Schlocktoberfest XV – Day 13: Rats: Night of Terror

Rats: Night of Terror (1984)

Country of Origin/Production: Italy

Trailer:

*Spoilers Throughout*

What’s This About: Post-apocalyptic story where talented up-and-coming chefs learn to feed a starving population with the guidance of rats telling them how to hone their cooking skills by pulling on their human-hosts’ hair. That and a lot of dumb post-nuke survivors try to survive one night from killer rats.

Here are some of my observations as I watched the film:

Why do all of these schlocky sleazy Italian horror flicks all look 10 years older than when they premiered. Looking at the film quality and poster art this looks like it should’ve came out in 1977. This was released in 1984. Same year as Gremlins and Cheech & Chong Corsican Brothers!
There’s rolling crawl as well as a narrator reading the crawl. Which wouldn’t be a big deal (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre did the same thing) but the speed of the crawl doesn’t match up with the speed of the narrator’s speech and it’s distracting.
Naturally this is a post-apocalyptic Italian horror flick. Without knowing anything about it, and despite it has rats in the title, that this will probably feature human zombies in some way, shape or form.
Always a good sign when there’s typos (“disatisfied” “comunities”) in your opening crawl.
So quick recap. Earth was annihilated by nuclear war in 2015. Survivors now live underground. Some people revolt and decide to try to live back on the earth’s surface. Both sets of humans hate each other in the year of our lord 225 AB (after the bomb). Christ, what I wouldn’t give to make it 2015 again.
The crawl’s words are superimposed over shots of Monuments Valley for some reason. Guess Bruno thought this was as apocalyptic on earth as it can look. Also sometimes the film goes wonky and it’s as cheap and crappy as you can imagine.
An iguana. Wait, make that two Iguanas. And 80s synth score. We’re off to a good start.
The main characters’ names are Chocolate, Taurus and Video. There’s also a Lucifer and Deus. As well as Kurt, Diana and Lilith. I’m going to guess the unconventional names are the villains.
Nice ascot, motorcycle gang member!

So the title is Rats: Night of Terror. Just one night? Kinda odd considering this is a film set in the post-apocalypse and one might assume that every night is a night of terror but whatever.
Plus, if one group of post-nuke survivors can’t handle a swarm of rats in one night, then fuck ’em!
A rat. Shit. Video almost caught it. There goes dinner.
But it’s OK, cause Video shows Kurt (the ascot wearing leader) a whole cabinet full of rats.
Video says his mom has a slew of great rat recipes that he wishes he still had. Video misses the cold days warming his belly and heart by eating a nice bowl of Rat stew.
Gothic organ music plays suddenly when they enter this one open room. Not sure why since the room isn’t exactly creepy in any way, shape or form.
It’s full of boxes. And those boxes are full of food! Real food, not rodent kababs!
Of course the savages just start eating without discretion or manners!
They pour flour all over the one black lady (which I’m going to take a wild guess and assume this is Chocolate) and they all start laughing at her being white now. Hilarious. You just wasted a bunch of flour on a dumb racist joke.
Chocolate Mousse!
One girl notices a bed with the sheets moving. Her curiosity leads her to further discover that under the sheets is a dead body slowly being eaten by rats! She starts freaking out which makes some of the other girls freak out, which angers Kurt who’s like “What is the matter with you? Like you’ve never seen a dead body?” Seriously, you live on a post-apocalyptic earth and a dead body being eaten by rats bothers you? Is this their first day out of the shelter?
Kurt surmises that there was a fight over the supplies and that this dead fellas was murdered despite there not being any sign of a struggle and the boxes of food are still left unopened in this room. Stick to motorcycles and ascots Kurt.
“We must explore this shitty place.” I say that whenever I go to Las Vegas.
It would be funny if the whole movie takes place in this building and the fact that they live in a post-apocalyptic earth is moot.
Why does Taurus have beef with these rats? What did they ever do to him? Maybe he’s sick and tired of eating rat sandwiches every stinking day?
Both Taurus and Duke try to capture this one inconsequential rat by the bar area and stupid Duke gets bit. He then kills the rat as humanely as possible with a shotgun blast to its little furry face.
Kurt and the rest stumble upon more creepy other church music. But this time it’s accompanied by another dead body sitting in a chair. This place has a death curse!
Yup. I was right about Chocolate being the lone black chick.
Another idiot broad tries to show off her “new hat” to Kurt but the wardrobe opens up and a dead body falls on her.

Another lady is dressed like a magician’s assistant with a red cape and bodice with black leggings. I’m not gonna lie, it’s kinda hot.
It looks like Kurt has some sort of large projectile shooting weapon attached to his hand. It’s definitely a weapon one would make and use in a post-apocalyptic Earth. Whether it’s an effective time weapon remains to be seen.
If you hate or have an extreme fear of rats then I’m afraid you won’t be able to watch more than 15 minutes of this flick.
Despite this gang of bikers looking like Mad Max rejects, they act pretty normal and still have cordial conversation. In the opening crawl, it stated that the subterranean folk refer to the surface dwellers as Savages and I’m just not feeling it. The magician chick told this one guy whose flashlight died on them that he “always manages to screw things up.” And he calmly replies “Wait. That’s not fair. This could happen to anyone.” Not exactly the rape and pillage sort of talk right?
He then politely warns her that there’s a staircase here.
Kurt and group find a room that has a large computer machine in it. Kurt wonders what it is or what it does and Video claims it’s a video game and that he’s an expert since that’s how he got his name. However, this is 225 years after the nuclear war and I highly doubt any video games survived the apocalypse much less 10 generations past!
Chocolate tells Video that she’ll make Video pregnant if he can make the machine work. There may have been an error in the translation here. I hope.
Hahaha. Video just starts playing with the nobs and switches like he knows anything about this thing.
But the movie’s gotta movie so he gets lucky and finds the ON button.
How in the fuck would this one dude know what a water purifier is?!
Also, how in the fuck are these plants not dead and withered with the power off all this time?!
Another bloke tells a frustrated Video that the machine is not a video game but a computer. Video complains that he never gets to play an actual video game. Despite his name being Video and earlier he said that he can beat any game in the world. This writing is atrocious. I love it.
Video then angrily says that the machine needs a kick in the balls and actually kicks it and the machine starts going haywire.
Kurt doesn’t like this vibe. Claims that “computers and corpses are a bad mixture.” And that’s why Kurt is the leader folks..
The computer screen just says “Total Elimination Group” and one of the goons surmises that it means that the computer had something to do with the dead bodies they found. Sure. Let’s go with that.
Lilith (the magician’s assistant) barges in to tell them to come down to the cellar and check out the fresh water and plants they found.
Be sure to try the Maui Wowie Kurt!
The one dude who was with Lilith tells them all about the fruits, veggies and every type of plant that is growing in this tiny little greenhouse. He even coaxes Diana to try the distilled rainwater and she says it tastes “delicious.” How the hell this dude knows so much is suspect since he grew up in an apocalypse!
Why do they look so sad and distraught when they’re burning the dead bodies in the street? They didn’t know them, when they died, how they died or anything.
Duh. I just realized that Chocolate was in Bava’s Demons.

Video tries, and fails, to get pregnant by Chocolate. (That may be the strangest sentence I ever wrote for this site!)
Lucifer and Lilith are literally humping in the same open room from earlier keeping everyone else awake. They are literally telling the two of them if they want to fuck then to do it outside. Lucifer told them to shut up because they are hindering him from climaxing!
Hilarity ensues when the zipper for the sleeping bag gets stuck and Lucifer and Lilith are stuck in the sleeping bag!
OK this bit is going on way too long.
Lucifer is really upset at the others for forcing them to boink outside. Anyway some smoochies from Lilith and they are back in business.
I’m kinda shocked this movie didn’t kill off Lucifer and Lilith mid-coitus.
Meanwhile, the dude who found the greenhouse, is hanging out down there and witnesses several rats get into the water distillation station! He tries to get them out but is then attacked by several dozens more!
Somehow Lucifer knows what a 20th century phone looks like. Again, this is set in the year 2240 after a nuclear war that displaced the human race underground for most of that time until some decided to return to the surface. So unless the subterranean people made the underground mostly the same as it was back in 2015 and progressed as a society from there on, maybe most people would have a decent idea of what most common items are. But I highly doubt these savages who barely live like normal folk would have the faintest idea what computers, phones, water purifiers all look like. Lucifer even says, “Hey, What’s that? Looks like a phone.” When he stumbled upon it. Maybe he was more confused that it was a rotary phone from the late 70s since that is when this film was made. Now you can argue that today’s kids don’t really know what the previous generation stuff is like floppy discs or answering machines but those are obsolete items. I think a public phone is pretty well known because most older folks’ homes today still have a corded phone with a receiver. But to a race of people who have progressed underground because of armageddon? Not sure if they would know what a rotary phone is. Anyway, I should, wrap up this rant, obviously this flick is dull right now. How are you guys?
Lucifer is drunk and taunting the large swarm of rats outside.
Come to think of it, I’m not sure why Kurt and his group are here or what their purpose is. Are they like, nomads, finding refuge? Is this the first time they’ve ventured out of their old compound or do they make these excursions often and this time they got lucky finding real food. It’s never been revealed why they’re here.
Lucifer’s so smashed that he’s having a hard time navigating a manhole. (Not innuendo) I think the rats got him but the way the scene was framed with him half-out of frame and upside down and drunk it was hard to tell.
Lilith has a little friend rummaging around her sleeping bag and it isn’t Lucifer.
The others hear Lilith’s screams and decide to investigate and locate her. All of them at once in the same location. But they found her rather quickly and after examining her naked body they concluded that Lucifer strangled her in the throes of passion.
But then Lilith’s mouth opens and hundreds of rats spill out. I wrote that before the shot ended and I’m sorry that I exaggerated the number of rats. The grand terrifying total number of rats coming out of Lilith’s mouth is one. Just one.
Then the agricultural dude stumbles out in agony and a totally bloody face, covered in rats and without hesitation Kurt shoots his flame thrower at him!
They then finish him off with a gentle shotgun blast to the face!
Duke is paranoid now and looking at every window outside but the film isn’t showing us anything that we should be concerned with in the windows. But he starts firing his gun wildly anyway.
“It’s filled with rats!” Is what Kurt explains when he opens a random door and also not just full of rats (at the angle this was shot I saw zero rats) but the wind was so intense, Kurt had trouble closing the door again. Strange!

One of the chicks (Myrna?) is having a full-blown panic attack saying she doesn’t want to die over and over again. For folks living their whole lives in a post-apocalyptic world they sure are wussies.
So they’re trying to find Lucifer and Kurt says that there’s no way for him to get out. But Lucifer has been outside drinking that whole time. At no point did this flick make it point that they shouldn’t leave or that they locked up the place so they couldn’t leave. So odd. I swear these flicks are either badly translated or that they are written so poorly that they forget what happens from scene to scene.
There’s Lucifer. He’s rat chow. Burn him!
“Hey! We’re stuck. The rats have chewed through the tires of our bikes!” Then Kurt punches Taurus and tells him that he was supposed to be guarding them [the bikes]. Again, at no point did this film make this known. In fact, when Lucifer and Lilith were boffing in the room, it was Taurus that told them to leave the room. I don’t remember Kurt telling Taurus, ‘hey you’re supposed to be guarding the bikes outside, now go!’
Also, there was plenty of room inside the compound or building they’re in and they could’ve totally placed the bikes inside if they wanted to for better safe keeping. Just saying.
Also, Lucifer wasn’t supposed to leave the place yet Taurus was supposed to stay outside and guard the bikes? OK. I’m thinking Kurt may be the worst group leader in a movie ever. I mean he’s still more competent than Pete Hegseth or Kash Patel so there’s that.
Shit. Now I’m on the FBI enemies list.
I love how these European flicks try hard to be as ‘American’ as possible and this is even set in America and this flick is dubbed from whatever language(s) they originally filmed with so they speak in American accents yet there’s always some random non-American custom that shows up. In this instance, Taurus spits in disgust after asking what are they supposed to do now that they have no rides. We don’t spit in common conversation unless we want to piss someone off by spitting on them and even then that’s rare.
I’m not even half-way through yet and I’m bored to tears.
Duke is inciting a mutiny against Kurt! He also thinks the rats planned their attack to trap and kill the humans.
This is the nicest mutiny I’ve ever seen. Kurt basically dares Duke to take over but declines. Great. Wonderful. Moving on.
I think they’re now collecting boards to barricade the doors. But they’re rats and can easily sneak inside a building in lots of ways. Did they think the rats are going to all collect themselves into a trench coat and hat and knock on the doors?
Myrna freaks out (again!) at a spider and Kurt has to (he does) slaps her face hard to calm her down.
I’d like to know where they got the nails to barricade those boards to the doors and windows.
The group are contemplating how and why the rats are so determined to attack and kill them. Fucking morons can’t seem to grasp that the rats, like any other animal, are starving in this post-apocalyptic world. “Maybe this instinct to kill has been awakened, though there’s no way of knowing how.” Did they think that the rat is a super cuddly sweet creature like a hamster or something?
Taurus tells a tale when he used to live a cave and they were attacked by hungry rats. But the rats didn’t want them they wanted their food supply. But these rats are different—they don’t want the food, they want them! Pretty sure, the hungry rats will eat anything they can get their grubby little paws on.
Well after a rather lengthy discussion about how rats used to live underground before the nuclear war and how the rats lived in exclusive communities and could tell who was an intruder by urine odor, a whole slew of rats attack Diana. How they got in you might ask? Oh, through the one window that they FORGOT to barricade!
And now it’s revealed that they barricaded themselves in this room and forgot to supply water! Seriously, I have another 44 minutes of watching these nincompoops die from either rat bites or starvation.

Duke is being mutinous again. The last time was just 7 minutes ago!
How did Kurt exactly become de facto leader of this group? Was he elected or did he pull a magic sword from a stone?
Kurt and company run into the greenhouse room only to discover that the water supply is full of rats and is hereby polluted. Kurt orders them to head back but Deus informs him that the staircase out is covered in rats. “Shit!” Exclaims Kurt.
It’s hard to take the terror and danger seriously when they say the staircase is covered in rats and there are only 2 or so dozen calm and cool rats hanging on the stairs. Not only are they as docile as can be, the guys could simply run up the stairs and not get harmed I should think.
I’ve seen more rats on the staircase at the 14 St/Union Square station.

For some dumb reason, Kurt decides to fry the rats on the stairs (the only way out of this room mind you) with his flame thrower but it’s just shooting gas at them. He then has a tantrum “What the hell’s the matter with this thing? It doesn’t work anymore! Shit! Shit!” Hilarious.
Now I’m not saying that I’ve been in a room that was slowly being filled with hungry rats and I’m also not gonna say that I want to be in this situation but I’d like to think that I can handle this dilemma a shit ton more efficiently then these buffoons.
Kurt wraps a club with an oil-soaked cloth as a torch and leads the morons up the stairs. The rats don’t give a hot shit.
Hahaha, as they’re going up the stairs, Kurt is yapping on: “Damn Things! My God, they’re repulsive! Just their teeth, think of the diseases they can give you: hepatitis, meningitis, leptospirosis, Plague.” One, I highly doubt this cave dweller knows what any of those diseases are and two, I think he’s thinking of Robert Kennedy Jr. RFK Jr. will give you those diseases.
Fuck, now I’m on another government enemies list!
One rat jumps at Taurus and that’s enough to make him fall down the stairs. Kurt makes the tough decision to leave him because he is a goner for sure and can’t risk the other guys’ lives.
The door they’re banging for the others to let them in the barricaded room is heavily barricaded and seems awfully unlikely that that is the same door they left the room from.
Also, Duke is refusing to open the heavily barricaded door because Kurt tells him that the water was polluted. I’m with Duke on this one.
Chocolate tricks Duke by saying there was a rat by his feet and she knocks him down and lets the other fellas in the room.
I’m still holding on to the theory that whomever gets bit by the rats and isn’t burned will become zombie-like.
Ya know? I’ve never seen Ben or Willard or even Gnaw. I have listened to Michael Jackson’s Ben a few times though and that’s scary enough for me.
They hear a man’s scream from a distance and deduce that it could be Taurus still alive. Kurt says that they have to do everything possible to save him. You weren’t thinking that when you left him to get devoured by 100s of rats earlier dear leader.
I’m starting to doubt the validity of this film being taken place in a post-apocalyptic world. The cast could be any group held-up in an abandoned building that is rat-infested. The only reason they aren’t leaving is that they just want to stay there for food. They could leave anytime they want. But it being post-apocalyptic means nothing so far for this flick. If they said something like the rats are more violent, aggressive or crave human-flesh because of nuclear fallout then sure, go with that but I guess it’s up to our imagination.
Again, I just don’t get the danger here. Video volunteered to walk across this other room and he’s successfully and slowly making his way past the swarm of rats without incident.
You dirty rat!

Video gets super excited by making it across the room he yells over to the others that “The War is over! Yahoo!”
Meanwhile sickly Diana who was bit earlier is starting to look sinister. So my theory is correct. The last half hour will be them fighting their own who became rat-brained.
Or maybe Diana just has leptospirosis or the Plague.
In the bar area, Taurus is there and he falls down and then his body opens up and a bunch of rats pop out. Was this special effect worth it, (again?) hell no.
I forgot they had a mini tank, but anyway Duke being Duke takes it over and starts shooting at the rest of the group.
He also has Myrna as a hostage. But in the middle of negotiating with Kurt, Duke notices that the tank is full of rats and the dumb shit that he is, gets so angry at the sight of them he drops his grenade in the tank blowing up the tank while he and the rats are still in it. Myrna somehow escaped before he dropped the grenade. My gawd this film is so stupid.
This gothic organ music reminds me of the organ music in The ‘Burbs.
When the tank exploded, the others ducked down at the window to shield themselves from the blast. When they dropped, Diana was the only one standing and then she slowly backs away, keeping her eyes on the flames, until she’s out of sight in the darkness. The others didn’t know she was there. What was the point of that?!
Wait. Chocolate did know she was there? But they made it a point to leave her on the bed because she’d be safer there. They would’ve acted surprised or concerned that she was up and about at least. It’s like the movie forgets everything in the subsequent scene.
Huh? Is this some sort of joke? Deus says: “At least for them, it is finished [meaning Duke and Myrna who they think is dead]. But us, what kind of a finish can we look forward to?” Kurt replies: “More matte than glossy.” Now I know some lines have been misinterpreted!
Man, I really wish something crazy or extremely stupid happens soon. This movie is so fucking dull.
Diana lumbers to another empty room and decides to kill herself with a razor to the wrists so she can die on her own terms. Maybe I should save myself the misery of the last 20 minutes and follow her lead.
Kurt finding Diana dead on the ground covered with rats he decides to blast her with the ol’ shotgun anyway.
“It’s worse than being dead!” No Kurt, watching this movie is worse then being dead.

These dopes really give these rats more credit than they deserve. They’re just simple rats doing simple rat stuff. Kurt and company speak about them like they are criminal masterminds and set traps and deliberately trying to frighten them.
They find some kind of voice recorder and when they activate it, there’s a scientist talking about his experiments. It kinda sounds like Professor Heinz Doofenschmirtz from Phineas and Ferb.
OK so according to the recording, these rats have survived the nuclear fallout and hence been mutated to have intelligence to “an amazing degree.” So maybe they are setting traps. However, they are very simple and subtle traps that even the human imagination can’t follow or explain.
The recording voice is slowing down and dying out as the recording goes on and on. The voice is cracking and fading and rising. It’s quite hilarious.
Oh. Kurt and company assumed that they and others above ground like them are the only survivors. They don’t know about communities underground. Which makes the opening crawl even more redundant since, it talked about the class war between the uppers and lowers. I was just reminded about this right now—earlier I assumed that Kurt’s group would meet up with some subterranean people, fight them briefly before joining forces to stop the common enemy—the rat. But that would be a good movie now wouldn’t it. In other words, don’t mention something that isn’t even remotely important to the plot.
Deus also glosses over the fact that there is a whole world underneath with other people and starts going on about the rat problem.

Apparently there are history books that only describe rat vs. rat conflicts and never mentions the subterranean folk. That’s just rat propaganda!
I’m amazed that Kurt’s long red ascot/kerchief has stayed around his neck this whole time.
More gothic chamber music. And look…some subterranean folk in HAZMAT suits have come up from a sewer. They seem to be fumigating the area. Do they do this often or is this just a happy coincidence that they happened to do this when Kurt and company are being attacked all night?
This is like the third or fourth time the movie has a scene where the rats are trying to break into a room, whether it’s a locked door or a window and after the rats win the struggle and break down the door or whatever, the rats are then seen pouring down the door’s threshold since the filmmakers are dropping them into the scene instead of having a shit-ton of rats on the ground already. It just looks so silly when the door obviously had no rats directly behind it causing the pushing and banging.
I also love seeing rats fly to their victims. Obviously the filmmakers are tossing the rats to the actors but it looks like they’re flying.
So both Deus and Kurt die when the rats break down the door and Chocolate and Video plan a murder/suicide to spare themselves but the fumigators arrive just in time. Well not exactly since Kurt and Deus are dead but little victories ya know?
Hahahaha. The fumigating gas filling in the room is slowly killing Video and Chocolate so they have to now escape this room. Will they make it?!
Kinda pissed I couldn’t make a Video Killed the Radio Star joke.
Video and Chocolate thank the fumigators for saving them but lo and behold, the main fumigator revolves his gas mask and it’s a human-rat mutant. BIG TWIST! M. NIGHT (of Terror) TWIST!

Final Thoughts: Hilariously bad schlock masterpiece. It was very boring and the gore effects could’ve been better but watching this with a group could be a grand ol’ time. Dumb characters with even worse costumes, terrible dialogue that makes very little sense and animal-wrangling done by idiots all equal good times to be had.

How Italian 🇮🇹 is it: Virtually none. Supposed to be in America. No pizza for the rats I’m afraid. Tariff Rate: 5%