178 - RATS NIGHT OF TERROR (1984)

**Word of warning – the first fifty minutes of the show has less than great audio. For some reason a buzzing was on the track and the only way I could eliminate it was to crush some of the less loud portions of the sound out. Sadly, this dropped most of the laughter from the amused ladies in the room and causes the softer ends of some words to be lost as well. I’m sorry about this – I’ll work to make sure it doesn’t happen again.**

I am joined once again by Bobby Hazzard and John Hudson to roll around in Italian sleaze! This time I chose the film and, since I was in a post-apocalypse frame of mind, we end up talking about our first Bruno Mattei film. RATS NIGHT OF TERROR (1984) is probably my favorite of Mattei’s efforts, which some will claim is damning it with faint praise – I can’t disagree. 

We talk about how we first encountered this mad movie and its regular video companion HELL OF THE LIVING DEAD (1980). Tied into that, Huson notes the strong similarities of this film’s plot to the classic NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1968) siege scenario. Other post-apocalypse exploitation movies are used for comparison with this one coming in as a lesser effort in some way but not in others. The portentous ‘Star Wars’ inspired opening voiceover has us trying to square the supposed 225 years ‘After the Bomb’ timeline it provides but we do have a lot of un noting that the world ended in 2015. Actress Geretta Geretta has talked about this film on several occasions and we relate a few of her more interesting tales of working in Italian cinema without speaking the language. Other topics include dodging iguanas, buckets of rats and well-done fire stunts complete with some unfortunate animal cruelty. We do eventually end up spoiling the excellent ending, so you have been warned.

 If you have any comments about this film or any other we’ve covered on the show [email protected] is the place to send them. We thank you for listening and we will do our best to avoid audio problems in the future.