RATS: NIGHTS OF TERROR (1984) (88 Films Blu-ray Review/Comparison)

RATS: NIGHTS OF TERROR (1984) 

Label: 88 Films

Region Code: B
Duration: 96 Minutes

Audio: English, Italian LPCM Stereo with Optional English Subtitles

Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (1.85:1)

Director: Bruno Mattei
Cast: Ottaviano Dell'Acqua, Geretta Geretta, Massimo Vanni

In Bruno Mattei's Rats: Night of Terror (1984) Earth is a post-nuke wasteland, the year s 225 A.B. (you know, After the Bomb!), the world lays in ruins hundreds of years after the bombs have fallen, and we take-up with a motorbike gang of Mad Max styled bad asses rolling in the a burned out town. They find refuge is a strange building that looks to be a saloon up on top and a research facility down below, which is where good fotune seems to be smiling down upon them, discovering crates of stockpiled food rations. The food is a bizarre combination of what looks to be canned sour kraut, grains, sugar and flour, it's a pretty shit pantry selection but even this seems like quite a find in the A.B.-life. Filling themselves on their new spoils they settle in for the night, but find that the place is crawling with fierce four-legged vermin, besieged by a horde of red-eyed rats with a taste for human flesh.

Co-written and directed by Claudio Fragasso (Troll 2) and Bruno Mattei (Violence in a Women's Prison) this is a post-apocalyptic slice of Italian exploitation in the vein of Eliminators of the Year 3000 (1983), by way of a killer-rat movie Deadly Eyes (1982). The band of surface dwelling scavengers is lead by the cheesily rugged Kurt (Ottaviano Dell’Acqua, Zombie 3), but for me the real star is American born Euro-cult star Garetta Garetta (Demons) who is a serious bad ass black biker babe, named "Chocolate", 'natch. Along those lines there's a scene of someone dumping a bag of flour over Chocolate's head, and she starts doing a jig, while singing/saying "look, I'm just as white as all of you!", it's an odd bit of reverse-black face, but not all that strange for an Italian production from this era, all these Italian films were loaded with oddities, if it wasn't the all too-real animal carnage in the cannibal films (and this one too), it was atrocious dialogue, which this has as well,  and these insensitive racial characterizations. 

The rats we see onscreen are not the ravenous looking sewer rats they are implied to be, instead we get some docile looking white lab rats with bright pink eyes, that look to have been thrown into an oil can or something to make them look dark and scary, with occasional tufts of white fur showing through, but in a world where I can watch Deadly Eyes and be just fine with dachshunds in rat pelts I'm O.K. with what this film has to offer. Some of it is less forgivable though, like a brief scene of what is supposed to be a horde of rats on the move, but looks to be some sort of carousel wheel or treadmill with plastic toy rats glued onto it being turned around to give a poor man's illusion of said horde, it's probably the most laughable effect in the film, but trust me, it's not as laughable as most of the stilted Italian to English dubbed dialogue. 

For a Mattei film there's not a lot of bloodletting and gore, but the film is reasonably well shot, being a fairly entertaining genre mash-up with some much appreciated nudity and a loads of scenes of wet rats clearly being thrown and dumped onto the actors, which I am sure was not pleasant for actor nor rat. There is a small smattering of minor gore though, with the group discovering the gnawed-on remains of the scientists who once inhabited the facility, plus a cheap gag involving a rat emerging from the mouth of a corpse after having eaten it's way up from her naughty bits, presumably.

The film is cheap and silly for sure but I dig the apocalyptic punker aesthetic and deadly rats shtick, if you're a fan of post-nuke and/or killer rat movies this is a fun trashy b-movie, not a great film, but certainly an entertaining red-eyed rat flick. 

The film has a shocker of an end that involves the arrival of contamination suited survivors who emerge from the underground, revealing themselves to be rat-faced subterranean humanoid underground dwellers, which always brings a smile to my face, love it.

Audio/Video: Rats: Nights of Terror (1984) arrives on region B locked Blu-ray from 88 Films as part of their Italian Collection line-up, presented in 1080p HD and framed in 1.85:1 widescreen. 88 Films do not offer an lineage for their HD master but it looks good, the grain looks decent, blacks are good and the colors are well saturated, though there is what looks to be a little bit of scanner noise present throughout. I've included a few screenshots comparing it to the 2014 region-free Blu-ray from Blue Underground, the color grading and framing looks identical to my eyes, I am thinking this is the same HD master, but a tad brighter.  

Audio comes by way of both English and Italian LPCM 2.0 Stereo with optional English subtitles, both tracks are clean and free of distortion, they're in good shape, but I think the English audio is more robust, the electronic synth score from Luigi Ceccarelli has a nice life in the mix.

Onto the extras we get a few good ones, beginning with a new interview with Stuntmen and leads Massimo Vanni and Ottaviano Dell'Acqua, they discuss having known Mattei since childhood, he was a friend of their cousin, joining Mattei for a series of films he shot in the Philippines, working with Fulci on Demons 3, how the effects of a rats coming out of a victim's mouth was ac hived, and singing the praises of "b-movie" directors like Enzo Castellari, Lucio Fulci, Lamberto Bava and, of course, Bruno Mattei.

Composer Luigi Ceccarelli shows up for a 19-min interview, opening with his early love of music, and of composing music specifically, beginning his career in film scoring on a Claudio Fragasso super 8mm film, then going on to score Metamorphosis, Blue Angel Cafe, Women's Prison Massacre and over forty others, including co-scoring Nosferatu with Vangelis, saying he rarely passed up a film score opportunity, regardless of budget. He also speaks of visiting the set of Rats, which was not something he would usually do, and seeing scenes of the rats being let loose, describing Mattei as being very in control, while Fraggasso was more impulsive, describing their rapport together as playful.

88 Films go all-out for this release, the single-disc Blu-ray release comes housed in an oversized clear Blu-ray keepcase with a 2-sided sleeve of artwork, both artworks are basically the same with slight alterations, one side featuring the Italian title and the other the English title, with the English option featuring the numbered spine, while the Italian option does not. The limited edition includes an attractive slipcover with the same English title artwork, inside there's a 4-page booklet containing an interview with star Garetta Garetta by

Calum Waddell, in it she discusses her career, working with Argento and Lamberto Bava, the convention circuit, and a writing a script for a Demons homage, which would in effect be Demons 3! There's also a fold-out mini poster of the film with the Italian title!

Blu-ray Comparison: 

Top: Blue Underground Blu-ray (2014)

Bottom: 88 Films Blu-ray (2018) 

Special Features:  

- Limited Edition Gloss O-Card slipcase [First Print Run Only] 

- Limited Edition Interview with Geretta Geretta booklet by Dr Calum Waddell [First Print Run Only] 

- Limited Edition 150gsm Fold-out poster [First Print Run Only] 

- Uncompressed Original English Audio 

- Uncompressed Alternative Italian Audio 

- Newly translated English Subtitles fort he Italian Audio - NEW Interview with Stuntmen and leads Massimo Vanni and Ottaviano Dell'Acqua (25 min) HD 

- NEW Interview with composer Luigi Ceccarelli (19 min) 

- Theatrical Trailer  (2 min) 

- Reversible Sleeve with Italian Title 

Rats: Nights of Terror (1984) is a fun slice of post-nuke rat horror from the Italians, it's not too gory but all sorts of fun, and just a little bit mental, good stuff. 88 Films do good work bringing this one Blu-ray for the UK, and for you region-free lovers of exploitation.

More 88 Films Blu-ray Screenshots 

SHOCKING DARK (1989) (Severin Blu-ray Review)

SHOCKING DARK (1989)

Label: Severin Films
Region Code: Region-FREE
Rating: Unrated
Duration: 90 Minutes 
Audio: English DTS-HD MA Mono, Sponaish Dolby Digital Mono, German Dolby Digital Mono, Italian Dolby Digital Mono, Chinese Dolby Digital Mono with Optional English Subtitles
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (1.78:1) 
Director: Bruno Mattei
Cast: Christopher Ahrens, Haven Tyler, Geretta Geretta, Fausto Lombardi, Dominica Coulson

Italian master of schlock Bruno Mattei (Violence In A Women's Prison) was never one to shy away from a good knock-off, and never was this more evident than with this balls-deep and shameless mash-up of a pair of sci-fi action cinema classics, swiping from both James Cameron's Terminator (1984) and Aliens (1986), aping the latter film almost beat for beat in a way that is actually quite breathtaking in it's sheer audacity. Set in Venice, Italy in the once futuristic sounding year of 2000 we find that the scenic city has fallen on desperate times due to pollution, oxygen clogging seaweed, and corrosive sea water. The now dead city has been abandoned by all except the insidious Tubular Corporation who are supposedly there to rehab the city with a variety of eco-friendly experiments, all the while guarding the city from outsiders with their own private military force known as the Mega Force. The story starts proper when a trio of Tubular employees send a scream-filled video distress call to the Tubular headquarters, when the video is cut short the Mega Force is sent in to investigate, the group being a z-grade version of the marines from Aliens, highlighted by the presence of b-movie queen Garetta Garetta (Demons) as a foul-mouthed and ill-tempered bad ass named Kostar, and the inclusion of scientist (and a total Ripley stand-in) Dr. Sara Drumball (Haven Tyler). The band of mercs venture down into the subterranean utility tunnels beneath the city and find more than they bargained for, first one of the scientist they are there to rescue opens fire on them and then they encounter red-eyed rubber monsters who quickly decimate the team. The creatures here looking like a mix of Marvel's Man-Thing by way of General Ackbar from Star Wars, there's one that looks decent but they're mostly awful, but they're good in a trashy sort of way, wisely seen in only fleeting glimpses throughout. 

The Mega Force also discover a young girl who has survived on her own amidst the monster menace, she of course being the Newt character in the film, and as far as annoying kids in Italian cinema go she's right up there with "Bob" from Fulci's The House by The Cemetery (1981), maybe even a little worse, towards the end of the film she and doc Sara become separated in the tunnels and just start screaming each others names for what feels like fifteen minutes, it's nerve-shredding cinema at it's worst-best-worst.

Late in the game this slice of Italian exploitation comes through with some surprises, starting with the revelation that one of the Mega Force-ers is a cyborg - and thus begins a short-lived Terminator riff complete with a facial wound revealing cyborg circuity and a stiff Terminator strut. Then, with just a few minutes left Mattei pushes full-on with a head-spinning time travel element that comes out of nowhere and really goes nowhere, but damn if this thing is not entertaining through and through. As the saying goes, good artists borrow and great artists steal outright, if that's the case then judging him by this movie alone director Bruno Matteil was possibly the greatest Italian director of all time! Few have pilfered so freely with so few resources to make it happen, but he made it happen, this movie exists, somehow. The biggest downfall of the film, aside from the derivative nature, is some overly-long dialogue stretches that will bore you to tears, but if you love trashy knock-off of the Italian variety there's plenty to love about Shocking Dark, which was distributed in Italy under the title of Terminator 2!

Audio/Video: Shocking Dark (1989) arrives on Blu-ray from Severin Film in 1080p HD framed in 1.85:1 widescreen, "scanned in 2k from the Director’s Cut negative discovered in a Rome lab vault", the image looks good within reason. This was shot on the cheap and not exactly shot well either, the steam and smoke filled shots can be soft looking and lacking detail, not helping is a diffused lighting style, but some of the shots that are well-lit and have a fair amount of fine detail. Colors look nicely saturated with the exception of some poorly lit shots, the black levels are adequate, and while there's some age-related wear and tear on the print it's all very watchable, and at times modestly impressive. 

The main audio option is an English DTS-HD MA Mono track with optional English subtitles, there's alsob Dolby Digital mono mixes in Italian, German, Spanish and Chinese. The mix is good, there's a little bit of hiss present, and occasionally during the livelier scenes the sound can be a bit shrill on the ears, the cheesy synth score from Carlo Maria  Cordio (Pieces) is pretty good, it definitely suits the film, but it's not very memorable. 

Severin offer a few nifty new extras on this one beginning with a nicely candid interview with Co-Director/Co-Screenwriters Claudio Fragasso and Co-Screenwriter Rossella Drudi who give an overly honest recollection of this one, such as being assigned the project with the explicit direction to rip-off Aliens, which they didn't seem too happy about. They seem surprised that this stinker has the cult-following that it does, with Drudi saying she regularly omits this from her filmography, but I'm glad she's here to talk about it. Also discussed is shooting the film in a decommissioned nuclear facility, the less than stellar special effects by the Paolocci Bros., and how the producer is the one who re-titled the movie Terminator 2, the interview is in Italian with English subtitles.

Portland-born model/actress Geretta Geretta shows up to discuss her whole career, beginning with being cast in the punk cult-classic The Smithereens, doing some modeling and moving to Italy. She discusses working with Lucio Fulci (Murder Rock), Lamberto Bava (Demons), and Bruno Mattie on Rats: Night of Terror, describing how they would "recycle" the mice used in that film. 

The disc is buttoned-up with the alternate Italian title sequence with the Terminator 2 title card, plus an Asian trailer for the film with the Alienator title card, but the English voice-over which advertises it as Shocking Dark, with a bizarre coda right at the end that had me in stitches. The single-disc release comes housed in a spiffy black Blu-ray keepcase with a one-sided sleeve of artwork. the disc also featuring the same key art as the sleeve.

Special Features:
- Terminator in Venice - Interview with Co-Director/Co-Screenwriters Claudio Fragasso and Co-Screenwriter Rossella Drudi (13 min) 
- Once Upon A Time in Italy - Interview With Actress Geretta Geretta (13 min) 
- Alternate Italian Titles (2 min) 
- Trailer ( 1 min) 

There are a metric shit-ton of Italian knock-off films from the 70s and 80s, but very few were as shameless as this one at lifting directly from the films they were aping,it's sort of amazing how much this straight-up steals from Aliens and Terminator. It's on the level of the infamous Jaws knock-off Great White, but somehow this one hasn't been banished to copyright infringement limbo the way that one (or the black Exorcist knock-off Abby) have been, and of course it had to be Severin that brought this bonkers slice of trash to to Blu-ray, and that's why I love them!