Customer Reviews

The Rats [VHS]

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

A customer at a posh department store is bitten by a rat in a dressing room. As a result, the store fires its current exterminators and hires the best in the city.

But the rat is only the start. The store has a big rat problem and it seems to originate outside the store. This is further proved when one of the store managers spots a rat in her home and her daughter is attacked at a recreation center.

Slowly we follow the trail of the rats and unravel the mystery behind their origins and attacks.

Decent acting and wonderful atmospheric settings help move the story along and keep the viewer neck prickling. Actual rat attacks are slight in number as the story and settings are used to create the rising fear of the rats.

I really enjoyed this one except when "the best in the business" baited his trap before setting it for the climactic battle. His competence level had been so high throughout the movie that I found it hard to believe he would intentionally do things backwards. but other than that, this was a surprisingly well-done film.

I've loved killer rat movies ever since I sat mesmerized by the original WILLARD (and it's lesser sequel BEN) back in the early 70s. Something about these furry, much-maligned rodents has always brought a smile to my face and a pleasant chill down my spine. THE RATS is an absurd, yet completely enjoyable return to the good old days of rampaging rodents terrorizing mankind. Garson's department store in mid-town Manhattan is the proverbial "ground zero" for an all-out invasion by millions of genetically-enhanced, über-rats w/ murder on their teeny minds! Madchen Amick (Sleepwalkers, "Twin Peaks") is store manager Susan Costello. It's her job to deal w/ the rat problem, while simultaneously protecting Garson's' exclusive image. Enter Vincent Spano as Jack Carver, discrete exterminator extraordinaire. Carver soon discovers that things are far worse than just a small infestation. Receiving no help from the health dept., it's up to Carver and Costello (weren't they a comedy team?) to eradicate the menace. THE RATS is a lot of fun and moves along at a relatively brisk pace. The rat fx are well done, both cgi and real rats are creepy as well as crawly. Well worth a late-night viewing...

This movie concerns an infestation by rats in a Manhattan Department Store which comes to the attention of store executive Madchen Amick. Then upon returning home with her daughetr she discovers a rat lurking outside their window. In desperation she calls the Rat Exterminator with the hope of finding somewhere else to stay but he informs her that 'whereever you go in New York you are only 9 feet away from a rat". This is hardly the reassuring advice you would want to hear but sadly proves to be true. Lots of scary scenes in this movie and I have been in love with Madchen Amick ever since I saw her in "Sleepwalkers". This movie rocks!!!

Now I wouldn't say this is the best "creature features" I've seen, but this sure packs a punch.

The story is about a department store manager who comes to realize there are rats in her upscale store after a customer is bitten. This bite subsequently leads to this customer be hospitalized. Now of course these could be no ordinary rats, they must of course be genetically altered creatures in order for this movie to make any sense.

The only way to get rid of these rats is to bring in the rat expert, Jack Carver. Now Jack has a bachelor's in ratology from the university of Ratcliffe, and knows all about these ratical rodents. He is the only human that can destroy them.

Now despite the fact that only two poeple get killed and the fact that Susan should have met her maker in the end, this is a delightful film suitable for the entire family.

Other Rat Recommendations:
Secret of the Nimh
Killer Rats
Deadly Eyes
Charlotte's Web

My recent venture to the video store has me bringing home animal revenge flicks as of late for some uknown reason.But this time i came across with a well made ,fast paced,and entertaining little gem called "the rats ".To be honest i was not expecting much but when it was all over and done i enjoyed it immensely!It even does one of my ole favorite cliches ,hints at a sequel.The plot is nothing special, but what there is of a plot all fits together.Rent this little gem you will be glad you did.

Lab experiments have created mutant rats. Actually, they look just like regular rats, except they're a little stronger and more aggressive. These rats start attacking people, then a department store executive (Madchen Amick) and a rat exterminator (Vincent Spano) unite to defeat the rats -- and fall in love along the way!

Even for a made-for-TV movie, THE RATS's horror content is disappointinly tame. One man gets killed early in the film, then another man gets it 75 minutes into the film, and that's it. That's a pretty low body count.

It's hard to count all the mistakes and cliches in this film. Here are some:

* Vincent Spano sees rats leaving through a hole into the subway tunnels. He immeadiately rushes into the subway to try and see which way the train went, because he knows Madchen Amick is on the train. HUH? How did he know that she was on that particular train? Or even that the rats would attack it?

* When the subway stops, a motorman tells the passengers that they should wait in the train while he inspects the tracks. So an Obnoxious Yuppie complains, "What, you're not gonna leave us in here alone, are you? I don't believe this!" HUH? Who wrote this dialogue? The train stops, you expect the motorman to inspect the problem. Does this Obnoxious Yuppie want the motorman to hold his hand?

* When the rats enter the train, the Obnoxious Yuppies starts shooting a gun at the rats. So another man grabs him from behind to stop him. HUH? The yuppie was obnoxious, but he wasn't endangering anyone but the rats, from which everyone was trying to escape. Why would anyone stop him? My guess is that the screenwriter just wrote cliches (an obnoxious yuppie/gun nut must be stopped) without thinking about the context of his own script, or how his characters would behave in that situation.

* The subway seems to have only one car, the front car. We never see what happens in the previous cars, and the firemen seem not to rescue anyone from any other car. That's weird.

* Lots of opportunities for gore are wasted. A swarm of rats invade a swimming pool full of kids, causing a panicky escape. Good computer effects, but sadly, all the kids escape. C'mon, this is supposed to be a horror film! Let's see some of those brats go under in a pool of blood (as in THE GREAT ALLIGATOR.)

* And NO ONE on the train is killed. Not even the Obnoxious Yuppie, who had Classic Horror Victim written all over him. Yeah, that was a surprise, but not a good surprise.

* Madchen Amick mentions that the department store has an area (many rooms and floors) that was sealed off because the store stopped using it as a post for store detectives. HUH? Floor space is very expensive in New York City. If a store changes its use for an area, it doesn't seal off the area, it finds a new use for it.

* Amick is a single career mom raising a smart and cute little girl. Been there, done that. Again and again.

* Naturally, Amick and Spano initially get on each other's nerves, but then fall in love. It seems the movies are full of smart, professional career women who fall for gruff, blue collar macho guys. It happened in SPECIES and THE RELIC, to name two such horror films. I guess the conceit works because it plays into both male and female fantasies. Men fantasize about having macho, non-office jobs, and women fantasize about being successful career women who are swept off their feet by burly brutes.

* Two men are covered by rats and quickly chewed to death. But then Madchen Amick falls into a pool full of THOUSANDS of rats, and sinks beneath them until she is completely immersed (much like Sigourney Weaver is immearsed into the alien in ALIEN RESURRECTION). But when Amick is eventually pulled out by Spano -- she is pratically unscathed! No bite marks! Just a few reddish smears which barely look like blood. HUH? How come a few DOZEN rats almost instantly chew two men to death, but THOUSANDS of rats barely graze Amick? I'm guessing the filmmaker didn't want to kill off Amick, but he still wanted that "cool scene" of seeing her immersed under THOUSANDS of rats, so he did both, and simply ignore that she should be dead -- or at least severly disfigured. This is another old horror cliche -- horror heroines are immune from monsters. Consider THE DARK, in which an alien instantly kills everyone he meets, until he meets star Cathy Lee Corsby. Then he merely carries her off, giving the hero time to save her.

Still, I'm giving THE RATS a generous three stars.

* Although THE RATS is shot in Canada, its "New York" settings are not as obviously Canadian as some other shot-in-Canada "New York" films. ISLAND OF THE DEAD did a worse job of recreating Wall Street in Toronto, and WES CRAVEN PRESENTS THEY was much worse than THE RATS in recreating New York's subways. THE RATS had a 39th Street Station, which does not exist in New York, but at least New York streets ARE numbered. But WES CRAVEN PRESENTS THEY actually had "Victoria Station" on a "New York" subway stop, a dead giveaway that the film was shot in some British influenced country (i.e., Canada).

* As a TWIN PEAKS fan, I enjoyed seeing Madchen Amick in THE RATS.

* And the computer effects were cool, albeit highly unrealistic. They actually had rats spouting volcano-like out of the sewers, flying into the air.

A stupid film, and disappointly tame, but hard core horror fans (especially if they like Amick) should be satisifed if they get a used copy at a good price.

When I saw this movie I thought, Oh great, another low bugdet, lameo B-movie, but it turned out to be great Scifi. The acting was great too, but you have to give credit to those rats, and you never know if some science experiment can actually go wrong, especially in a place like New York. Hey ya never know.

When a customer is strangely bitten in Garsons local department store, Susan Costello (highly underrated Madchen Amick) the head of relations, starts to worry. Rats have been overpowering the city in ways people can barely escape surviving the horrific attacks. Rats infest the rec center pool where Susans daughter swims, people have been killed by the little terrors, and the rats seem to be leaving their little presents all over Garsons. With little time left to destroy these Rats from reproducing, Susan calls in Rodent specialist Jack Carver (Vincent Spano) and his assistant Ty to help sort out the mess. As things grow worse and the Rats grow more powerful, they know they must think of a way to destroy them and quick.

The acting was great as I said before. Vincent Spano was good as the Rats expert. Haven't seen him in a while. Madchen Amick was beautiful. For the credit she should get, she's a highly underrated star. This is definetely a movie that would catch your interest. It keeps pace, and even gives you an ominous ending. 5 stars for a great movie.

Oh, wow. I saw this recently on television and watched it because I thought it would be the worst "rat movie" I've ever seen. Boy, was I wrong! The storyline seems very believable. A few years ago, a science lab made rats stronger and angrier by subjecting them to science tests. The lab shut down, leaving the rats for dead. The rats escaped their cages and infest N.Y.C. Of course, some of the rats were done with computers, but they used real ones when it counted. Rats don't scare me, but the ones in this movie did. The best scene was the pool scene when the rats swim after a bunch of kids. I had a problem with the ending. Without giving it away: she should have been dead. I HIGHLY recommend buying this DVD!

What a movie! Probably 2001's best "genetically enhanced rats attack new york city" movie. Only two words can describe the acting: Oscar worthy. I'd rather wake up to find my room mates crapped in the kitchen sink than miss this film.

Do you remember the grade B monster films of the 50's? Typically the hero was a handsome scientist type who with an equally attractive scientist-girlfriend would meet and defeat a slimy and laughably cheesy monster. Along the way, of course, a number of country-bumpkin types would get gobbled up before the male and female hero leads would discover true love just about the same time as they discovered the monster's Achilles heel. Now flash forward some forty years. Romance between the leads has vanished with the female lead an often tough-talking Sigourney Weaver-type who battles a monster that in terms of special effects and computer animation is far more scary than its predecessors of the 50's. In RATS, director John Lafia has combined the best of both decades of monster making films. There is indeed a romance between the handsome male lead (Vincent Spano) and the ... divorcee (Madchen Amick) who discover their own form of ... love (remember RATS is an updated version of a 50's mentality that did not permit the leads to kiss until the last reel) while battling a massive horde of genetically enhanced superrats. A number of scenes are both amusing and horrifying at the same time. Early in the picture, a slobby landlord who likes to adopt rats suddenly sees a strange-looking addition to his heretofore friendly collection. While the audience is screaming for him to not to approach it, he cooingly sticks his finger in the rat's mouth with a predictable result. Within moments he is, of course, picked clean. Later there is a most amazing scene of rats in a pool, possibly millions of them, squiggling around in a writhing, breathing mess. Into this verminous brew, Miss Amick rather unsurprisingly tumbles. RATS catches the spirit of the long ago monster ethic that demands the viewer to shed an adult perspective and for a few brief hours remember what it was like to show one's fear of the boogeyman by laughing, without ever being sure whether the need to laugh or to gasp is the stronger.