This film exists halfway between softcore lesbian porn and gore-soaked splatter as a cheap exploitation film that tries and then fails to do both, without too much concern for acting or dialogue. Mountains of barely clad female flesh go hand in hand with ridiculous violence in this barely recognisable adaptation of an obscure Bram Stoker story about a coven of rat-worshipping female bandits. While there isn't actually any lesbianism shown on camera the implication of its existence overwhelms virtually every other aspect of `Burial of the Rats'. The story follows the adventure of young Bram Stoker and his father, attacked by the bandits during their travels abroad. The younger Stoker kills one of them and is captured; the elder one tries to convince the local constabulary to search for his missing son even after receiving such matter-of-fact advise as `Go on home, and forget all about your son!' In a matter of hours young Bram has fallen in love with one Barbie-doll proportioned Rat Woman and become sympathetic to the others' cause, even if it entails murderous raids on monasteries and brothels. Meaningless topless dancing scenes and silly violence follow, including a gratuitous torture dungeon sequence and the sight of a bucketful of rats picking a corpse clean to a bleached skeleton in a matter of seconds. That a god-fearing Victorian moralist like Stoker would have even conceived of something like this is unlikely: `Burial of the Rats' is pure William Castle camp from the prison guard who can't recognise the protagonist because he has a hat on (!!) to the ludicrous moment when the Rat Queen plucks a disobedient rodent out of the pack on the floor at her feet and cuts its head off-with a miniature guillotine! Insipid and inane but much more fun than a dozen far more well-made `serious' films, this is a bad movie lovers delight!
Review of Burial of the Rats
