RATS: Night of Terror
(aka: Ratti: notte di terrore)
(1983)
review by Head Cheeze

How does one go about describing a film so incredibly awful that it's actually almost enjoyable?

BRUNO! That's how!! From now on, whenever I'm bleary eyed from drink or zonked out on skunk weed and I turn on the DVD player, I'm tossing in a movie from Bruno Mattei. This guy's ouevre is like a party in your pants and everyone's invited! Hell of the Living Dead was a classic of stock footage and lame ass dialogue, and Rats, well, it's just shit on a stick, man, but it's the kind of shit you want to rub on everyone who comes a knockin'. Just ask Big McLargehuge, the guy who writes Horrorview's Hall of Shame! He came down one night, Ms. McLargehuge and baby in tow, and we had a double feature of the aformentioned films that had us rolling on the floor MST3K style.

STOP RIGHT THERE!: Now, bear in mind, there is NO WAY in hell I can recommend this movie as anything more than a party favor, so those of you looking for a GOOD movie to watch while sober and clothed, look elsewhere! Now on with the review!!

To give you an idea how bad Rats: Night of Terror is, the beginning of the film features a narrator giving us the lowdown about the apocalypse, and how, two hundred years later, man is all cave dwellery and such. This is also presented to us as text on a vellum sheet being dragged over stock footage of some desert, and the "clear" sheet is covered with stains, scratches and goo, thus showing us that this movie did not have ILM working for them. We are then introduced to our gang of protagonists who are dressed in the appropriate POST-APOCALYPTIC wear, like leather pants, big futuristic boots, spiked wristbands and militant garb. The only person who looks out of place is the girl in the leather bikini and cape, but then again, capes are always in style. Oh, and there's a bald guy in yellow pajamas with a triangle doo-dad on his forhead that keeps changing shape, but only because it was drawn on with marker.

Our group is led by Kurk (Dell'Acqua) who sports a mean, trimmed beard and feathered hair. In the future, this will be considered tough. In the present, this will get you killed. Kurk proves he's the leader on several occasions, mostly by hitting people and lighting them on fire with his flamethrower. Yep, Kurk has one of those. Meanwhile, the rest of his gang have maces and sticks with nails in them. Anyone wanna guess why Kurk's the boss? If you said "Because he has the best weapon", give yourself a pop-tart.

Anyway, the gang of dusty trail-riders on their motorcycles and armored vehicles (where'd they get gas, anyway?) cruise into an abandoned town and find a storage of food, as well as a water filtration system and a hydroponics set-up. The fact that all of this is surrounded by thousands of rats, and freshly eaten corpses does little to deter the group from settling down for awhile. Soon they realize that the rats are super intelligent and one by one they get eaten by what look like large gerbils being thrown at them by production assistants.

Bruno Mattei freely admits that his films, especially Rats, are not the stuff of Citizen Kane, so he knew he was making crap and, as long as he got paid for it, he was fine with it. In Rats, Mattei must have gotten a giant bonus to make the worst movie he could possibly make, because this is some serious fecal matter on celluloid folks. We get painted rats and guinea pigs being thrown onto people, whacked with brooms and sticks, and SET ON FIRE ( watch 40:55 into the film. Kurk decides to blast a sewer full of rodents with his flamer and you can clearly see about 3 or 4 of them running around ablaze. The P.E.T.A. folks oughta make this a training film!). After about 80 minutes of that we get a conclusion that's supposed to be the big twist ending, but it's about as surprising as winning a medal in the special olympics.

For sheer comedic value and drunken hysteria, Rats rates at least 3 skulls, but as anything else it hit's the skids with a TOTAL SHIT mark. As far as extras are concerned we only get a few things, but it's worth a couple of skulls. "Hell Rats of the Living Dead" is a 9 minute mini-doc about Mattei, and features the man waxing nostalgic about his bad movies and how he dislikes them, but figured "What the hell?" and made a career out of it. The guy is a riot, and he's brutally honest so you have to respect that! We also get the trailer for the film and a Mattei Bio.

Rats: Night of Terror is part of Anchor Bay's Bruno Mattei collection, so if you are into REALLY BAD MOVIES you may want to start clearing some shelf-space because this guys made a million of them!