The Rats Are Coming! The Werewolves Are Here!

Andy Milligan's unforgettably titled The Rats Are Coming! The Werewolves Are Here! is listed in my trusty The Official Splatter Movie Guide by John McCarty, although its inclusion puzzles me, for it features next to no gore. What it does have are interminable scenes of terrible dialogue, dreadful acting, poor sound quality and the general level of technical ineptitude that I have come to expect from exploitation legend Milligan.

The godawful story sees a young married couple arrive in England to visit wife Diana's family, the Mooney's, who harbour a dreadful secret: they are all werewolves. Even with the worst of films, I try to find some sort of positive, but this one has me beaten: I can't find anything good to say about it. Not one thing. In fact, so excruciatingly amateurish and incredibly dull is this film that, even if it had buckets of bargain basement blood and guts, I can't see it being much easier to bear.

I rate The Rats Are Coming! The Werewolves Are Here! a pitiful 1/10, although I wish I could give the film 0/10 for including a repulsive scene of unnecessary animal cruelty, the stabbing and nailing of a live mouse.

That's right, that'll fix everything, just add scenes involving rats, now it's a good movie! Why would someone want to ruin a perfectly good 72 minute British horror movie about werewolf stuff, with 20 minutes dedicated to rats, just so it can be a 92 minute movie about werewolf stuff? OK, fine, there was never anything perfectly good about The Rats Are Coming, The Werewolves are here, we're looking at bad Acting (like it matters) worse lighting, an extremely not well thought out plot, with a poor choice of sub plot thrown in at the last minute. On the other hand, this movie gets pretty interesting, and would be considered underrated by some. Hell, I'll just say it, I dig this movie. Set in 1899, concerning an eccentric British family of bickering werewolf people in their castle. The 180 year old bed-ridden Patriarch, with his immortality experiments and what not, the sadistic middle daughter, Monica, who torments her half werewolf, half retarded brother Malcolm, and a couple older siblings. The bickering werewolf people are soon joined by the estranged, youngest daughter, Diana and her new husband, Gerald. Gerald is warned by the family members, repeatedly to leave, In fact, Monica is so displeased by the new guests, she brings rats into the situation, hence, the ridiculous title. There is a secret in the Mooney household, and as time goes by, it becomes less clear who can be trusted, but, I guess nothing overly special happens, like gore, although, we're treated to a nice little twist, which always counts for something in the horror genre. Ultimately, this isn't near as bad as it seems during the first viewing, could even pass for original, if your standards are low enough. For quality British Horror, check out Vampyres, and Psychomania, and for (slightly) better werewolves, check out Werewolves On Wheels. The Rats Are Coming, The Werewolves are here is reserved Only for those of us who have a thing for rare British Horror, as well as unusual/interesting Z-grade. The moral of the story? Inviting rats into a movie about werewolf stuff will never be a good idea, yet, awkward references to incest will always be hilarious. 7/10

The utterly insane Mooney family has many problems, the least of which is lycanthropy. Their biggest deficit stems from just how bloody annoying they all are!

When daughter, Diana (Jackie Skarvellis) brings her new husband, Gerald home for a visit, the family really turns out! Sister, Monica shows her true eeevil. Feral brother, Malcolm lives in his chicken-filled room, raving like a rabid squirrel, even when he's not being set on fire. Pa Mooney grumbles in his pompous way, in between neck injections.

Luckily, Gerald is accustomed to horrible families, having come from one of his own.

Soon enough, everyone is yelling at each other in histrionic hysteria. Monica beats Malcolm, who caterwauls like a wounded hyena. Chickens are mercilessly murdered in the family dungeon. A mouse is stabbed with a butcher knife, then nailed to a table (yes, the graphic animal torture is all too real! If you are disturbed by such sadistic, idiot behavior, then, by all means, avoid this travesty!).

THE RATS ARE COMING! THE WEREWOLVES ARE HERE! Is a rugged test of endurance, recommended for only the stoutest of hyper-schlock, sludge, and sub-sludge enthusiasts! Even they will require protective eyewear! Normal viewers may feel their souls separate from their bodies, experiencing what the scholars refer to as "sweet oblivion"! Indeed, this "film" may cause living death!

What establishes this Andy Milligan anti-opus far below other, lesser cesspool-filler, is its extreme, brain-liquifying aura of stupefaction. The delirious "dialogue" unites with the mannequin-like "acting", pounding away at the mind like a slaughterhouse bolt gun! Add in the trance-inducing tedium, and you'll feel mummified!

Anyone making it to the impossibly inept, shape-shifting non-finale can be thankful, yet wonder why they bothered.

God help us all...

The crazy title of this film would seem to indicate that it's a bad movie, but that doesn't even come close to describing this film and just how bad it is. The film reaches levels of amateurism that are hard to believe and you just have to see it to believe it. I'll try to describe its wretchedness as best I can. The acting appears about the same quality as local community theater. Not a big community and not a good theater mind you. The actors(?) over-emote wildly but that is not the big problem. The big problem is that they deliver their lines so rapidly that it makes your head spin and the director (Andy Milligan) SHOULD have told them all to slow down. The costumes and sets are just odd. But the oddest thing is the strange and disjoint plot. At times, it is enjoyable as a guilty pleasure (much like "Spider Baby") but much of the time it just seems like everyone is winging it!

The film begins with some nonsense involving some maniac lighting someone on fire. Exactly what's going on is vague and you hear from the demented family that the youngest son has once again run amok. Soon the youngest daughter who has been away at college arrives home with a new husband. Her father is not happy—apparently there are weird genetics abounding in the family and her duty is to work on some formula to correct it. At this point, it is obvious the youngest son is some sort of primordial weirdo—not really a werewolf. However, you soon see that one of the three sisters is just plain nuts and delights in tormenting and tearing apart animals. This is the part that angered me because they really did torment animals for the picture—and I think the animal that was literally ripped apart on the camera might have been a real animal. Normally I am not a big supporter of PETA, but here they really have reason to be angry! There's also a deformed guy who loves rats and sells them to this crazy sister—but none of it really made sense. It was more like watching a freak show as the actors hammed it up and tried to shock the viewer. The biggest shock for me, however, is that the film just rambled and seemed to have no point or direction. The only reason I am giving this one a 2 and not a 1 is that it did keep my attention—at least for a while. All the nutty antics were mildly interesting. But artistically, this film is just awful and pointless.

If you care (and really, you shouldn't), the nuttiest sister refers to her new pet rats by name—one of which is Ben and the other Willard—and are taken from the movie "Willard".

After watching Bloodthirsty Butchers I was afraid to watch this one, not for the horror but being horrified that it is another turkey. luckely it was better but still worse, the acting is better but still, yes you can guess it. Again there is a lot of talking in this flick and what the hell the rats are doing was not clear until I did my research. The movie was too short and the producer wanted some extra scene's, and that became the rat man with his, euh, rats. Nothing to do with the movie so you know it, the whole movie is a turkey. It's only in the last 10 minutes that the werewolfs arrive. Or is it carnival, man the make up is so stupid.It's all predictable what is going to happen, so no fear at all, no suspense and still Andy Milligan (the director) has his following, and still sells DVD's, this flick is a bit hard to catch and as always not that cheap.