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 

ZOMBIE 4: AFTER DEATH (1989) (Severin Blu-ray Review)

ZOMBIE 4: AFTER DEATH (1989)

Label: Severin Films

Region Code: Region-Free

Rating: Unrated

Duration: 88 Minutes

Audio: English DTS-HD MA Mono 2.0 

Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (1.85:1) 

Director: Claudio Fragasso

Cast: Jeff Stryker, Candice Daly, Massimo Vanni, Jim Gaines, Don Wilson

From director Claudio Fragasso (Troll 2) - which should tell you something right there - comes Zombie 4: After Death (1988), a Filipino shot zombie film that opens with a zany prologue wherein an angry voodoo priests condemns his wife to the pits of Hell as a smokey-hole opens up in the ground swallowing her. The rite is interrupted by a group of medical anglo-interlopers who show up and dialogue is exchanged with some crap about them causing the death of the voodoo priest's daughter through their cancer research. The priest places a curse on them, which ends up being a zombie plague. This is a strange prologue as it doesn't have a whole lot to do with the rest of the film but we do get some green-drooling zombies, one of which looks a bit like a cheap knock-off of the Garretta Garetta demon from Lamberto Bava's much superior Demons (1985). The only survivor during the prologue is a young girl, and we flash forward about ten years and this girl returns to the very same island with a group of mercenaries, though I'm not sure why she came back, the whole time she keeps speaking about how they are all doomed if they step foot on the island, but they do anyway, of course. This first group we're introduced to ends up as victims for the undead from the get-go, falling victim to the surprisingly fast and kung-fu inclined undead in quick succession. The undead here appearing in black shrouds and white-face, with caked-on make-up meant to make them look like their flesh is rotting off, but just looks really cheap, but that they are fast and inclined to use weapons at times made me think of another Italo-schlocko, Umberto Lenzi's batshit infected flick Nightmare City (1980).

  

Much like in the Fulci-Mattei-Fragasso hybrid Zombie 3 (1988) the film has two groups of people plagued by the hungry undead who meet-up and face-off against the threat, the second group turns out to me the main group we stay with for most the film, we have group leader David (Massimo Vanni), Chuck (gay porn star Jeff Stryker) and Valerie (Candice Daly). This adventuresome trio are on the island to explore a volcano, but end up down in the catacombs of where we saw the voodoo priest earlier and reading from the "Book of the Dead", in a bit stolen straight from the Evil Dead, eventually making their way to the island hospital where they encounter more undead before ending up down in the catacombs again. 

As mentioned the film is directed by Fragasso (director of Troll 2, screenwriter of Zombie 3, Shocking Dark) so you know this is gonna be a silly sort of film, but it's also nice and gory with some really fun blood and guts gags that are sure to entertain the horror fiends. The film actually has some nice atmosphere too, dare I say it, it superficially brought to mind Lucio Fulci's Zombie (1979) a few times, the jungles and tunnels are all drenched in wafts of fog and with a synth-drenched score from Al Fiesta (director of Fatal Frames!) that heaps on the queso-delic campiness, accenting the sometimes shambling, often running undead, as they emerge from graves and chomp down on the living.

The acting in this one is pretty spotty but also appropriate for the film, this is a straight-up Italian cheese-fest, and that's what I was in the mood for when I popped this on, and I was not even a little bit disappointed by it. It certainly lives up to it's reputation as a hideously awful - but totally fun - slice of late-80s Italian/Filipino schlock. 

Audio/Video: Zombie 4: After Death (1989) arrives on Blu-ray from Severin Films in 1080p HD framed in 1.85:1 widescreen, advertised as a 2K scan from elements that aren't advertised, so it's probably not the original camera negative. It's worth noting that this is the 8-min longer uncut version of the film, so you're getting more gore with this release! The image shows some wear and tear but isn't DNR-abused, grain shows up just fine, looking it bit chunkier during the darker scenes and looking considerably less gauzy. Colors are decent, occasionally a red, green or blue gel light shows up and looks good, blacks are just okay, it's not gonna blow you away but it looks better than my Shriek Show DVD by a Filipino mile and is gorier! 

Audio comes by way of an English DTS-HD MA Mono 2.0 track, with no subtitle options. Dialogue is clean and never hard to decipher, the synth score from Al Festa sounds good, if you dig it the first 3000 copies of this one include a CD soundtrack, listening to the szcore in the car today I was a bit shocked how good it was.

Extras begin with another wonderfully candid interview with Director Claudio Fragasso and Screenwriter Rossella Drudi (plus their ever-present cat) who speak about this being his vision as opposed to other films he co-wrote, this time out he was director, but was slightly hamstrung by the fact that he had limited access to a camera as Bruno Mattei was making Strike Commando 2 at the same time, so he only had access to the cameras at night. They talk about how they came up with idea of a more action oriented zombie movie, wherein the zombies could think, handle weapons and run fast, which he points out he did a long time before films like the Dawn of the Dead remake and 28 Days Later, and having to shoot the prologue for the film when the movie ended up a bit too short.

Also discussed is the Al Fiesta score, the gory special FX of Franco Di Girolamo, the visual FX of the Paolocci Brothers, who Drudi amusingly recalls as being "full of shit and pretentious", plus working with the Roman/Filipino hybrid crew. There's also a fun story of how during a dinner with his Filipino crew he unknowingly drank a hallucinogenic coconut liquor that warped reality, plus anecdotes about working with the Filipino crew on this film and on Strike Commando 2 with Mattei, and remembering actors Jeff Stryker and the late Candice Daly. 

Gay porn star Jeff Stryker shows up for a 10-min interview discussing how he was cast in the film by a gay casting director who was infatuated with him,  hoping it would lead to more legit movie (which it didn't), also modeling his 12-inch action figure for us, remembering how dedicated the Filipino crew were, also remembering that Candice Daly was so upset with how hideous her make-up was at the end of the film she cried. 

There's a 2-min vintage interview with the late Candice Daly who recalls flying to the Filipines to join her then boyfriend who said she could get a gig on some Italian films, remembering how hot and humid it was, and referring to Fragasso as Francis Ford Fragassio, ha ha.nThe disc is buttoned-up with 4-mins of behind-the-scenes footage of shooting the prologue in Rome, plus a 3-min trailer for the film. 

The 2-disc BD/CD release comes housed in a black Blu-ray keepcase with a one-sided sleeve of artwork, the same key art on the sleeve is featured on the Blu-ray disc, the CD featuring an image from the film. 

Special Features:

- Run Zombie Run! - Interview With Director Claudio Fragasso and Screenwriter Rossella Drudi (32 min) HD 

- Jeff Stryker in Manila - Interview With Actor Chuck Peyton (10 min) HD 

- Blonde vs Zombies - Interview With Actress Candice Daly (2 min) 

- Behind-The-Scenes Footage (4 min) 

- Trailer (3 min) 

- Limited Edition: First 3000 with First Ever Official Release Soundtrack CD of Music By Al Festa

Zombie 4: After Death (1989) is not a good film, but it's the good sort of bad that I find hugely entertaining, sometimes you just wanna watch a bad zombie movie and few did it better (or worse, depending) than the Italians. It's with only a small amount of  slight towards Claudio Fragasso that I say he had his hands on quite a few of these z-grade zombie curios throughout his career, and Severin have given it a Blu-ray several times over more opulent than it probably deserves, so dig in!