Revenge Of The Slashers: Benjamin Willis

“When you leave a man for dead, make sure that he’s really dead!”

Today’s slasher is the primary antagonist of what has often been referred to as the lesser slasher franchise from the 1990s. Despite being written by the same man, Kevin Williamson, I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997) has always remained in the shadow of Scream (1996). Summer is also considered the first in a long line of copycat slasher films featuring a young, beautiful cast that is systematically taken out by a sadistic killer that attempted to capture some of Scream‘s profitability. Today’s slasher is none other than Benjamin Willis, also known as the Fisherman.

Willis goes on a vengeful killing spree after he is struck by four young adults in a vehicle who, believing that he is dead, dump him by the docks and vow to never speak of the incident again. Willis remains in hiding for a year and then begins his reign of terror in the town of Southport, North Carolina, taking out friends and family of the four young adults before turning on them as well. Willis would return to hunt down the survivors of the first film in I Still Know What You Did Last Summer (1998) and, in a whacky twist, be resurrected in 2006’s very forgettable I’ll Always Know What You Did Last Summer. Another Fisherman killer appears in the 2021 series I Know What You Did Last Summer, but let’s not talk about that one.

Willis wears a black commercial fisherman’s slicker suit and uses a large, industrial fisherman’s hook to kill his victims. When he loses his hand near the end of the first movie, he replaces it with the hook in the second film. He was never a good guy, as he actually murdered his daughter’s boyfriend just prior to getting hit in the first film. We finally see his face at the climax of the first film.

Willis was portrayed by Muse Wilson in the first two Summer films. In the third film, Don Shanks took on the role. Benjamin Willis does not appear in the television series. Rumors about a fourth film have floated around since the early 2010s, but nothing has come to fruition. Hopefully we will sen Ben and his hook back on the big screen soon.

I hope that today’s Thirty-One Days O’Horror entry really “hooked” you in and made you eager for the rest of the month’s posts. Tomorrow’s slasher is the most recent to join the killer club!