Rat Man

This flick do has his pros and contras, to be honest I can understand it completely. Just face the reviews, only a few for a cult classic. That must say enough. The problem this flick had was the fact that it was being cut heavily even so that nudity and gore was left out. It did had a few releases and was even sold with the title Terror House.

I still don't know what to think about it because to be fair it is a bit boring at some places. Comes because there's no suspense in it. But I have seen it full uncut. It took until 2008 before it was finally released full uncut and sadly Nelson De La Rosa (the ratman) never experienced the final release, he passed away in 2006.

Maybe people hate it because the effects weren't the next big thing and there is not really that much of gore to spot. For me it's even goreless, it's more a trashy flick. It's just made for the geeks of bad taste. And it surely won't win an Oscar for acting but there's more than the flick itself. David Warbeck (Fred Williams) famous of a lot of classics (The Beyond (1981)) has the main lead here to help a model's sister to search for her sister. Girls do disappear due the ratman of course. Most notable and been cut out of a lot of DVD's is the ratman as a peeping tom watching Marilyn (Eva Grimaldi) taking a shower. It's as gratuitous as it can get and she goes all the way. people who know Eva know that you will see an extreme beautiful body. And that's what's it all about for a lot of pervs out there, to see the shower scene.

A bit of blood here and there, trashy in some way and a lot of Eva walking around and modelling never wearing a bra throughout The Ratman.

Gore 1/5 Nudity 1/5 Effects 1,5/5 Story 2/5 Comedy 0/5

Somewhere in the Dominican Republic, a scientist creates a cross between rat and ape, which is poisonous and feeds on human flesh. Of course, the creature escapes and starts to kill everywhere. The sister of a missing model and an author of television crime stories start to investigate on their own and follow the monster's bloody route...

This was one of the last "big" Italian gore shockers and has all the ingredients we've come to expect from such films as it is sleazy, sexist, gory and stupid as hell (heck, the scientist even wants to win the Nobel price for his monster!). The creature itself is, and that's a bit of a surprise, astoundingly scary (and ugly, too). However, as we can see the monster before it escapes and starts its killing spree and the director seems more interested in showing tits and gore than anything else, there's not much of suspense in the film. However it was nice to see the return of Italian horror film veterans David Warbeck and Janet Agren. A movie for fans.

David Warbeck was a likable, energetic screen personality, but he deserves the John Carradine Lifetime Achievement Award for his sanguine eagerness to appear in ANY project thrown at him with a promise of fifty bucks. Case in point would be THE RATMAN, a vagrant little Eurochiller which inexpertly illustrates the bloody rampage of death and destruction brought forth by a two-foot tall poisonous were-rodent.

The midget actor in the titular role is actually quite frightening looking. He's EXTREMELY small, and costumed with claws and razor-sharp incisor teeth. Regrettably, he's the only point of substantial interest this film offers(besides the presence of David Warbeck, of course).

THE RATMAN is scantly agreeable fodder, and does manage to bring on the creeps once or twice...still, it's ultimately just another bump-and-grind monster mash scored with lousy synth music.

4/10

Seriously fun little Italian sleazefest by former spaghetti western director Anthony Ascott. His "Sartana" films were filled with nifty little gimmicks, gizmos, devices, contraptions and bizarre cinematic flourishes that set the films apart from the pack. Here his little wind up gimmick is a despicable marvel of exploitation monster mania that must be witnessed to be believed. Watching the poor little rat man claw apart the half naked female supporting players is where the heart of the film lies. It delivers the goods, doesn't apologize about what it is & gets the job over with a bit of style in under 85 minutes. None of it is really scary but a lot will make your flesh crawl, and probably laugh.

One idea that keeps coming to mind is about how the film is a study in applied bad taste right down to the wince inducing use of a real life deformed person in a freakshow role. Such things cannot be enjoyed in good conscience without beer which is used in the presence of friends: It's a howler of a party movie and a guilty pleasure to be enjoyed at times when you just want to marvel at how absurd the human species can be. I don't defend this movie for a minute but I sure am in awe of it, which in some cases will have to do.

7/10

Inspired by a song written by the Fall on their Totales Turns album, Ratman is a late era Italian horror thankfully devoid of haunted houses, but unthankfully full of boring stalk and slash sequences.

A scientist on some tropical island has successfully managed to get a rat to breed with a monkey, somehow, and produced a rat monkey capable of poisoning anything it scratches within seconds. This creature of course has escaped and is now chowing down on anything it can get it's teeth into.

This includes the bunch of fashion models led by Werner Pochtath (Days of Hell, Cat o Nine Tails), and his main model, Eva Grimaldi (Demons 5). After another model is stalked and killed and mistaken for Eva, her sister Janet Agren (Eaten Alive) goes looking for her, helped by legend David Warbreck (The Last Hunter, The Black Cat). And basically the film turns into Warbreck and Agren doing the old research on what's happening, and Eva trying to avoid being killed for the remainder of the film. Kind of like Tonino Ricci's Panic, also starring Warbreck and Agren.

Directed by Guilliamno Carnimeo (director of the great Case of the Bloody Iris and numerous Westerns I've never got round to watching) Ratman is full of cheese, but it's also full of boobs and gore, so really, where do your priorities lie? This one doesn't go down the old haunted house road as a lot films do from this era, but on the other hand it becomes quite slasher-tastic in the old 'folks trying to hide from a killer' routine. I have the hiccups. It's really annoying. Really annoying. My wife has a remedy for it but she's in bed.

Forget this film/ Do you have the hiccups? I hate the hiccups. Makes my stomach hurt from##jpepw;/ O cast/muppets