Benjamin "Ben" Willis or also called The Fisherman, is the main antagonist of the film: I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997) and the antagonist of the novel of the same title.
Benjamin Willis wears a fisherman's trench coat and hat, uses his trench coat collar to cover his face. His appearance itself is that of a fisherman from the 50's. His weapon is a hook that he uses to stab and slaughter his victims.
Origin[]
Previously, Benjamin Willis lived happily married with his wife and both had as children Billy and Suzie Willis. In an indeterminate time, Mrs. Willis tries to abandon Ben and he murders her when he learns of her plans, since then it is unknown if her children were aware of those facts or if Willis cleaned her image.
Years later on July 4 (during the Independence Day of the United States of America) in 1996 Suzie Willis dies in a car accident with only her boyfriend David Egan surviving.
I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997) []
Some time after Suzie's death, David felt guilty for what happened and Willis decides to kill him 1 year later, just at the time when David is about to commit suicide; After having killed him, Willis is run over by a car where there were four young people named: Julie James, Helen Shivers, Barry Cox and Ray Bronson, who decided to throw him into the water believing him dead and being unable to face their responsibility, the four young people decided keep silent about this macabre fact.
What they did not know is that Willis survived the accident, and the moment he is about to be thrown into the water the man takes Helen's tiara, making it clear to the young people that he was still alive at least until the moment he falls into the water where young people assume they killed him. From that moment on, a resentful Ben Willis swore to himself to kill the four people who threw him into the sea and everyone who keeps a dark secret.
A year after much stalking and studying them, Ben waits for the next July 4 to take revenge on the boys and thus begins an inevitable massacre in which he ends up murdering Helen and Barry. When a paranoid Julie suspects that Ray himself is her murderer, Ben takes advantage of her situation to take her to her boat and tries to murder her. However, the young woman realizes her plan and recognizes him as the true murderer. A terrible chase breaks out in his boat where Julie and Ray defeat him, Ben ends up losing his right hand and his body falls into the sea. The police decide to investigate the case and find him guilty. However, the only thing they can recover is his hand with the hook since Ben Willis is declared dead.
Settling accounts[]
One year after his supposed death; An angry Ben Willis with the help of his son Billy who decides to take the last name Benson (which in English is a combination of the word Ben's son) devises a new plan to annihilate the two teenagers responsible for almost killing him.
To accomplish his task, Billy approaches Julie as a trusted friend, who in turn pretends to be the host of a radio contest who communicates with Julie in a contest with a paid vacation to the Bahamas. Contest that she ends up winning despite not having answered the question correctly. Entirely trapping her in a trap as the Willis males are warned that a storm will block the ports with no way out.
Meanwhile Ben tries to kill Ray on his own but the fisherman only seriously wounds him and the boy, as soon as he finds out that his girlfriend is on a trip to the Bahamas, he shoots to the island armed and crossing a storm. Once on the island Ben psychologically tortures Julie with her characteristic modus operandi and kills all the other residents of the island until he only leaves Julie alive. At that moment Billy is revealed as Ben's son and together they take the girl to the grave of Suzie and Willis's wife, where he dug a grave to be the grave of Julie herself.
Unexpectedly, Ray appears and joins in a battle in which Ben accidentally kills his own son. A maddened Ben lashes out at Ray but is stopped by several shots to the chest by Julie; Ben loses his balance, falls into the grave that he dug himself and is buried by the mud increased by the rain. A few months later Ben inexplicably shows up at the Broson residence attacking Julie and Ray and doubtfully annihilating them.
Living dead[]
10 years have passed since his defeat by Julie James and Ray Bronson and Ben Willis has become a true legend. So every July 4, the new generations of adolescents hear the terrifying massacres that the maniac unleashed in his attempt to take revenge on his enemies.
On July 4, 2006, a group of teenagers organize a joke in bad taste in which the fisherman supposedly returns and unleashes chaos at a fair. In the middle of the persecution the young people who organized the prank meet with the fake Ben Willis satisfied by his trick until they find out that one of them died in the fake persecution. Desperate and panicky, the boys decide to keep quiet about the death of their friend, vow to take the secret to the grave and destroy the evidence.
On July 1 of the following year, the equivalent of the new Julie James: Amber Wiliams is the first to be harassed by the mythical fisherman and decides to tell what happened to the rest of her friends. In that way slowly but surely Ben Willis begins to stalk and eliminate the boys one by one.
At first the boys believe that the person responsible is an acquaintance of theirs or one related to the deceased boy who tries to take revenge or make fun of them. However they do not get much evidence and the suspects are reduced when they all begin to be killed by a living dead Ben Willis who has returned from the dead to punish those who dare to keep a secret to the grave.
In this way Ben Willis goes from being a resentful fisherman to an undead as immortal as a legend himself.
Ways to kill[]
His hunting style is to assassinate his targets one by one, even though he doesn't seem to mind assassinating anyone who crosses his path or who represents a potential threat whether he is blacklisted or not. He has even killed other people in front of his victims. He generally stalks his targets at a distance and warns them of their attack with messages that usually include his catchphrase "I know what you did last summer" or simply an "I know."
Once he manages to either panic his victim or confirm that she is completely alone. Willis attacks her victim and ruthlessly kills her with her sharp hook, stabbing or slitting her throat. Once the fisherman is dead, he hides the corpse in his boat. Although when he saw himself on an island he did not seem to worry about hiding the corpses of his victims in different parts of the hotel on the island and only when they began to be discovered was he when he hid them all.
Ben Willis is fast, agile, deadly and has an extraordinary ability to surprise his victims at the worst moment. He works exclusively alone, but in the second attempt to kill Julie James and Ray Bronson he worked with his son Billy to create a complicated conspiracy to kill the only ones who have survived before him and corner them completely.
Despite being very analytical and anticipatory to kill without mercy and very discreetly. Ben Willis most of the time is confident enough to underestimate his victims and be unable to calculate any strategy or resistance from them that always ends with his defeat and imminent death.
He always kills his victims with his sharp grapple but that doesn't limit him to using other nearby objects to kill or finish them off. Losing his right hand, the fisherman replaced it with his loyal weapon.
In the novel[]
- In the novel, there are many things that change unlike in the movie. Like Benjamin, who's real name is Collingsworth Wilson who is a librarian rather than a fisherman, and lives in California rather than North Carolina.
- These changes were due to the fact that the writer Lois Duncan had the rights to the novel and Jim Gillespie, the director together with the screenwriter Kevin Williamson wanted to completely adapt the book, but the writer did not want to assign them the rights; so after an agreement he only gave them certain rights such as names and titles, so Kevin Williamson decided to make his own adaptation of it using the names that the writer gave them.