A very poor movie! Normally i love cheap horror movies - or any cheap movie that has evil little things scuttling about in the dark trying to kill the human characters, e.g "Ghoulies", "Critters", "Munchies". This Vipco production bored me though. "Rats" is overly long with mediocre special effects and hyperactive synth music. Set in a post-apocalyptic desert town, a bunch of scruffy human survivors find fresh food and water - and thousands of rodent killers! The human characters display few redeemable qualities, bickering, poor leadership from a bearded bloke called Kurt, a woman who spends the whole time screaming, a curly haired bloke called Video who spouts nonsense etc. Credit to the producers for making the rats into a faceless, emotionless hoard who hunt down the humans with sheer numbers. However they then ruin it as Kurt turns up and quite clearly napalms a few of the (live) furry co-stars after one of the humans finds a bottle of the "hard stuff" and falls into a sewer. Any producer that permits important members of the cast to be burned alive makes me dislike this film even more. You can quite happily leave the room after 20 minutes, come back 20 minutes later - and the plot will not have advanced at all. The only difference you will notice is that there are less of the annoying humans on screen (as a couple will have wandered off and gotten killed by the rats). However, that's not to say that it is a complete waste of time. The Italian-English dubbing is very funny. Some excellent over-the-top dialogue. There are some impressively gory moments. The set design has a convincing weather-beaten, grimy look about it. The scene where the rebellious human "Duke" tries to escape the town, panics and decides to throw a grenade at some rats on his truck, even though he too is ON THE TRUCK is absolutely hilarious in my view. The very last 30 seconds of this film are also funny - they would have been quite profound, had the director/writer not made their audience sit through a load of poorly done set-pieces and slow plot development. Not clever.
Review of Rats: Night of Terror
