Ben

Released by: Shout! Factory
Released on: May 16th, 2017.
Director: Phil Karlson
Cast: Joseph Campanella, Meredith Baxter, Lee Montgomery, Rosemary Murphy
Year: 1972
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The Movie:

In this follow up to 1971's Willard, we meet Danny Garrison (Lee Montgomery). He's a young boy who has recently had heart surgery due to a medical condition. He's also lost his father and lives now with his mother Beth (Rosemary Murphy) and sister Eve (Meredith Baxter). After the death of Willard Stiles at the end of the first movie, Danny befriends Ben, the large brown rat who caused such a commotion in that earlier picture.

Working the Willard Stiles case is Sergeant Cliff Kirtland (Joseph Campanella). When he gets ahold of Willard's diary he starts to believe that, yeah, maybe that guy did have a strange relationship with the rats in the area and maybe they did listen to him - at least to start with. As Kirtland and a few others try to put together the pieces of what happened to Stiles, Danny, who spends an inordinate amount of time out in his garage putting on creepy marionette shows and singing to himself, grows closer to his new furry friend. When a neighborhood bully picks on him and Ben sees it happen, an army rats attacks the kid whose mother calls the cops. As rat based mayhem starts to pick up in the neighborhood, Kirtland and the others try to put a stop to all of this and sort out what's happening - with all fingers seemingly pointing back to Danny, and to Ben…

Ben is no Willard. In the first picture we felt for the protagonist and had a clear antagonist - there was human conflict there, it made the right sort of backdrop for the rat based Mayhem to play off of. We don't get that with Ben. Instead we get an annoying kid - a kid that we have some sympathy for due to his medical condition, sure - but Danny is still an annoying kid. He goes all in with those damn puppets and his weird little songs that he sings to himself, and then later to his rat friend? No. He's not the cool kind of kid you want to hang out with, he's the kind of kid you want to go away. This is no fault of young actor Lee Montgomery. He's perfectly fine in the role, at times even good, but the character is written in such a way that it's hard to like him. Willard might have been a bit of a loser, but you didn't necessarily feel the need to slap him. This hurts the film. Where we should feel for this kid, this outsider who can't seem to make friends and who has been dealt a bum deal in life, instead we kind of want him to shut up and go away. Maybe if he didn't run around yelling 'OOMPA OOMPA OOMPA' or 'CHEEP CHEEP CHEEP' he'd be less loathsome.

However, the picture is not a total bust. The cast are pretty good here. Meredith Baxter, before she became immortalized as Elise Keaton in Family Ties, is good as the caring sister and Rosemary Murphy just as good as the understandably concerned mother. Joseph Campanella (who pops up on the same episode of The Golden Girls that George Clooney appeared in but who really did have a long career in T and film) is pretty great as the top cop - he's tough, he doesn't take no for an answer and if you get in his way while he's working the case he's going to yell at you.

The film also features some pretty decent rat action - and some not so decent rat action as well. Most of the time the rats are just that - actual rats - and these scenes are creepy and weird and well done. There are a few spots in the film, however, where some sort of wonky animation was used to bring the rats to life, mostly in scenes where real rats would have been harmed or where using real rats would have been impossible or dangerous. These scenes are not convincing. But hey, once we're running around in the sewers under the city watching cops battle rats with flamethrowers and shotguns, all is forgiven.

And of course, the movie famously features Michael Jackson singing the song 'Ben' over the end credits. This is the same song that Danny composes for Ben in the film and plays to himself at the piano - so it's appropriate enough, if a little weird in that, well, a boy is singing a perfectly lovely song to a rat that kills people. It garnered an Oscar nomination for the film, though it failed to take home the gold statue (it did win a Golden Globe though).

Video/Audio/Extras:

Whereas Willard was beautifully restored from its original negative for its Blu-ray release, Ben was transferred from the best 35mm print available (a disclaimer before the movie starts lets us know that both the negative and the interpositive are gone). Not surprisingly, it doesn't look as good as the earlier film but the AVC encoded 1080p high definition transfer, framed at 1.85.1 widescreen, is perfectly watchable so long as you keep your expectations in check. Colors are a bit faded and there's some minor print damage here and there but black levels are decent. Depth and detail won't floor you, but this clearly rises above anything that DVD could have provided. Given that this is a case of doing the best with what was available, it's not such a travesty. This won't impress the way the best HD transfers can but it'll do.

The English language DTS-HD Mono track, which comes with optional subtitles in English only, is fine. There are no problems with any hiss or distortion, the dialogue sounds clean and clear and the music has good range and presence to it. For an older single channel track? No complaints.

Extras for the film start off with an audio commentary featuring Lee Montgomery. Montgomery also shows up in a ten minute interview piece where he talks about being cast in the film, adjusting to life with the rats on set, how he 'instantly' saw Meredith Baxter as his sister, getting along with the other cast members, hanging out with teamsters and more.

Rounding out the extras on the disc are a theatrical trailer, two Williard/Ben double feature trailers, some TV spots, a few radio spots, a still gallery, menus and chapter selection. As this is a combo pack release, the standard Blu-ray sized keepcase also contains a DVD version of the movie taken from the same transfer and containing the same extras as the Blu-ray disc.

The Final Word:

Ben isn't as good as Willard but judged on its own merits it's still a really entertaining movie. The oddball cast help to keep the picture interesting while the copious amount of rats featured in the film keep the horror elements strong enough to matter. Shout! Factory's Blu-ray release looks decent given what was available to them, and the commentary and interview with Montgomery are both worth checking out. And hey, just try to get that theme song out of your head once you've heard it…

Click on the images below for full sized Blu-ray screen caps!