earth.
There is one scene I hav
e yet to erase thirty years later from my impressionable young mind. A housewife is washing dishes when we see a small puff of smoke rising from her over-sprayed helmet hair. A mutant bug has crawled into it and suddenly her "do" ignites. The whole house burns down as she tries to put herself out.
This film not only played on human’s fear of all things creepy crawly, but comments on the apathetic suburban existence.
Sometimes it takes a swarm of mutant cockroaches to inject a little excitement into the monotony of everyday life.
Next- Bad Reputation Part II: The Ratatouille Revolution!
Citations [1] Ratman’s Notebooks was retitled Willard after the main character, for the very successful 1970 film starring Bruce Davidson and remade more recently in 2003 starring Crispin Glover.
[2] Kim Newman, introduction to Ratman’s Notebooks, by Stephen Gilbert, (Virginia; Valancourt Books, 2013), vi
