To me, this movie is perfection.

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

What a delightfully bizarre film. When reading the trivia on Amazon Prime attached to this I was amused and delighted to see that the director made his film, then was told it was too short at just 72 minutes. This led to the addition of the rats, adding 20 mins to the running time (and making what was already a strange viewing experience slightly stranger).I'm not going to list the elements that weren't perfect, because that's not the point of this kind of film, instead I'll stick to what I enjoyed or found amusing:The sisters Monica & Melanie (or whatever) are both very easy on the eye.The shop owner who sells the rats, Mr Micawber, is simply brilliant. Like a cross between Igor the hunchback and Edward from The League Of Gentlemen. I love how the poor unfortunate chained brother, when being taunted by Monica, stops his roaring when older sister intervenes to admonish the cruelty. Then resumes it once she's finished speaking. Pop is a sly old dog, he soon changes his curmudgeonly manner towards the new husband. Now it suits him.

The tedious condescension of the other reviews notwithstanding, this film passes a number of screen tests that many a more mainstream big budget flick fails: does it have a horror film's one essential, i.e., atmosphere? In spades, although an original score would have helped sustain it better; do the characters dispatch their difficult roles convincingly or do they camp it up in a desire to wink at the audience to let us know that they don't take such an over-the-top scenario seriously? Very convincingly indeed. Mad Monica comes across as especially terrifying, and madness is always one of the hardest personas to bring off. (The actor playing the rather subdued character of Gerald is, perhaps an exception here, but the fault may reside with the part itself, which is the only "normal" voice in the action and suffers from some degree of underwriting.) And finally, the trump question of all dramaturgy: do you find yourself wanting to know how "Rats" ends and what becomes of its characters. Emphatically yes!

The thing that attracted me to this movie was, of course, the bizarre and over the top title, but to be honest I wish the movie had been given a more generic name. This is the fourth film I've seen by the talentless Andy Milligan, and it's the third completely awful one. It would seem the director has an obsession with rich families and inheritance, as this is yet another film with a similar theme to Blood Rites and its crappy remake Legacy of Blood. This time, there's a family curse involving werewolves thrown in, but this doesn't make things any more interesting as the terrible acting and production values are still there, and this really is an awfully boring film. The plot pacing is trite throughout, and the film was giving me an itchy fast-forward finger before the final credits finally rolled. The special effects are tacky and ineffective, and there's not a single decent gore scene in the entire movie. Add extremely poor sound into the mix, and you have a film that isn't only boring and similar to other crappy Andy Milligan films, but one that you can't even understand! Overall, I wouldn't be callous enough to recommend this dross to even my worst enemy and you should take that as a reason not to bother seeing it.

Most people seem to hate this movie and basically anything associated with director Milligan. It's slow moving, has awful make-up and lighting and a huh (!?) chaotic ending, but some of the performances are actually pretty good, the overkill melodrama is hilarious and it's kind of interesting...for awhile.In England, poor Gerald (Ian Innes) is in for a treat when he visits the family mansion of his new bride Diana (Jackie Skarvellis). Pa Mortimer (Douglas Phair) is a bedridden grouch, older sister Monica (Hope Stansbury) is a childish psycho, mom Phoebe (Joan Ogden) is a miserable mess and retarded brother Malcolm (Berwick Kaler) is kept chained-up in a secret room. Only the older brother seems normal. Something isn't right, as the son-in-law soon realizes, but his wife won't let him leave. Yes...they all turn out to be werewolves guarding the family secret.The older insane daughter torments the chained up brother by insulting him and beating him with a belt in some outrageous out-of-place scenes. She also buys a cage full of flesh-eating rats from a grimy vendor and in a shocking, standout scene, nails a REAL rat on a board! The whole rat idea has no relevance to the plot and was added by the director to bulk up the running time and cash in on the success of WILLARD, so that (sort of) explains the title.