In the year 2015, the world is destroyed by nuclear bombs (it IS likely, haw!) and most humans now live underground. They are an advanced society, though they consider surface dwellers as savages and maintain no contact with them.
In the year 225 AB (After the Bomb, not Alberta) a ragtag group of futuristic bikers (and by futuristic, I mean devastatingly 80s) are in search of sanctuary. They hole up in an abandoned laboratory (complete with wall-sized computers and other scientific-looking bits), where they find food and water. Little do they know the surrounding area is swarming with intelligent (more so than the humans), carnivorous rats!
Crapmaster Mattei does it again, this time with the incredibly talented and underrated Claudio Fragasso *haw!*. He's churned out yet another racist, sexist, and generally z-grade George Romero knockoff, and boy is it entertaining. How do I even begin to tear this apart? Hell of the Living Dead (Night of the Zombies) was Mattei's answer to Dawn of the Dead, so Rats must surely be a ripoff of Night of the Living Dead, except with rats instead of zombies. Why else include scenes of pointless infighting and barricading of doors, not to mention the corpse "reanimated" by being filled up with rats?
Rats does feature gore and nudity, neither of which is terribly convincing. The rats appear to be thrown at the actors, with the exception of the one that crawls up a girl's hoo-hoo. Yup, that actually happens! Hilariously, one corpse literally explodes from the pressure of the rats built up inside. Again, this happens all the time. If anyone's to blame here, it's makeup artist Maurizio Trani, also of Troll 2 fame. But then again, what kind of makeup would one expect from a Trani? *haw haw*
The film's opening music is seriously grating, but the rest of the soundtrack is passable sci-fi bleeps and bloops. Storywise, there's nothing new to take away from Rats. Except the twist ending; it's a definite head-scratcher. At least Geretta Geretta's (Demons, Murder Rock) in this. Recommended only for heckling. Makes a great double feature along with Troll 2. Buy it here.
No comments:
Post a Comment