International 80's Trash: Rats

Bruno Mattei was not a good director. Up until his death in 2007, he was directing crap film after crap film. His last film is the classic Zombie: The Beginning. But, before he directed films like that and skin flicks for Italy, he made a classic film alongside his buddy Claudio Fragrasso. It dared to rip off two different genres at once in a hilarious mess of a film. Behold the glory and splendor of...

Rats: Night of Terror

There is no correlation between this and Burial Ground: The Nights of Terror. That is probably obvious, but still bears mentioning. Plus, I want to plug this review again for the Final Girl site. That is all.

*

The movie begins with a long prologue explaining the backstory of the film. In 2015, the world was nearly destroyed by nuclear war. I guess five years after we make contact, two years after a giant flood, but three years before the world is overrun by terminators, all hell broke loose. People fled underground for hundreds of years and eventually started to come out again. Our heroes are a bunch of bikers who do just that. They find a house that is perfect: food, supplies and absolutely no people around. What could possibly go wrong?

*

They quickly discover a few dead bodies and the constant presence of rats. Well, it's not like there is any correlation between scavengers being around a place full of corpses. Much like Frogs, the film is obsessed with constantly showing shots of the animals wandering around. It is not really scary or effective in any way. We learn that many experiements were being done here, but we won't find out what until later. In the meantime, we get a scene of two people having sex in a sleeping bag and being mocked by their friends when they get stuck. This feels like stupid padding, but is actually really bad foreshadowing. You see, the lady gets stuck in it later as a rat his way from 'lady hole' to mouth. Ow.

*

Our 'heroes' figure out that something is up...eventually. In the meantime, they wander around the place and get picked off for a while. One guy even gets killed by a pile of falling rats. No, really. The rat leader, meanwhile, is a more interesting character. Like the leader from Frogs (the comparisons are just that easy to make), he does nothing save for look away from camera. He is a half-white, half-black rat though. Fortunately for our heroes, they find a flamethrower, the solution to all of life's problems. Somehow, the people still managed to get killed. We get the 'he's alive- let's just turn him around and OH NO, he's dead' shot about three times here as well. That really only works once, Bruo. Of course, most of them would have lived if they could have stopped bickering for five damn seconds.

*

I will spoil the *shock* ending here. If you want to be surprised, skip to the end.

*

Only two people make it, one of them, strangely enough, is the only black actor. Suck on that, the one cliche not used here! We keep getting cuts of mysterious men in Hazmat suits walking around and killing the rats in the surrounding area. This is also preceded by some weird recording of experiments on rats being discussed. Finally, our heroes are rescued. But their rescuers are mute- why? One of them pulls off this gas mask to reveal...a giant rat face! Rat people have taken over the Earth! Aargh! The End.

*

This movie is freaking ridiculous. Much like Hell of the Living Dead (how have I not done that yet?), it is stupid, amateurish and badly-written. Also like that film, it is pretty damn entertaining in an ironic way. One of my favorite effects is the rat 'swarm' that is clearly rat dolls placed on a moving track. It looks like either the candy dots on wax paper or ducks in a shooting gallery- take your pick. The downside is that the characters are almost all unlikeable. Then again, they all die- most violently- so it's a trade-off. If you like good horror, stay away. Lovers of ridiculous crap should be happy here.

*

In honor of a new reader, I bring you the best Greek zombie film ever! Also, the only one (so far). Stay tuned...