The Riffs III - Die Ratten von Manhattan

Ah, these were the days for sure. Rats is a post-apocalyptic sci-fi horror by the one and only Bruno Mattei. If you've seen anything else by this guy you will no doubt know exactly what to expect. You'll be aware that you are going to see a shoddy but enjoyable trash-fest with many laugh-out-loud moments of unintentional humour. This film is full of typical Matteisms. It's ram-packed with extreme over-acting, over-the-top maniacal laughter, stupid chat and atrocious dubbing. It's got lots of gore, comically unthreatening monsters and moments of alarming non-political correctness. It's unashamedly derivative and incurably cheesy. And yet despite - or perhaps because - of all this, its loads of fun.

Like many bad films there is a scrolling text introduction. This is an easy way for cheap-skate film-makers to give us the background story and context without having to go to the trouble of conveying this information cinematically. Anyway, it basically boils down to the fact that the Earth is scorched after a nuclear war and some people live underground, while others live on the surface. A band of the latter pitch up at an abandoned settlement and discover that the previous inhabitants had been killed by super-intelligent nasty rats. Guess what happens next.

In a lot of horror films the most interesting characters are the villains and monsters. Not in this film. The rats for the most part act in a completely indifferent manner. This of course makes for some very funny moments when our heroes act as if they are a terrifying threat. A couple of such scenes spring to mind. Firstly when the gang mount a set of stairs covered in rats, the implication is that this is a super-scary moment, while the reality for all to see is that not only do the rodents pose no hazard whatsoever, they also are actually actively hiding away. Secondly, the scene where the leader of the gang wards off the hordes of rats with a flaming torch is properly silly as not only are the creatures a good twenty metres away in a small utterly unthreatening group but they also approach the flaming stick with zero concern when it is finally thrown on the deck. Prior to this silly scene, we are treated to what can only be described as the rat conveyor belt. This somewhat incredible cinematic device is a 'special effect' created for the film that is evidently supposed to suggest hordes of scary rodents moving forward menacingly. It doesn't. It looks like a conveyor belt with 2D rat-shaped cut outs stuck on it. It's quite something else. It does have to also be said that seeing as this is an Italian production there are a number of scenes where the rats are quite obviously getting battered or burned. They are thrown at actors, kicked by actors, have heavy objects thrown at them and set on fire by flamethrowers. With this in mind I'm very surprised this one got a BBFC certificate to tell you the truth.

In all honesty the gang are a lot more memorable that the rodents. One of them is called Video. He is supposed to be a computer genius, yet he says things like 'stupid machine needs a kick in the balls'. Another character called Deus is supposed to be the brains of the bunch as he has a shaved head with a little triangle drawn on it. At one point he goes into a long spiel about how rats lived in the days before the War. He qualifies his rambling rubbish with the line 'I read it in a book'. He says it so ludicrously portentously that it is laugh-out-loud funny. The only black character is a woman called, wait for it, Chocolate. At one point she covers herself in flour and says something along the lines of 'I'm white like the rest of you, ha ha ha'. Right on baby. The final character I shall draw your attention to is a guy called Duke. He is the villain of the group and is relatively unremarkable. Until is death that is, when he stands in an armoured vehicle with a grenade and then notices that there are some rats in the car with him, so he does what any sane person would do – he throws the grenade at them and blows himself up.

If you haven't already worked out then I have to say that this film was a bit of a comedy classic. It mixes cheap sci-fi with gory horror and levels it all off with a dollop of unintentional stupidity. It's a riot. And wait until you see the ending. If you thought things could not get any more ridiculous, you are in for a treat.

What starts out looking like a poor Mad Max type of film about a post-apocalyptic nightmare ends up a fairly well-done low-budget horror flick about a gang of futuristic nomads attacked by a whole lotta nasty rodents who are hungry for humans. The film unfolds as the rats slowly take control of the situation and trap the humans in ruins of a long-abandoned city, and prepare for the siege. The violence is pretty graphic as the rats seem to kill people from the inside out, and there are some nasty scenes of rats popping out of dead bodies. This one should satisfy horror fans with its violence, somewhat interesting storyline, and a bizarre and unusual ending. Recommended for fans; one of the better killer rat flicks.

This is probably one of the funniest movies I have ever seen in my entire life. Rats is hilariously inept and goofy beyond imagination. First of all you have the scenes of Rats attacking. You can almost spot the stagehands throwing the rats towards the actors... then there's the scenes of horror when the actors discover some evil, nasty mutant rats... who just sits there, doing nothing that would resemble anything remotely scary. And lets not forget the conveyor belt. There is a scene where our bold and poorly dubbed heroes try to get away from a teeming mass of mutant rats... and the mass consists of furry things (who does not even move) on a conveyor belt. Oh boy, oh boy. Then there's the ending... This movie would be an awesome doublebill with Bruno Mattei's equally inept Hell of the living dead. They sure don't come funnier than this.

It's 225 years past the nuclear holocaust. We are introduced to a band of post-apocalyptic bikers who are amazingly clean, especially their hair, which holds its body even on a long-dead planet. Their clothes are equally well preserved, and pressed. Even their spiked armbands are brand new! Perhaps this is due to the radioactive fallout.

Happening upon a ghost town, our anti-heroes search for supplies, soon realizing that the only living things left other than themselves are rats. Lots of rats. These are no ordinary rodents, since they devour human flesh. Even after several half-eaten corpses are found, the well-groomed bikers refuse to leave town.

When night falls, the real hoopla begins, and there are more rats running around than at Willard's birthday party! The bikers remain oblivious. Nudity ensues. Will any of these imbeciles survive?

RATS: NIGHT OF TERROR is one of those hilarious Italian horror films from the 1980's- the scene in which a rat puppet emerges from a biker's mouth is a particularly enjoyable moment of merriment! It contains the requisite gore, female nekkidness, big-big hair, and unnecessary animal cruelty.

As rubbish cinema goes, this is Grade-A vermin droppings. It's a howl to watch, in spite of the numerous stretches of mind-destroying dullness.

In the end, it's just a good thing that rats love cheeeze...

There are far too many movies which fail to give us someone in the film to sympathize/empathize with, whether through ineptness on the part of the director & actors, or because the characters are so vile/empty/cardboard/venal/pointless/useless that one doesn't want to admit they are the same species as ourselves.

The only sympathetic characters for me in "Notte di Terrore" were the rats who, far from being menacing, were in fact huddled miserably together, busily trying to clean from themselves the black goop with which they had been coated in a clumsy attempt to make them look menacing. As for the human characters -- I simply could not wait for all of them to be dead! If these were the survivors who were supposed to repopulate the planet -- let the rats have the whole damn world.

Not only do the rats have to suffer being gooped up, they have the further indignity of being repeatedly tossed at bad actors. And Italian animal rights laws evidently being looser, many rats are obviously injured or killed for the sake of action effects, including several which are clearly burned alive. Would that they could have given their lives for a more worthy film.

I hope this movie isn't intercepted by some alien civilization out there, because it would serve to convince them of the need to exterminate the human race. For the good of the universe.