• The four main actors are perfectly cast. Locke (who is not a good actor) is spot on as the awkward, shy but pretty girl. Davison is ideal as the wimpy poor man’s Anthony perkins from psycho. Lanchester is spot on as the doting overbearing mother and Ernest Borgnine is great as the powerhouse who just runs all over davison’s “willard”
  • Very good score by Alex North (Spartacus)
  • Davison’s Willard is neutered and pushed around by his family and boss
  • The narrative builds very slowly and believably with his family baggage, growing isolation, and turning to his rats. At first he just refuses to kill them, then starts talking to them because he’s lonely, etc.
  • Willard is not a redeeming character either that we feel for- it’s pretty complex
  • There are seemingly direct scenes/characters straight from psycho. There’s a scene here where two business men discuss and brag about the money they have just like the office scene with Marion crane in psycho. Also, Willard talks to himself (and dead mother) in big empty house after his mother’s passing
  • The actual horror mechanism of the horrifying rats does not nearly live up to the birds or jaws but it doesn’t boot it out of the archives either. I actual would’ve preferred a slightly more psychological approach where maybe the rats were just in his head and at the end it’s the guilt of what he’s done coming after him
  • Not in the top 10 of 1971 or near it but in the archives
  • Recommend