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Rats: Night of Terror (Bruno Mattei 1984) Trash rating +
No trash cinema thread would be complete without a neck straining nod in the direction of the late Bruno Mattei. A sort of poor man's Lucio Fulci; Mattei was an Italian exploitation director responsible for some of the cheapest, trashiest pieces of Z-movie dreck this side of Ed Wood. Spanning a thirty year period from 1970 to 2007 he churned out over fifty films in numerous genres including nazi-sploitation like the infamous SS Extermination Love Camp (1977); women-in-prison-sploitation like Violence in a Women's Prison (1982) and Women's Prison Massacre (1983); zombie-sploitation like Hell of the Living Dead aka Zombie Creeping Flesh (1980) and Zombi 3 (1988); not to mention rip-off-sploitation like his scandalously titled 1995 TV movie Cruel Jaws (US title Jaws 5), and my favourite, Terminator II (1990). Yes you read that right, Terminator II. For many of these films Mattei was billed under numerous pseudonyms, the most well known of which is Vincent Dawn. This was to makes his films appear as American productions, but I can't help but jokingly imagine it was to avoid the wrath of certain Hollywood studios and directors. Indeed how Mattei and co were never sued over the plagiaristic content of some of his movies is beyond me...
Co written with long time collaborator Claudio Fragasso, Rats: Night of Terror was no doubt heavily influenced by James Herbert's classic horror novel The Rats. In reality however the film bears more resemblance to the third novel in Herbert's trilogy (also released in 1984), Domain.
Set two hundred and twenty five years after a nuclear holocaust (or 'A.B. - after the bomb' as it's called here) Rats: Night of Terror begins with a grubby group of bikers called 'New Primitives' scavenging a familiar limestone quarry wasteland looking for food and shelter. With names like Kurt (the neckscarf wearing leader), Chocolate (the whiny blaxploitation wannabe), Video (the curly headed unfathomably stupid one), and Duke (the power hungry traitor who dresses like Napoleon Bonaparte); they're your usual bunch of childish posturing soon-to-be-deadsters complete with army surplus punk rocker wardrobes, and a clapped out armored van with wispy camouflage curtains. As the opening credits roll we see them arrive in an abandoned town where they proceed to take shelter in an old science lab (that reuses the same props from Luigi Cozzi's Contamination, and Umberto Lenzi's Nightmare City). But this is no ordinary science lab, oh no, this one was headed by researchers who were fiddling with rats and calling themselves the Total Elimination Group. Naturally this isn't good new for our grimy heroes...
Rats: Night of Terror (Bruno Mattei 1984) Trash rating +
No trash cinema thread would be complete without a neck straining nod in the direction of the late Bruno Mattei. A sort of poor man's Lucio Fulci; Mattei was an Italian exploitation director responsible for some of the cheapest, trashiest pieces of Z-movie dreck this side of Ed Wood. Spanning a thirty year period from 1970 to 2007 he churned out over fifty films in numerous genres including nazi-sploitation like the infamous SS Extermination Love Camp (1977); women-in-prison-sploitation like Violence in a Women's Prison (1982) and Women's Prison Massacre (1983); zombie-sploitation like Hell of the Living Dead aka Zombie Creeping Flesh (1980) and Zombi 3 (1988); not to mention rip-off-sploitation like his scandalously titled 1995 TV movie Cruel Jaws (US title Jaws 5), and my favourite, Terminator II (1990). Yes you read that right, Terminator II. For many of these films Mattei was billed under numerous pseudonyms, the most well known of which is Vincent Dawn. This was to makes his films appear as American productions, but I can't help but jokingly imagine it was to avoid the wrath of certain Hollywood studios and directors. Indeed how Mattei and co were never sued over the plagiaristic content of some of his movies is beyond me...
Co written with long time collaborator Claudio Fragasso, Rats: Night of Terror was no doubt heavily influenced by James Herbert's classic horror novel The Rats. In reality however the film bears more resemblance to the third novel in Herbert's trilogy (also released in 1984), Domain.
Set two hundred and twenty five years after a nuclear holocaust (or 'A.B. - after the bomb' as it's called here) Rats: Night of Terror begins with a grubby group of bikers called 'New Primitives' scavenging a familiar limestone quarry wasteland looking for food and shelter. With names like Kurt (the neckscarf wearing leader), Chocolate (the whiny blaxploitation wannabe), Video (the curly headed unfathomably stupid one), and Duke (the power hungry traitor who dresses like Napoleon Bonaparte); they're your usual bunch of childish posturing soon-to-be-deadsters complete with army surplus punk rocker wardrobes, and a clapped out armored van with wispy camouflage curtains. As the opening credits roll we see them arrive in an abandoned town where they proceed to take shelter in an old science lab (that reuses the same props from Luigi Cozzi's Contamination, and Umberto Lenzi's Nightmare City). But this is no ordinary science lab, oh no, this one was headed by researchers who were fiddling with rats and calling themselves the Total Elimination Group. Naturally this isn't good new for our grimy heroes...
Rats: Night of Terror is an absolute hoot that would get a much higher rating if it wasn't so inept. Filled with priceless dialogue like 'If you must copulate, do it outside' to which one of the offending gang members replies 'awww but I'm just about to blast off'. This is juvenile fun that doesn't just deliver a man-eating-rat-movie, but a post apocalyptic man-eating-rat-movie to boot. Naturally the acting is all way over the top almost to the point of self parody, and the rat action? well, the rat action is perhaps the funniest (did I say funniest? I meant lamest) thing of all about this movie. Most of the time rat attack sequences involve one of the cast having a bucket of live domesticated rats poured over their heads before writhing around on the floor in agony. But in one choice sequence, Mattei needs the beasties to form a swarming attack and so resorts to using plastic rats on a conveyor belt. The resultant footage has to be seen to be believed and is well worth the rental fee alone. Unfortunately though much of Rats: Night of Terror is bogged down with inane talky sequences and the film is a little short in the gore department (though there is one memorable chest burrowing sequence). Where the film redeems itself is with Mattei's audaciously ludicrous ending - a sort of semi-homage to Planet of the Apes, except better and funnier; I kid you not. Overall I'd recommend checking this one out if you can pick it up cheap. Mattei's films may be bottom of the barrel guttertrash, but I've yet to see one I didn't find entertaining and Rats: Night of Terror was no exception.