# Ben (1972)

### reviewed by
Douglas P Mosurak

    BEN (1972)

starring: Lee Harcourt Montgomery, Joseph Campanella, Meredith Baxter, Arthur O'Connell

    written by Gilbert Ralston
    directed by Phil Karlson

    a Bing Crosby Production
    a Cinerama release

    length: 92 mins., color
    MPAA rating: PG (for some cheap scares)
    on video: yes (Prism Entertainment)

recommendation: only if you're in the mood for "Family"-style sugarsap and aren't afraid of rats

Hot off the heels of the 1971 drive in staple "Willard" comes an untidy sequel, "Ben", which gets its wires crossed about 20 minutes into the game. It can't decide whether to be a horror film or a Quaalude-induced melodrama about a sick little boy, so it tries to be both.

The story opens with the closing scenes from "Willard", as Bruce Davison's Willard Stiles must come to bear with the wrath of his trained pet attack rat, Ben, and his legion of pet attack rats. These scenes are the best of the whole film, probably because they have little to do with "Ben" itself. Ben the rat has a very malevolent stare that's almost comical, as he squeals his evil bidding. As the townspeople look on, two bumbling cops go into the house and are attacked by rats as they open the floorboards in the basement. The army of rats escape into the backyards and sewers of the adjoining neighborhood houses. It's here that the movie takes a ridiculous turn and loses any effectiveness it might have had.

It's here that we meet David Garrison (Lee Montgomery), a cutesy, Adam Rich-looking young kid. He lives with his older sister Eve (Meredith Baxter, years before "Family Ties") and just-a-bit-too-old mother Beth (Rosemary Murphy, who got shot between the eyes in director Phil Karlson's next film, "Walking Tall"). David's got some sort of unspecified heart condition, which causes his mother to dote incessantly on him. Apparently this ailment forbids him to have any friends either, so he stays at home in his backyard workshop, where he builds extremely complex marionettes and writes songs for piano and harmonica. The uncomfortable air that comes with his song numbers is one I wouldn't wish on the unfortunate masses who saw any live-action Disney films of the period.

Ben makes his appearance in David's workshop. David feeds him and the two seem to be able to communicate with one another, which explains why David calls the rat by his given name. Meanwhile, every night the horde of rats emerges from the drainage system and ransacks a different location in town. It's kind of cool to see thousands of rats tearing apart the cereal aisle in a supermarket, and pretty funny to see them attack some ridiculously large women (and a stereotypically gay man) in a health spa, but such moments are few and far between.

Cops Kirtland (Joseph Campanella) and Hatfield (Arthur O'Connell) know what the town is up against, but are too busy being typical crusty cops to catch up with the rat invasion. As a result, they take everything really slow, fumigating houses after a rat attack, and trying to get everyone they know to believe that there is a problem. David is aware of what's happening though. His child-like demeanor won't let him see that Ben is a coldblooded killer, but merely his only friend (who he kisses in the sewer, and holds close to the open scar on his chest from his last operation). When David has the rats attack a neighborhood bully, the cops press him for answers, but he's all hush-hush about it.

It all ends up in the sewers by David's house, with his sister trying to find him and avoid being attacked by the rats, while cops and sanitation workers do battle with the enemy with flamethrowers and firehoses. These scenes are the most ridiculous in the film - countless reused shots of rats fleeing the fire and Ben sitting above them all, while the humans are overcome by dozens of rats clinging to them.

This movie is bad, bad, bad. In "Willard", the same silly premise was there, but the characters had a lot more going for them, and in turn the revenge fantasies that played out were amusing and trashy fun. Here, I wasn't the least bit encouraged to feel pity for David; I just wanted to smack him around some. He's an annoying little shit, and when he breaks into the depressing title song (which you'll recall was performed by Michael Jackson and nominated for an Oscar), you'll be fumbling for the fast-forward button. It's virtually impossible to care about anyone else in the film; there's about half a dimension to each character, so by the time the cops share a male-bonding exercise at film's end with their reporter friend, I was just scratching my head. The rat effects at the end are terrible; one shot looks like a bunch of burning oranges rolling down a hill, and it's used over and over.

What promised to be a cheap, entertaining Saturday afternoon UHF-band "Suspense Theater" style film just could not deliver. After my hour and a half with "Ben" dragged to a close, I wanted to devise a huge rat trap and spap the cast in two.

    Copyright (C) 1998 Douglas P. Mosurak
    marumaru@andrew.cmu.edu
    ----------------

The review above was posted to the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due to ASCII to HTML conversion.

Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews