Customer Reviews

Rats - Night of Terror

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Buying Rats was an experiment of sorts for me, partially because I wasn't sure about the film and partially because the reviews frightened me somewhat. I had expected to find a really low-budget "horror" movie with painted gerbils posing as flesh-eating monstrosities, and I expected the acting quality that accompanied that prototypical setup. Well, in that regard I wasn't disappointed. I was somewhat annoyed at first by the lack of "gore" the editorial initially spoke of, but something else came out of the moving, a strange thing that I wasn't aware of the movie containing. The part I was surprised by was the hilarious nature this movie, obviously not intended to be something frightening, was crafted in, laughing at itself over and over again. Honestly, when watching it, I wondered if I had read about the same show I was witnessing.
The basic concept of the movie is this. A group of bikers existing in a post-apocalyptic world take shelter in a town and discover food, supplies, water, and rats everywhere. These rats, mutated by radiation and bent on human consumption, are more than happy to share room with something so..tasty.
Basically, buy this movie if you like B movies and something to laugh at. Don't purchase it if you are looking for something life altering, because mutant rats normally don't fit this criteria very well.

Oh man, how long I have been looking for this one movie for so damn long. I remember seeing this WAYYYYY back whenever there would be those old Creature Features on Sunday afternoons at 4:00 and you were a kid in a candy store. I had nothing to do but watch horror movies all afternoon long and just eat junk-food. I missed that show. The thing was that I had remembered a few scenes and I knew it was about rats but I just couldn't find the movie. Now by the power of God (Satan? Must be to re-release THIS movie) Anchor Bay re-released this in the Uncut version. This movie is just funny as hell. The movie soundtrack by Goblin is another addition to you who love Eurohorror, the special effects are low and cheesy, and the rats themselves are actually pet mice painted black!!! PURE GENIUS!!! I love the whole post-apocalyptic mood in this movie, and the avant-garde atmosphere is great. This movie is not that gory, maybe 1 or 2 scenes, but very tame. This is NOT a Horror movie, this is Comedy people. Pure Comedy!!!

Set in the year 215 A.B. (after the bomb), "Rats" is the story of a group of motorcycle riding nomads who travel around scavenging the leftover cities of the world that have become ghost towns. Most humans never resurfaced after going underground to avoid the radiation all those years before, but the biker gang soon discovers that the humans moving underground forced the world's rat population above ground, and it is they who now hold power over us!

Putting his own spin on Romero's "Night of the Living Dead," famed European schlock-horror director Bruno Mattei replaces zombies with rats and takes us into the future to a world turned upside down. If that sounds intriguing to you, you may want to give this one a look, but be prepared for the worst. Everything about this one is pretty bad (and kinda gross) except for the twist ending and some of the general concept itself. It's all in good fun if you enjoy bad movies though, but one sort of feels this would have been more effective as part of an anthology since it really doesn't need to be feature length.

I recommend opting for the double feature DVD that includes "Hell of the Living Dead" and the same extra features which are: "Hell Rats of the Living Dead" (an interview with director Bruno Mattei), a Bruno Mattei bio, and a theatrical trailer. Though, that one is double-sided and may be troublesome for finicky DVD players.

Well, I have seen much worse. The film is laughable, but worth a viewing if you're into Euro Horror. It's definately entertaining, just not in the way the filmmaker intended. The dialogue is a riot, and the gore is really quite bad. Really a film for genre fans.

The first thing i must say about this film is that if you are looking for something intense or scary this is not for you.But if you want to be entertained you're in for a surprise.Yes,this movie is bad in the true sense of the word,but that's it's charm.I laughed as hard at this as I did at American Pie.This could be released in the theater and marketed as a comedy and it would work.From the bad dubbing to the not so special effects this is a B-movie classic in every sense of the word.Invite over a few buddies,drink a few beers and it will be enjoyed even more!

I really had little idea the cinematic pain train I was boarding as I watched Rats - Night of Terror (1983) aka Rats - Notte di terrore last night. Oh sure, I read the reviews and what not, but to really get a true understanding of the film's utterly rotten essence, you must watch it, and experience it, for yourself. I've seen a hell of a lot of bad movies in my time, but I have to say, this fetid, moldering bit if Italian produced flotsam buried the needle on my Suck-O-Meter, something that hasn't happened since I watched Red Serpent (2002), with Michael Paré and Roy Scheider. Written and directed by Bruno Mattei, the man who gave us such wonders as S.S. Extermination Love Camp (1977) and the ode to the usage of stock footage Hell of the Living Dead (1980), the film features Ottaviano Dell'Acqua (Zombi 3), Geretta Geretta (Demons), Massimo Vanni (Escape from the Bronx), Ann-Gisel Glass (Deadly Eyes), Henry Luciani, and Fausto Lombardi (Don't Look in the Attic).

The film started off well enough, with some displayed text telling us about how a great, nuclear holocaust drove those humans left alive under the ground, where they developed sophisticated societies. After some years, some (fool) hearty individuals decided on returning to the surface, to enjoy the toxic wonderment I suppose, and became viewed as primitives by those who remained down below. The story picks up in the year 225 A.B. (After the Bomb) as we see a motorcycle gang tooling around the wasteland (looks like an old rock quarry to me). As I was wondering just where in the heck they got the gas to run their machines, they boogie on into a dilapidated city, deciding this might be a good place to set up camp...and this is about the time the, as the boys from MST3k would say, the `deep hurting' began as the characters started to actually talk. Anyway, the find a deserted research facility, complete with canned food, plants (fresh vegetables and fruit), and fresh water, littered with gnawed on corpses...well, it's not completely deserted, as there's the rats, and plenty of them. They clear out the dead bodies, move into their new digs, and soon enough the mutated, furry, super rodents begin picking off the gang one by one. Not only that, but the verminous mongrels have eaten up the tires on the vehicles, preventing those who haven't become all ate up from leaving. As tensions rise, more annoying characters die (thankfully), and leadership of the gang comes into question, but there's little time for debate as the hairy horde begin their relentless onslaught (apparently grungy bikers are good eatin'...who knew?) challenging man's long standing position on the top of the food chain...

Seems pretty straightforward, right? Well, perhaps, but essentially what I did was put a nice sheen on a stanky (stank goes well beyond stink) turd, and believe me, that was not an easy task...really, the absolute worst aspect of this film is the writing. Here's an example, once the rats begin killing off the characters, one woman spits out this little gem of brilliance, "The idea of being killed right now really frightens me." And here's another, as the leader of the gang prepares to flash fry a whole mess of rats with his flamethrower, "I'm going to warm their whiskers." Oh criminey...the film is filled with completely unnatural dialog, pointless interactions, accompanied by atrocious, awe inspiringly overblown performances. I swear, the actors chewed up more scenery than the rats themselves. As far as the characters go, a more irritating bunch you'll rarely see. One can't help but root for the voracious rodentia. And get the names of some of these a-holes...Duke, Video, Lucifer, Chocolate...there was one character that was particularly loathsome in that of Myrna, a leather clad woman who spent a great deal of time losing her marbles and screeching incoherently throughout the film. Here's another juicy line of idiocy, as one mook finds a bottle of booze and begins sucking it down..."Hey, what an incredible drink!"...yeah, drink up boyo, as your time is gonna come. I think the absolute worst scene for me was near the beginning, when the group found all the food and began celebrating by dumping sugar and flour all over each other, dancing about like mental deficients. The black woman, named Chocolate (nice), ends up covered in flour, and starts shouting how she's white, while doing a very loose interpretation of an Irish jig. The effects throughout weren't too bad, but mostly featured people off screen either throwing, or dumping rats onto the performers. There were a few gruesome bits, like the rat in the sleeping bag gag, and the exploding corpse piñata filled with rodents, so fans of the visceral will find something to enjoy. Now I've read where some think the awful aspects of the film are intentional in a comedic sense, and even the back of the DVD case makes statements along these lines, but I honestly believe the original intent was to try and make a serious, scary film, and once the finished product was out there, everyone assumed it to be a joke, so Mattei went along with this rather than cop to the fact he's a lousy writer....hell, that's what I would have done, if I were in his Italian loafers...I suppose it doesn't make a difference one way or another, as if you're an aficionado of rotten, sleazy, awful cinema, this one's right up your alley. As far as the directing, apparently Mattei, who started working on this film right after completing a project with Jess Franco, keeps things moving along, disjointedly, but seems to have thankfully taken few cues from that Spanish hack (seriously, ever seen Oasis of the Zombies? If so, you know what I'm talking about). Hey, at least there's a decent nekkid chick in the movie, which is nearly spoiled by a nekkid man and the appearance of his wang dang doodle. As far as the ending, I did see it coming, and despite the fact it was completely ridiculous, it was suitable for this story.

Anchor Bay Entertainment provides on this DVD a very good-looking, widescreen (1.85:1) anamorphic print, along with mediocre Dolby Digital 2.0 audio (some of it was really soft, in terms of the dialog, but perhaps that was for the best given the script). Special features include a lengthy theatrical trailer, a Bruno Mattei bio, an interview with Mattei titled `Hell Rats of the Living Dead' (9 minutes), and a 5X7 reproduction of original poster art included on an insert, the flipside listing the chapter stops.

Cookieman108

By the way, I think plenty of rats were harmed in the making of this film...also, if you're interested in buying this DVD, I'd suggest doing what I did and buying the Anchor Bay DVD Fright Pack: Man's Worst Friends, which features six films including Parasite (1982), Lucio Fulci's The Black Cat (1989), Slugs: The Movie (1988), Bruno Mattei's Rats: Night of Terror (1984), Zoltan, Hound of Dracula (1978), and Dario Argento's The Cat o' Nine Tails (1971). It's available here on the Amazon website, at a really good price, and cheaper than buying the individual releases.

You've seen where other movies have been reviewed with the reviewer saying that 'this or that' movie is the worst they've ever seen? ...uhh..hehe...well this one is Head and Shoulders below the rest! Be prepared to sit and marvel at the incredibly insane plot!...watch and be annoyed at the incredibly unreal effects! yes, you guessed it, this movie is worth watching ONLY to see how NOT to make a movie! I promise that if you can sit through this movie and NOT say that it is truly the END ALL worst horror movie ever made -- I'll eat my monitor.

... It was kind of like Waterworld (with the manner they were dressed) meets Night of the Living Dead (in respects to the reaction of the biker group) meets really cheesy rat effects. Can I say that I enjoyed it all? Not every minute. Matter in fact, I was waiting for the guy and two robots from Mystery Science Theater 3000 to appear at the bottom. But once you see the ending, you are strangely intrigued and drawn in.
It's rating (I guess it's unrated) is for violence (the gore is tame for Mattei's films), language, nudity and sexual content. ...

mr mattei takes us to apoclyptic wonderland that truly rivals mad max in this belivable and wonderfully written film. just remind yourself.... it is only a movie

AMAGAD!!!!! AMAFACKINGGAD!!!!! AMAMOTHAAFACKINGGAD!!!!! This movie is a *beep* masterpiece! It's so bad that it's totally awesome! It's one of the funniest movies I've ever seen! It's full of sleaze, gratuitous violence, hilariously bad acting, ridiculous dialogue and awful special effects that you just have to laugh at! I couldn't stop laughing my ass off! It's just as (unintentionally) funny as movies like Troll 2, The Room, Women's Prison Massacre, Burial Ground, etc... Bruno Mattei is a god! 10/10!!!! AMAGAD!!!!!!

If you like cheesy Italian horror and/or exploitation movies, you'll love it! If you don't like cheesy Italian horror and/or exploitation movies because you take them seriously and you can't laugh at the bad acting and ridiculous dialogue, you're a boring person and you don't have a sense of humor. Stick with your technically perfect movie.