Ah, rats. Filthy, plague-ridden carriers of disease- and occasionally a piece of pizza- and scourge of New Yorkers, these nasty vermin have been the source material of many a horror film.
From Willard and his beloved Ben, to the rats Of Unknown Origin with Deadly Eyes working the Graveyard Shift, rodents in film don't exactly have the on-screen reputation of their cuter, cuddlier cousins, the mouse.
One gets to headline their own kid-friendly Magic Kingdom (that would be Mickey), while the other inspires fear and revulsion in almost everyone they come into contact with. Of course, rats are scruffier, oft-red-eyed and intimidating, while mice are fuzzy, smaller and more likely to end up snake food than inspire fear, so it makes sense.
Far and away one of the nuttiest entries in the rats-gone-wild horror movie sweepstakes is the absolutely bonkers Rats: Night of Terror, which plays like an oddball cross between Escape from New York and Planet of the Apes, only nowhere near that good, as this is Bruno Mattei we're talking about.
For those unfamiliar, Mattei is a director that never met a cult film he couldn't rip-off. Think Syfy's Saturday night Creature Features or The Asylum's cheap blockbuster knock-offs of the week. As such, it would probably be more apt to compare Rats to something like After the Fall of New York-meets-Night of the Lepus.
Mattei has tackled everything from women-in-prison flicks, a la Caged Heat (Women's Prison Massacre, Caged Women), zombie movies (Hell of the Living Dead, aka Night of the Zombies, Zombie 3 & 4) to cannibal movies (Mondo Cannibale, In the Land of Cannibals), nunsploitation (The True Story of the Nun of Monza), Nazis (SS Girls, Women's Camp 119), Jaws rip-offs (Cruel Jaws), Terminator rip-offs (Robowar, Shocking Dark- Terminator II) and plenty more trash where that came from.
That said, as inept as a lot of his stuff is, it's also highly enjoyable, at least if you like movies of the so-bad-they're-good variety. At the very least, Rats might be one of his more accessible flicks, not that it's saying much, given some of the movies he's done over the years- Killing Striptease II, anyone?
The story, which features a largely pointless elaborate back-story, related in a wordy scroll at the beginning, a la Star Wars, but not slanted- Mattei probably couldn't afford such frivolous add-ons such as creative credit sequences- revolves around a group of land-dwellers that have emerged literally from underground, after a nuclear war sent everyone below the earth to escape deadly radiation.
Taking the form of a biker gang, only with Road Warrior-style get-ups and one machine-gun-equipped ATV, the crew goes from town to town scavenging for food and water and shelter. Little do they know that, while the radiation may have subsided, nature has taken over, in the form of hyper-intelligent rats that have made the transition from living in sewers to living above ground in mass quantities, killing anyone who they come across.
The gang stumbles into a former military installation, featuring plenty of food, purified water, and even a basement hothouse with all sorts of plant life that could sustain them for years to come. However, the presence of several dead bodies is a harbinger of things to come, not to mention a heads-up that maybe there's a reason no one is there anymore.
Sure enough, when the night falls, the rats come out in mass numbers, devouring anyone who gets in their way- but not all at once, mind you. No, these rats are wily foes, waiting to get each of the crew alone for their attacks, picking them off one by one, slasher-movie style. Come the morning, will anyone be left standing?
Rats: Night of Terror is indeed like a slasher movie in futuristic sci-fi movie clothing, as each of the gang gets theirs in fairly gory fashion, but with the sillier twist of the stalker being a horde of rats, who mostly just stand around looking puzzled at everything going on around them.
For effect, to make them look scarier than they actually are, the film crew literally toss the rats at the cast members supposedly being attacked, to make them look appropriately ferocious! The end result is oft-LOL-inducing, though I suppose some animal lovers may be horrified to see what appears to be actual living creatures IRL jeopardy. I think.
TBH, I'm not sure what the laws were back then, much less if there even were any, in Italy, where the film was made- on sets abandoned by the legendary Sergio Leone for his classic Once Upon a Time in America, BTW. (Try not to think of that the next time you watch that film!)
As such, that means that it is indeed likely that rats were bashed, beaten and even burned over the course of this production, which is truly unfortunate. Or maybe not, and it just looks that way. I honestly have no idea. But, be that as it may, it's easy to suspend one's disbelief for the short running time of the quickly-paced thriller, IMHO.
Much of this is die to the undeniably distracting audio spectacle of the film's horrifically bad dubbing, which features some priceless terrible dialogue that has to be heard to be believed, such as a black actress being doused in flour and proclaiming gleefully: "I'm white! I'm white!" or a guy having trouble with a computer and declaring: "Stupid machine needs a kick in the balls!"
Maybe the acting is better in the film's original Italian, but the voice-over work is spectacularly bad, leading to some undeniably funny moments, even when the film is ostensibly looking to scare viewers. Be that as it may, there are the occasionally icky moments, such as when a rat crawls out of a victim's mouth or a whole mess of them come spewing out of another's chest cavity.
As such, the movie is tremendous fun for bad movie lovers, though I suppose animal rights' activists need not apply, even if these are nasty rats we're talking about. I mean, I love animals, too, and setting them on fire is obviously a bridge too far, but this movie is so ridiculous, it's hard to forget to care when what's going on is so silly.
I guess what I'm saying is that, if you can suspend your disbelief, which is easier to do that one might think, despite what's transpiring on-screen, then Rats is a lot of fun, and primo make-fun-of-with-your-pals material, as much as I felt bad to a certain extent for the rats themselves. Maybe PETA types can take comfort in the fact that the rats get the best of the humans at nearly every turn in this one.
But what really make it worthwhile is the next-level insanity of the ending, which gives even the twist of Planet of the Apes a run for its money. I don't want to give it away for the uninitiated, but boy, oh boy, is it something, and you likely won't see it coming. Too bad we didn't get a sequel to see what happened next, as it might have made for an even campier follow-up.
The cast is basically made up of unknowns, at least in the States, but horror fans that know their Italian gore-fests might recognize a few familiar faces, and even if you don't, you probably know a few of them anyway, whether you realize it or not.
For instance, in the leading role of Kurt (an obvious nod to Kurt Russell, of the aforementioned Escape from New York), there's the elaborately-named Ottaviano Dell'Acqua. The name and even the face might not ring a bell, but you know him if you know Italian zombie flicks. He's none other than "worm face," poster boy for Lucio Fulci's notorious Zombie, aka Zombi 2.
Acqua's mainly known as a ubiquitous stuntman, who worked on loads of Italian productions, from the early 70's onward, still working to this day. Some of his more notable flicks include Starcrash, Cannibal Apocalypse, She, Ladyhawke, Red Sonja, Demons, In the Name of the Rose, The Sect, The Stendhal Syndrome, Quantum of Solace, Angels & Demons and John Wick: Chapter 2.
However, he has done some acting on the side, sometimes uncredited, sometimes under the stage name of Richard Raymond. Notable credits to this end include Fellini's Satyricon, Scorsese's New York, New York and Gangs of New York; Nightmare City, 2019: After the Fall of New York, Escape from the Bronx, Zombie 3 & 4, Double Team and Demon Mind.
Geretta Geretta, who plays the wily Chocolate, should be more readily familiar to Italian horror aficionados, thanks to her turn in the classic Lamberto Bava film Demons, where she plays Rosemary, the woman who sets the events into motion by putting on the metal mask.
She's also in Fulci's Murder Rock: Dancing Death, The Becoming and Bloody Christmas, and wrote the semi-autobiographical The Boy with the Sun in his Eyes and has written and directed several shorts and feature-length films.
Massimo Vanni, who plays Kurt's right-hand man Taurus, was also in Violent City, Seven Beauties, the original The Inglorious Bastards, The House by the Edge of the Lake, The Last Shark, 1990: The Bronx Warriors, Escape from the Bronx (alongside Acqua), Warriors of the Wasteland, Zombie 3 & 4 (also alongside Acqua), The Wax Mask and Scorsese's Gangs of New York (you guessed it- what's with these guys and movies set in New York? LOL).
Gianni Franco, who played the computer "expert" of dubious skills, was also in Lamberto Bava's Delrium, Phantom of Death, The Wax Mask (with Vanni), Dario Argento's The Phantom of the Opera and the more recent Third Person.
The cast gets a bit more obscure from there, though Fausto Lombardi, who played Deus, was in Terror Express, Don't Look in the Attic and Zombie 4 and Cindy Leadbetter, who played Diana, was in Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals, Starcrash, Absurd, The Lonely Lady and The Adventures of Hercules.
The memorable, 80's synth-drenched score was by Luigi Ceccarelli, who also did the honors for Mattei's Caged Women and Women's Prison Massacre, as well as 1987's Scalps, Joe D'Amato's Dirty Love, Massacre, Beyond the Ocean, After the Condor and Mozart is a Murderer.
The solid cinematography is courtesy of Franco Delli Colli, who also worked on such wonderfully trashy flicks like Vengeance is my Forgiveness, Dead Men Don't Count, Wife by Night, Born Black, What Have They Done to Your Daughters?, Strip Nude for your Killer, Macabre, Revenge of the Dead, Ghosthouse and Dark Bar, as well as the classic Vincent Price chiller The Last Man on Earth, which was the precursor to The Omega Man and I Am Legend, using the same Richard Matheson source material as those films. He was assisted by Henry Frogers, who also worked on Mattei's Women's Prison Massacre The Revenge of the Living Dead Girls and Maniac Killer.
Finally, the film was co-directed (albeit uncredited) and co-written by Claudio Fragasso, who also assisted Mattei on Hell of the Living Dead and Zombie 3 & 4, sometimes under the name of Clyde Anderson, and went onto write and/or direct such cult flicks as Monster Dog (starring rocker Alice Cooper), Beyond Darkness and the notorious "Best Worst Movie" Troll 2.
Rats: Night of Terror certainly won't win any awards for subtlety, and it's often laughable, but if you can get past the shoddy treatment of the titular terrors, it's undeniably a hoot and a half and is highly recommended for bad movie fans.
The film is readily available on DVD, as well as on Blu-Ray as a double feature with Mattei's Hell of the Living Dead via Blue Underground, with some decent bonus features, including interviews with Mattei, Fragasso and some of the casts of each film.
Check it out!
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