Tim likes snakes… He lives all alone in the Everglades like a hermit and looks after a few dozen snakes that he keeps around the house. Stanley is the name of his favorite rattle snake that he takes into town. Timmy does all this in honor of his father, an animal-loving Indian who got killed by poachers. A big textile giant wants to hire Tim for his knowledge of the animals' brooding places in the Everglades, but naturally this strokes with his believes. This film is commonly known as "Willard" with snakes instead of rats, which is 100% true, but that doesn't mean it isn't a worthwhile film for fans of 70's animal horror. The Everglades setting is phenomenal and I particularly loved the atmospheric opening sequences with footage of the swamps guided by a typically 70's song. Particularly the first half hour is tense and sinister, but then the film becomes exaggeratedly slow-paced, overlong and ridiculous. There's an extended sequence where Tim sets the table for himself and his two favorite snakes, Stanley and his spouse Hazel. The snakes' plates contain a mouse trapped underneath a drinking glass that gets removed after saying prayers. It's a pretty bonkers sight to behold. Snake-boy goes completely berserk when a psychopathic poacher, sent by the belt-maker, kills Hazel and her offspring. There's also a bizarre and redundant sub plot about Tim delivering snakes to an exotic dancer for her act, but when her pimp forces her to bite off the snake's head on stage, she suddenly becomes an enemy as well. Albeit imaginative, this sub plot could easily have been cut. "Stanley" was directed by the outcast horror director William Grefe, whom I strangely admirer. He made quite a number of oddball horror flicks in the sixties and seventies, including the hilariously inept jellyfish monster mash "Sting of Death" and the experimental shark adventure "Mako: Jaws of Death". "Stanley" is arguably Grefe's best accomplishment, but still just a mediocre and overall tedious exploitation film.

The 1971 movie, WILLARD, was a very clever film about a lonesome loser who uses his pet rats to exact revenge against the nasty folks who wronged him. Now, a year later, the film was essentially remade by schlock director William Grefe--but this time using rattlesnakes instead of killer rats. The films are very similar. Both involve an outsider who had weird and dangerous pets as well as had fathers that were destroyed by his evil business partners.While STANLEY is not a good film, you can't put all the blame on schlock film director William Grefe (just most). While he was never a particularly competent or inspired director, this sort of trashy film was in style in the 1970s and lots of directors made a ton of them because people were willing to pay to see them. However, practically none of the ones made after WILLARD had decent acting or decent story ideas. They just churned out one low-budget crap film after another, starring such things as killer frogs, piranhas, ants and even bunnies! However, most were not like STANLEY or WILLARD--where a man fell in love with the animals and controlled them. The rest were simply mindless animals running amok--and it sold.This film begins with Tim Ochopee living in the Florida swamps. He's been back from Vietnam for several months and is sick of society and its violence. Now he's like the Dr. Doolittle of snakes--living in a house filled with the critters. He earns money capturing rattlesnakes to be milked for their venom, but otherwise has no use for people. Into his ideal world comes Alex Rocco and his scum assistants--trying to get Tim to betray his beloved snakes and sell them for their hides! While this disgusted Tim, what eventually drives him over the edge is learning that Rocco's thugs had murdered his father--and Tim and his best snake friend, Stanley, are out to even some scores.Having a killer snake is pretty funny, as much of the time it does what all real snakes do--not much. At one point he tells Stanley to bite a dying man on the hand...and the snake doesn't even more a millimeter towards the guy! It's all pretty funny and at least Willard's rats were mobile! Since Stanley is pretty much a bust most of the time, Tim also uses water moccasins (though they were really just harmless water snakes) and other nasties to kill off the enemies of the reptile world. It's actually pretty funny seeing the victims of these bites die almost instantly! These must be some snakes!! After dispatching several well-deserving jerks, Tim decides to kidnap Rocco's sexy daughter. He says that he "needs an Eve in his Garden of Eden". Well, this plan works about as well as you'd expect--especially since by this point Tim and his snakes had already killed the girl's father! You'd think that even the college educated Tim would see the flaw in this logic! Later, in a tender moment when Tim is trying to woo her, he says "I want to rape you...bed you...love you". Wow. It's hard to imagine any girl resisting this come-on line...unless she isn't brain dead!! During this dopey kidnapping and subsequent love(?) scene, the most insipid and cloying music drones on and on in the background. You see no snakes in this scene, by the way, because they were all throwing up...as were many in the audience! Later after they made sweet love (i.e., he raped her), they awaken and she confronts him with the fact he's 100% insane as well as a lousy lover (insert your own snake comment here if you'd like). He doesn't take this very well and begins overacting horribly...at which point, she also begins overacting and screaming. Perhaps this is just angst in realizing how bad the movie is. When they quiet down, it's now his turn to overact as he yells at Stanley to "kill her"--and the stupid snake just lays there doing nothing. I think killer sloths or slugs would have been more animated than snakes. Finally, tired of the whole dull affair, Stanley finally turns on Tim and bites him--but you never see this! Tim yells and holds his neck--but the snake didn't move an inch!! I guess he was just too fast for the cameras to see (yeah, right).Overall, this is a bad film but probably just about as bad as any other crazed animals attacking mankind film of the era--they were mostly all very bad and silly.

When broadcast TV stations actually showed movies other than re-runs, infomercials and syndicated TV shows this film always seemed to in on every couple of weeks. the plot has an ex-vet named Tim living out in the Everglades because society doesn't take kindly to his being an Indian. Keeping pretty much to himself he makes fiends with the wildlife, particularly the rattle snakes including one he names Stanley. When he feels pressured he uses his snakes to get revenge on the people he feels have wronged him.Good thriller isn't really scary. To be certain your feelings toward snakes will determine the amount of squirming you'll do since this film is full of snakes from start to finish. Well acted the film has a nice feeling of believability to it even as it hits all of the right exploitation high notes. Watching the film again for the first time in at least a decade I was shocked at how well the film has stood up. While no classic it does what it does nicely and then gets off the screen.Definitely recommended. I'm rating it 6 out of 10 because I'm not sure what a fair rating is. My feelings toward the film are higher than that, but I'm not sure its not purely surprise that the film holds up as well as it does.

Partial spoilers. I just saw it again yesterday, even though I've known it on and off for a long while. Even though I've only ever read one or two reviews of it, I've always been able to hear "Willard rip-off!" as the usual song about this movie. There's probably no way to convince anyone who thinks so, but it ISN'T. (Even though I'm sure Willard was responsible for Stanley being made in the first place, but that isn't the same thing.) And even though the endings are similar - you can probably see that from a mile away - this one handles the idea in its own pretty clever way. Chris Robinson - long before he uttered the famous and infamous words, "I'm not a doctor, but I play one on TV," though he was already well-known - manages to be really believable as the likable main character, who's slowly coming apart, but believable in a completely different way from Bruce Davison as Willard. And of course, "Stanley" - whether you love or hate them - is a genuine "animals strike back" story, which Willard wasn't trying to be in most ways, of course. Except that, like that character, Tim is also killing a lot of PERSONAL enemies, but it's still a case of him vs. the poachers, until the end, of course. And Alex Rocco as a loudmouthed semi-comical villain (think Moe Greene in The Godfather) is something most people either LOVE or HATE, and for me, it's always the former.