BEN (1972). Another film that was better in my early adolescence. The sequel to WILLARD starts out as a recap to lead into this story, where Ben, an intelligent black rat becomes the defect leader of a whole bunch of rodents-I must give praise to Moe Desesso and help who trained what looks like at least a 1000 rats. I give give much praise at all to the horrid script and the extremely uneven acting, particularly Lee Hartcourt Montgomery, playing Ben's sickly friend. You are almost hoping against hope that He'll be eaten...the film just screeches to a halt every time He's on screen and hearing him talk/sing/play harmonica to "Ben" (which we hear Michael Jackson sing on the credits) will just astound You how bad it is. Also a young Meredith Baxter and longtime character actor Kenneth Tobey. I must also give credit for a pretty wild scene involving rats in a grocery store (No alarm? in Los Angeles especially
!) and all sorts of product placement. Proceed with risk. **