Animal - rampage movies were all the rage in the 1970s , with Jaws elevate the genre from niche horror to blockbuster position . But year before the shark it was all about the rats , in 1971 ’s Willard and 1972 ’s Ben . Now , at long last , this distich of skin - crawling classics is finally coming to Blu - shaft .
present-day audience are probably familiar with Willard thanks to the 2003 Crispin Glover remaking , but the original is a wonderfully creepy narrative desirable of its own recognition . It star Bruce Davison ( tot several ten and you ’ll spot him as Senator Robert Kelly in X - Men and X2 ) as the misfit who wriggles out from under the crushing thumbs of his female parent ( Elsa Lanchester ) and his boss ( Ernest Borgnine ) with help from his rodent army . It does n’t turn out so well for young Willard , but the gargantuan rat loss leader , Ben , got his own subsequence , in which he has a somewhat kinder personality , befriends a new lonely kid ( meet by Lee Montgomery ) , and gets his own Oscar - nominated composition song perform by a tweenage Michael Jackson .
BothWillardandBenhit Blu - electron beam — Willard gets a 4k scan taken from the film ’s original negative ; Ben obtain an HD transfer from the best available archival print — on May 16 courtesy of Shout Factory . extra feature include brand - unexampled comment by Davison on Willard , and Montgomery on Ben . Unfortunately , the discs are being sold separately , which stand for an opportunity to package the couplet in a suitcase filled with plastic rats has been unhappily miss here .
[ Coming before long ]
Blu - rayHorror
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