US Blue Underground unrated DVD edition

The old DVD Anchor Bay edition had a Mattei Double - "Rats" coupled with the Zombie trash insanity "Hell of the Living Dead".

Ratti: Notte di Terrore:

Brilliant direction and outstanding actor performances ? NO, but a very entertaining lowbudget apocalyptic Sci-Fi horror it is (if you're not bothered
by the scenes of cruelty against animals, poor rats) from the enthusiastic trash B film director Bruno Mattei, here working under his alias Vincent
Dawn. Among his many trashy films this film could be my Mattei favourite - The War between Humans and Rats. But ....

The dangerous rats that obviously were peaceful white lab rats painted brown and who wanted nothing more than the calm of their cages, and they
definitely weren't interested in any war against humans. When writing this in December 2020 it was 10 years since i watched this film the last time
(on this DVD) and i remember being very disturbed by the cruelty shown against animals, so a BIG WARNING to all of you Rodent friends out there.
To all of you who has had a hamster, mice or rats as pet animals (me myself i have had mice and a hamster when a teenager).
The poor tame albino rats have been dipped in brown paint and non-aggressive and scared they were thrown at the actors (as in Dario Argento's
"Inferno" where crew members threw cats at Daria Nicolodi - R.I.P. Daria 1950-2020).
The tame animals are beaten, stomped upon and even put on fire, in scenes of cruelty (the cat thrown into a horde of "real" rats in the ultra-nasty
"Men Behind the Sun" may take the prize though. This infamous 1990 Hong Kong movie was a film that Bite me, and i regret watching it).

OK, enough of whining, and now to The (quite clever) Story:

The year is 225 A.B. - After the Bomb that is, the big atomic war of 2015 B.C. who forced the surviving humans to go underground for atomic shelter.
People has started to go up in small groups onto the surface of Earth again, and one of these groups, a MC gang we get to follow.
The group is led by Kurt (Richard Raymond) and they have discovered a mystical Hi-Tech facility with lots of human bodies, eaten by rats, lying
around. There are lots of food and vegetables but also a lot of starved intelligent man-eating rats, and the latter is start attacking. One by one the
MC gang members start to die from the rat attacks.
There are some Gore and what this film really has got, that's a very inspired TWIST ENDING which may have inspired Tim Burton when he made
his crappy re-make of Planet of the Apes. Were Bruno Mattei and his crew the first using this twist ?

Anamorphic widescreen 1.85:1, english audio mono. Extra: Hell Rats of the Living Dead: Interview with Bruno Mattei (in italian with english sub-
titles, 2002), a Trailer and a biography. In the interview Mattei gives a sympathetic impression and doesn't take himself too seriously.



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