Search - Rats: Night of Terror on DVD

Crap: Night of Stupid.

Robert P. Beveridge | Cleveland, OH | 06/23/2010

(1 out of 5 stars)

"Rats: Notte di Terrore (Bruno Mattei, 1984)

I have seen a handful of Bruno Mattei joints over the years, and every time I do I resolve I will never watch another one. But there's something about the car-wreck awfulness of Mattei that makes me think that, okay, maybe this one will be just that much better than Zombies: The Beginning or Violence in a Women's Prison or Hell of the Living Dead. And every time I am wrong, wrong, wrong. My most recent descent into the world of Bruno Mattei is Rats: Night of Terror, a god-awful sci-fi flick that basically takes a single scene in Escape from New York and expands it into an hour-and-a-half flick with a cheesy twist ending you'll never see coming. (Please adjust your sarcasm filters if you didn't catch that.)

Plot: in a post-nuclear-holocaust world, most of the surviving humans moved underground in order to escape the radiation. Bands of savages remained on the surface, fighting each other and the inevitable wildlife. In this case, it should be no surprise that the particular band of savages we're following (who are tired of their savage existence and discussing descending into the underground to see if they can hang with the civilized folk) seem to have gotten on the bad side of a very large swarm of rats, who harry them into an abandoned building, etc. Meanwhile, the group starts fracturing along the predictable lines while every once in a while one or two get picked off by hungry rats. (Here's a hint: when two of them go off to have sex...)

So, yeah, this is your typical Bruno Mattei movie. The acting is horrid, and the dubbing even more so. (Usually I would have held out for subtitles, but come on, it's Bruno Mattei. That's like buying a 60-inch HD plasma TV so you can watch Adam Sandler movies on it.) Some of the completely gratuitous special effects aren't all that bad (which will come as a huge surprise to Mattei veterans), which at least keeps them film watchable when they're onscreen, and the dialogue is chock full of the usual unintentional hilarity, so it's not a complete waste of time. But if you're looking for great cheese along the lines of Kingdom of the Spiders or Shriek of the Mutilated, you'd do well to stay far, far away from any picture where Bruno Mattei had a had in its creation. *
"

Night of the Living Rats

Monty Moonlight | TX | 12/11/2007

(3 out of 5 stars)

"Set in the year 215 A.B. (after the bomb), "Rats" is the story of a group of motorcycle riding nomads who travel around scavenging the leftover cities of the world that have become ghost towns. Most humans never resurfaced after going underground to avoid the radiation all those years before, but the biker gang soon discovers that the humans moving underground forced the world's rat population above ground, and it is they who now hold power over us!

Putting his own spin on Romero's "Night of the Living Dead," famed European schlock-horror director Bruno Mattei replaces zombies with rats and takes us into the future to a world turned upside down. If that sounds intriguing to you, you may want to give this one a look, but be prepared for the worst. Everything about this one is pretty bad (and kinda gross) except for the twist ending and some of the general concept itself. It's all in good fun if you enjoy bad movies though, but one sort of feels this would have been more effective as part of an anthology since it really doesn't need to be feature length.

I recommend opting for the double feature DVD that includes "Hell of the Living Dead" and the same extra features which are: "Hell Rats of the Living Dead" (an interview with director Bruno Mattei), a Bruno Mattei bio, and a theatrical trailer. Though, that one is double-sided and may be troublesome for finicky DVD players."