Les rats de Manhattan

"Rats , Night of Terror" is set in 2225 , the nuclear war has devastated the Earth, but the planet has been reborn into two factions, the scavengers living above in the wasteland and the underground society. There some beleaguered survivors of a nuclear holocaust come across a town infested with carnivorous rats, as they struggle with a mutant rodent problem. Searching for water an food they become involved with dangerous and starving beings . In order to survive the long night they use all kinds of objects to kill them, such as flame throwers, sharp tools , assault arms and anything else, however thery are taken down one by one. They attempt to eliminate rats at whatever cost until a surprising and twisted final that turns out to be the best moment of the movie . Mutants of a Nuclear Disaster !

Short budget schlock revolves around some bikers , survivors seeking for shelter , when they find surrounded by a multitude of agressive rats, then gore and blood spelling everywhere . The main issue of the movie results to be the fights with flesh-eating rats , as they get rid some rats , but there are thousands and thousands , only to discover at the end they aren't the usual pesky critters. Stars unknown and usually secondaries actors as Massimo Vani and Ottaviano Dell'Acqua, the latter is a regular Stunt and occassionaly playing bit parts. In some countries this "Rats night of terror" was presented as the third installlment of "Bronx Warriors" 1982 and "Escape from the Bronx" 1983 by E. G. Castellari , though I think of Rats has more relation with "The new barbarians, warriors of the wasteland" 1983 than the previous ones.

It contains an atmospheric cinematography by Franco Delli Colli who photographed several movies of B Italian genres . As well as thrilling musical score by Luigi Ceccarelli. The motion picture was regular but professionally directed by Bruno Mattei who used the pseudonym Vincent Dawn. He often collaborated with Claudio Fragasso who directed the famous Trolls 2 . Mattei was a prolific and botcher Italian writer/director . This hack filmmaker made a lot of films in low budget and all kinds of genres, such as : Action Moviesc : Strike Commando , Terminator 2, Double Target. WIP Women in Prison : Emmanuele in prison, Caged Woman. Peplum : Seven Magnificent gladiators , Caligula and Mesalina. Naziexploitation: Casa privata per le SS. Spaghetti Western : Apache Kid, Scalps. Terror : Hell of the Living Dead, Terror in convent and this Rats night of Terror.

This film has some great elements such as some awesome 80's synth music, ridiculous over the top 80's outfits and character names (Lucifer, Taurus, Video). It does also contain some cringeworthy elements such as animal abuse which is common in foreign movies from as recent as the 90's. One moment you have characters talking about the indecency of humanity, and saying how rats don't deserve the punishment they get, and the next has the actors kicking live rats like footballs and beaming them with beer mugs. The acting, lines, and delivery bridges well into the absurdly bad, with one "joke" sticking out to me in particular. The character Lucifer is stuck in his sleeping bag and having trouble with the zipper, Taurus unzips it, and makes a comment about calmness being the virtue of a leader... then suddenly everyone is bursting out laughing like its the funniest thing they ever heard. Even Taurus who delivered the line is doing full belly wide mouth open head back laughter. Maybe you have to be in a rat filled apocalypse to understand the joke...

As cheesy, cruddy Italian post-apocalypse cinema goes, "Rats: Night of Terror" is constantly amusing and certainly NOT ever boring. It has enough uproarious moments to make it quite an acceptable diversion, and some brilliant lines (ex. "I'm gonna warm their whiskers!").

The story (credited to director Bruno Mattei) deals with a roving gang that comes upon an abandoned complex where they get inundated with rats that are more voracious, aggressive, and intelligent than normal. In order to ensure their own survival, they determine to make it an unsafe world for the rodent population.

Good fun all the way for its decently paced 97 minutes, it seems to suggest that the best way to survive a post-apocalypse future is to go underground. Luigi Ceccarelli's electronic score is a hoot to listen to, just like much of the dialogue. The dubbing and vocal performances, as is often the case for this sort of thing, are just hysterical, with the on screen performers gamely going with the flow of this material. It's extremely cool to note that leading actor Ottaviano Dell'Acqua, billed as Richard Raymond for English language prints, is the man behind the infamous "worm eye" zombie from Lucio Fulci's "Zombi 2". Besides Dell'Acqua, people will also recognize Geretta Geretta (billed as Janna Ryann) from Lamberto Bava's "Demoni". The funniest performance comes from Henry Luciani as Duke, what with his facial expressions.

Wonderful gags include a rat emerging from a victims' mouth. The overall mood and feel of "Rats: Night of Terror" is a great study in decay and despair, and pretty much everybody in this cast of characters is fair game for a hideous demise. And the movie rewards all viewers who stick it out to the end with a priceless final revelation they won't soon forget.

Don't listen to the naysayers...at least give this goofy bit of Euro escapism a chance. It may be of the endearingly bad kind of experience, but for this viewer it wasn't so bad it was good. It was so bad it was a RIOT.

Eight out of 10.

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.

I can't believe I haven't commented on this movie before! This was one of the first bad horror movies that I watched that got me hooked on B-movies. This is like a legend to me, alongside Blood Feast and Laserblast, that has helped pave the way for finding the most obscure of B-movies know to man. But enough about the legend of "Rats: Night of Terror," let's talk about the movie.

After I was done laughing and rewinding so many parts of this video, I began taking down the best quotes from the movie, and believe me, there were a lot.

"Stupid machine needs a kick in the balls!" -Video

(with flour all over her head, dancing around) "I'm white! I'm white!!" -Chocolate

(sounding really important) "I read it in a book" -Deus

"Stupid thing doesn't work any more! Sh*t! SH*T!" -Kurk

(while holding a spike, not a gun) "You make one move, and I'll blow your guts out!" -Chocolate

All these quotes and so much more make this movie all the more enjoyable to watch. Seeing rats constantly fall out from the ceiling, watching people being bitten when a rat is simply falling on their head then rolling off onto the floor. The only feeling I felt for this movie, was one girl who WOULDN'T STOP SCREAMING! No matter what it was she saw, she screamed her head off, and it drove me crazy! I was rooting for her to die first. And even though she didn't die first, she did die, and I cheered.

If you ever decide to watch this movie, don't drink while you do it, because you'll miss most of the good little stuff of the movie. Stuff like characters using spikes to try and hold rats at bay. This is a movie you need to soak all of it in. Enjoy.

**Final Judgement** Stupid movie needs a kick in the balls.

-Scott-