I love this movie so much

Fresh and Exciting

A Masterpiece!

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

Thanks to Paperbacks from Hell, I've learned all about James Herbert, the British horror author whose four The Rats novels pretty much defined the evil rats against man genre. Imagine my surprise in finding this Canadian horror film that pretty much takes Herbert's story and runs away with it (or gets away with it).Paul Harris is a divorced high school teacher and basketball coach who is dealing with rats the sizes of small dogs that have been found living in buildings containing steroid-rich grain (ripped from today's headlines!) that the health department orders burned. Now that the rats are homeless, they're looking for a new home and new eats, too.First, they surround a baby in a high chair and make him a snack. Then, they get a senior citizen. Soon, they're chasing down Scatman Crothers and eating him, too! Oh no, Scatman!Even spraying the rats with gas does nothing. Nope, instead they attack a bowling alley and a movie theater showing a Bruce Lee movie (director Robert Clouse also directed Lee's Enter the Dragon and Game of Death). None will be spared as the rats feed. Not Trudy (Lisa Langlois, Happy Birthday to Me), the cheerleader in love with Paul. Not her best friend Martha (Lesleh Donaldson, Curtains, Funeral Home, Happy Birthday to Me). And certainly not the mayor who acts like he's in the Canadian version of Jaws and then has a party on a subway train that gets infested by rats. Finally, Paul, his love interest Kelly and his son make it through the rats' nest only to get on the same train as the mayor's dead body.So how did they get the rats for this movie? By putting dachshunds in fur suits, a The Killer Shrews plan if I ever heard one. Sadly, one of the dogs died during shooting as it was suffocated by its suit.Herbert referred to this film as "absolute rubbish." Sadly, we've yet to see the definite adaption of his work. We'll have to make due with this, I guess. Where I disconnect with the film is that I could see it happening in New York, but Toronto? That's the cleanest city I've ever been in. I bet the rats could do much better elsewhere.

Contaminated grain breeds overgrown, killer rats in this Golden Harvest production. Dachshunds were dressed up as rats for the special effects. That is all you need to know.Exactly how to judge this film is something of a mystery. By no stretch of the imagination is it good in any critical sense. The acting is average, the plot is incomplete, multiple subplots turn up for no reason and never get resolved. The editing is choppy. The special effects are good, even if funny.Horror fans who like their films cheesy will love this. Others might be a bit more let down, as there is something lacking. The gore is glorious, though, and you can never take that away from them.Available now on Blu-Ray from Scream! Factory, with more than a handful of bonus interviews.

Writer James Herbert was something of a folk hero to people of a certain age . You can praise any writer of literature as much as you want but to be a teenager in the 1980s no book was more enjoyable than one by Herbert . The 1980s was a golden period of horror and much of it was kick started by Herbert's 1974 pulp fiction horror novel THE RATS that launched a whole host of other writers such as Guy N Smith who tried to emulate Herbert's style . Time hasn't been kind to his work because horror nowadays isn't as fashionable as it was once and Herbert's books have a very formulaic , predictable structure where every chapter alternates between one that is vaguely important to the plot followed by another that serves to introduce a character only for them to be killed off at the end of the chapter . There's a lot of truth in what critics say that if you read the even numbered chapters in a Herbert novel you can still follow the plot to a tee and the odd numbered chapters are mere padding . That said if you take his books on their own terms they are rather enjoyably disturbing and entertaining . It does become noticeable that the writer had one eye on the cinema/TV market later and DOMAIN the book that ended his Rats trilogy seems a conscious attempt to pitch his novel to a film company hence the nuclear devastated landscape of London is made more film-able by having many key scenes take place in the pitch blackness of or in mist shrouded day scenes which saves on a potential budget . Apparently the writer was very unhappy about his previous books THE RATS and THE SURVIVOR being translated to screen It seems a bit arrogant of Herbert . Despite bigging up the alleged subtext that THE RATS is supposed to have it's pretty obvious that he wasn't going to win the Nobel prize for literature . Whatever it's faults or merits THE RATS does lend itself very much to cheesy cinematic horror . The screenplay does follow the structure of the novel for the most part with the audience being witnesses to a series of episodic rat attacks and being one step ahead of the main protagonists in the story . There's two problems though . One is that the cinematography is very dark and murky and it's painfully obvious Roger Deakins didn't work on this film but maybe I was just watching a very bad print so should be forgiving . What is less forgivable is the production team trying o get around realising rat attacks on screen . Some of the close ups see animatronics used which are serviceable but for medium and long shots the production team use dachshunds made up to resemble rats . They're made up very badly I hasten to add and the effect is often laughable and even if you didn't know they were sausage dogs you're painfully aware that they're not rats either . Well let's be somewhat charitable and say there is an element of fun to all this as people are eaten alive by the dachshunds and stops the film from having a cynical mean spiritedness

This was a killer slightly giant rat movie. The main problem with this movie is one similar movies have had a hard time doing. Trying to dress up one animal to make it look like another animal. It was done in the killer shrew as it was apparent they were just dogs with bad costumes taped to them or something and it is very apparent in this movie. What is the animal of choice you ask? Dashaund dogs...yes the wiener dog is dressed up poorly to look like a rat and it does not work at all. The movie might as well had killer kittens or something else as a friendly happy dog just does not do a great job of playing the killer role. Just hard to recommend any movie like this...makes those movies where the animal is just projected onto a screen look amazing by comparison. So that is about it with this movie, wiener dogs dressed up like giant rats with not to many good gory kills to accompany their presence. So yes I would have to say this movie misses the mark, but at least they did not use poodles.