The Rats Are Coming! The Werewolves Are Here!

I first met Andy Milligan in 1985 and told him how much I enjoyed his movies. I remember how he actually blushed when I asked for his autograph. This 1972 movie is his best . . .but I am the first to admit that is small compliment. The Mooney family has no end of problems. Pa Mooney claims to be 199 years old, daughter Monica (Hope Stansbury) is a sadist, son Malcolm is a halfwit and the whole family are werewolves! There is enough plot here for two movies! The eldest daughter in the family (Jackie Skarvellis) returns home from medical school with a new husband, which Pa Mooney heartily disapproves of, but she is the last hope that they can overcome the ancient curse. Will she succeed? Remember, this is an Andy Milligan film we are talking about! Clearly Hope Stansbury is the best actress in the picture. A Milligan perennial, she turns up in several of his pictures. Andy always denied it but I suspect it is he playing Mr. Macawber, the one armed, disfigured shopowner who sells Ms. Stansbury the rats which serve to pad out the picture by 11 minutes (11 l-o-n-g minutes!). Notice during one scene in Mr. Macawber's shop if you look at the background you will see several cardboard boxes labeled "Hires Root Beer". A great movie? No. A fun movie? Yes, definitely. I miss you Andy.

I'm not going to try to pretend that this (or any other Andy Milligan movie I've seen) is actually a good movie, but I can't help feeling there's a good movie buried somewhere in this mess, trying to fight its way out. The dialogue, while soap operatic, is reasonably intelligent, with none of the overt howlers that make (for example) Ed Wood's movies so laughably amusing. Some of the performances are pretty good. The principle locations are quite good. And there are moments of (twisted) imagination. But countering these assets are debits too numerous to mention. The technical standards are pathetic. Even granting that is was shot in 16mm reversal nearly forty years ago the picture is grungy and badly lit. The sound is so bad that you frequently can't understand what the characters are saying. The costumes were apparently whatever Milligan could get his hands on. The editing is poor, the make-up is poor, and (perhaps most unforgivable of all) for a horror movie the shock scenes are very badly handled. I'm glad I satisfied my curiosity by checking this movie out, but I don't think I could sit through it again.

And if that really was a live rat being nailed to a board, then that's the part that's TRULY unforgivable.

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.

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...

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