Rats: Night of Terror (1984)
- Andrew Smith
- 5 hours ago
- 5 min read
"Mutants of a nuclear disaster"
Plot
Hundreds of years after a nuclear war has devastated the planet, a group of nomadic bikers stumble across an old research lab filled with essential food and water - and thousands of rats. In the years since the war, the rats have become flesh-eating monsters and the bikers find themselves top of the menu.
Review
Finally, I have found time to check out this infamous Italian low budget classic and it's every bit as stupendous as it's made out to be. It’s precisely the sort of Italian exploitation nonsense that gave the country its reputation for producing dodgy films during the late 70s and 80s. Rats: Night of Terror could only have been made in Italy – the premise mixing up the post-apocalyptic scenario made popular at the time by the likes of Mad Max and throws in one of cinema’s worst representatives of the nature-runs-amok genre – the rat. Let’s face it: rats aren’t the scariest things in the world. They may make people jump on the furniture or tuck their trousers into their socks but they’re not up there alongside sharks or crocodiles when it comes to pant-wettingly ferocious beasts that will rip you apart. Leave this thought in the less-than-capable hands of notorious hack Bruno Mattei, the man responsible for such diverse horrors as Zombie Creeping Flesh and Monster Shark, and the result is one of the messiest films to emerge from Italy in its long, varied history of horror. Obviously you’re not going to swallow the idea of killer rats without having your tongue in your cheek at the time. And after watching Rats: Night of Terror, your mind will have been changed little, if at all.
Rats: Night of Terror kicks off with some stock footage of some desert and runs down the story of the nuclear war and how life has changed. Cue the Mad Max moments with the biker gang, each member having one-word names like “Chocolate,” “Duke” and “Lucifer” and sporting the ‘futuristic’ look that only the 80s could have provided. It all comes off looking like one of those early 90s side-scrolling beat-em-ups like Streets of Rage where hordes of enemies were given generic names like “Scarab” and “Dwight.” No attempt is made to give the characters any further identity barring these one-word names so their originality is the only characterisation you’ll get here. We aren't meant to empathise with Duke or Chocolate. Duke and Chocolate are just meat for the grinder. They’ve all got bad dubbing jobs too and coupled with the banal script, it makes for some unpleasant characters. The audience knows it, the director knows it, and the actors probably knew it too. The tension doesn't come from wondering if Duke or Chocolate will survive. The tension comes from anticipating how the genre mechanics are going to dispose of them. . It isn’t long before this gang fall afoul of the killer rats and this is where the film becomes interesting.
Bizarrely, once the gang falls afoul of the rats, the vast open road wasteland shrinks down into a very confined space. The film abruptly shifts genres and just turns into a standard zombie film where the characters barricade themselves inside from an onslaught, only this time it's an onslaught of rats. The characters run into the research lab, they barricade the doors, board up the windows, and prepare for a relentless onslaught from the outside. Like a siege, they adopt the exact defensive posture you would see in Night of the Living Dead. They rats get well fed in the film so there are no complaints there. The highly ludicrous attacks simply consist of the actors being swamped by a bucket load of rats, seemingly poured in by stagehands off-screen. Some people will actually squirm at scenes of people being covered in the rodents so maybe it's not all that ridiculous, even making me cringe in a few moments. The rats manage to get pretty much everywhere as well, including a sleeping bag with a nude female for the film’s gratuitous nudity. You can also expect the usual Italian lashings of gore and cheap make-up effects too, with the rats chewing on literally everything they can, including emerging from a mouth at one point and a token chest-burster moment too. Lovingly filmed in long, slow-motion to dwell on the carnage, these more outlandish gore moments are only punctuated by the hilarious overreaction close-ups of the survivors standing around watching.
You may think the film has a decent budget, but the abandoned city sets featured heavily in the film were the New York City exteriors built at for Once Upon a Time in America which had fallen under disrepair. Once you know this, then you realise Rats: Night of Terror had almost no budget. There are only a limited number of rodents on-screen at any one time and in one laughable scene (well the whole film is laughable, just this scene is a little bit more), about twenty rats manage to blockade a staircase and stop the characters from using it. You have this hardened post-apocalyptic biker gang, and they are tough enough to survive a nuclear wasteland but the mere sight of around twenty docile rats standing around guarding the stairs makes them petrified for their lives. They could just run past or simply kick them out of the way but no, they decide to stand and tremble. In a further sign of budgetary setbacks, a scene in which the rats attack looks like a load of toy rats stuck onto a conveyer belt. Yes, it’s that type of film. Allegedly, the budget was so low that prop men kept rats that had died during filming and threw them at the actors.
For some reason, Mattei claimed that this was his personal favourite out of all the films he made. I can’t honestly see why! The gore levels are low, usually consisting of just scratches and the aftermath of an attack for the most part outside of the big set pieces mentioned earlier, and there’s little in the way of gratuitous nudity, save for the token sex scene. I know he was used to working on low budgets, but this was one takes the biscuit. Though he made some terrible films, I’ve always had a soft spot for his 80s output because you know exactly what you’re going to get and can prepare for it if you lower your standards to the bottom rung of the ladder.
Frequent Mattei collaborator and sometimes director himself Claudio Fragasso provided the messy script for this one which explains why nothing makes sense and the narrative is the least of your worries. Nothing can prepare you for the big twist ending though and token freeze frame to sell it over the end credits and blasting soundtrack. It's argubaly the most memorable moment of the film.
Final Verdict
Rats: Night of Terror delivers campy Z-movie entertainment that fans of schlocky horror may enjoy and if you know Mattei and his other work, then this is up there with his best/worst (depending on why you watch Mattei’s films). There is no mistake in what you are getting yourself in for so the only person at fault for watching would be yourself; the only real surprise is just how unwatchably watchable everything is. Non-existent writing, severely flawed logic and terrible special effects but it’s fun, constantly entertaining and does everything a film about killer rats promises and more.
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Rats: Night of Terror Director(s): Bruno Mattei Writer(s): Claudio Fragasso (screenplay), Bruno Mattei (story), Hervé Piccini (screenplay) Actor(s): Ottaviano Dell'Acqua, Geretta Geretta, Massimo Vanni, Gianni Franco, Ann-Gisel Glass, Henry Luciani, Cindy Leadbetter, Moune Duvivier Duration: 97 mins |  |
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