31 days of Horror: Day Five:Rats - Night Of Terror

Rats - Night Of Terror (1984)

Directed by Bruno Mattei

I almost decided not to write about this one. Not that it isn't a fine example of shitty, but entertaining Italian horror schlock, because it most certainly is. No the problem was one that comes up from time to time when watching (particularly Italian) horror films of a certain era. The problem is animal cruelty. Some of the worst examples of this phenomenon come from the cycle of popular cannibal films released in the late 70's/early 80's. In those cases cynical directors increased the notoriety, and levels of gore in their films by featuring animals being brutally killed on screen. The situation with Rats - Night Of Terror, isn't that bad, it's closer to watching an old western, and seeing horses fall down, and knowing it's because they were tripped. Rats is a horror film about killer rats, where it becomes obvious on a number of occasions that little care is being taken with the well being of the animals used in the film.

This situation spoils an otherwise fun low budget genre crossover. See Rats - Night Of Terror isn't just a horror film, it's a Post-Apocalyptic action/Horror hybrid. In the year 2015 nuclear war devastates the earth, forcing the human survivors to live underground. A century later the survivors break into two groups, with some people returning to the surface where they form primitive societies (riding motorcycles, and wearing studded leather), while the rest stay underground and continue to live with high technology. The movie begins 225 years after the nuclear war where we meet a gang of marauders in search of food and supplies. They discover a town in the desert, with not only food, but a water purification system, and indoor greenhouses. Unfortunately the town is also home to thousands of hyper intelligent man eating rats. Over the course of a single night, the gang parties, explores, and eventually does battle with the hoard of rats. It also turns out that the town is an outpost for the underground dwellers who plan their own return to the surface.

The movie feature awkward dialogue, bad haircuts, terrible dubbing, poor decision making and gross out gore. It also has an awesome EC comic style twist ending, and I wish I give it my enthusiastic recommendation. Instead I leave it up to the reader to decide if this sounds like their kind of thing.