Altered Species

well after watching this i can say that it ain't the worst movie ever made,, yes folks there is worse than this,, there are some good points to the movie,, you get to watch drunken teenagers, have horrible deaths,, and cute looking rats eating some science experiment, and getting grotesquely huge,, the drunk janitor,, the cranky doctor,, and yes a girl in thong underwear that has absolutely no shame,, dumb jocks,, i could'nt personally wait for the rat to eat these drunken fools,, i was rooting for the rat the e ntire time,, it had a good premise,, the first part of the movie,, was interesting though with the scientific explantation about the rats,, and the little back story,, but i think that it ruined when the dumb drunken horny teenagers come into play,, the rat in my opinion, the one that get's lost,, her name is Brenda, was so fake,, must have been a cGi rat,, looked like a guy dressed up in a beaver suit,, this was pretty schlocky, lame,, but not totally horribble,,

Altered Species (2001)

* (out of 4)

A professor is trying to cure cancer and of course doing experiments on rats who eventually escape and go on a killing spree. This is yet another film that deals with an animal going crazy and killing people but this one here is pretty bad from start to finish. The acting, directing and screenplay are all beyond horrid but thankfully the film gets so bad that you can't help but laugh. The director tries throwing all sorts of gore at the viewer but the killings are so bad that you can't help but laugh. We also get some nudity but not enough to keep the film moving. Go rent The Killer Shrews instead.

Despite the unorthodox script, storyline, and acting, the only real actor in the movie is Gary, played by Richard Peterson. He displays the only humor that is pretty funny. I honestly believe that if the actors were given a better script, the acting would have been much, much more believable. Allen Lee Haff wasn't bad either. He and Richard have the potential to do much deeper roles. I wouldn't be surprised if Richard becomes a big Hollywood star in the near future. I think Allen could do some Vince Vaughn- type of roles. Richard has a James Dean like aura about him when he walks across the screen. I really think that in lieu of the Director's choice of screenplays, Richard Peterson has huge big screen potential. I know that he will be in bigger roles sometime soon.

Well then. I just watched an crap-load of movies--all with varying degrees of quality. I wasn't too sure about which one I wanted to review first. Then it hit me like a sack-a-rats: Rodentz. Warn people about Rodentz. This monstrosity stars nobody and is painfully dull to sit through. And it's about mutant rats killing people. Yeah... real freaking' original. "Food of the Gods," or "Willard" anyone? Those were better than this, and that doesn't say much...

**POSSIBLE SPOILER**Okay here's the story: Inna laboratory the scientist and his plucky assistant are experimenting on rats and their laboratory is in a crappy neighborhood and crappy building and the plucky assistant's moronic friends show up drunk and everyone becomes food for the crazed rats and just about everybody dies and, oh yeah, there's one giant rat that looks crappy, but it gets killed, the end. There, all in once sentence! Spoiler, you say? Ppfff!! I beg to differ! The second we all realize that there's a giant rat, we all know it's gonna die eventually!!**END SPOILER**

Here's the breakdown:

The Good:

--Well, I watched it for free, but for everyone else... hmmm, no. There's nothing good here.

Didn't Hurt It, Didn't Help:

--Um... well. the gore was decent. --Very average cinematography.

--CG rats not as bad as they could've been in some shots...

The Bad:

--...and in other shots, the CG rats were pathetically cheap-looking. Look, if your film has a low budget, maybe you shouldn't rely on CG. Lesson to take to heart.

--The acting is extremely poor.

--The characters are beyond uninteresting--we have a mish-mash of clichés and none of them are even done that well.

--Booooooooooooring.

--Been done before--plenty of times.

--Stupid story, just stupid.

--Giant rat looks like fat man in poorly conceived bear costume--that was kind of funny--but not funny enough to give this film any worth.

--Retarded, unrealistic, and boring dialog.

--All the college student rat chow people are drinking Tequila from huge plastic milk jugs--and yet they don't appear to be drunk for anything longer than a few seconds. Way to stick with continuity, guys.

The Ugly:

--This film is bad. Simply terrible. Worse than you might imagine. It's not even laughably bad like, for instance, "Scarecrow" (2002) or "House of the Dead." Now those movies are crap you can enjoy. Even if they do make you stupider.

Memorable Scene:

--The lame action-movie ending, complete with uninjured heroes and explosion. Because it didn't feel at all like the rest of this monstrosity--but still sucked.

Acting: 2/10 Story: 1/10 Atmosphere: 2/10 Cinematography: 4/10 Character Development: 0/10 Special Effects/Make-up: 4/10 Nudity/Sexuality: 1/10 (I was tending to my son occasionally during the film, so I may have missed it, but was supposedly in there) Violence/Gore: 4/10 Dialogue: 2/10 Music: 1/10 (average for the time) Writing: 1/10 Direction: 2/10

Cheesiness: 7/10 Crappiness: 9/10

Overall: 1/10

Watch it only if you love rat and vermin-based horror films. Wait... Check that. Don't watch it. It's crap.

(www.ResidentHazard.com)

Every so often, while strolling through the aisles of the local video store, the unsuspecting consumer will spot something out of the corner of his eye that almost shouts, "LOOK AT ME!!! I'M WHAT YOU'RE LOOKING FOR!!!"

In my own particular case, this is exactly what happened. I had visited the local Blockbuster with my lovely and talented assistant, Noodles, in search of a movie so painfully stupid, so insipid, that I could sit through the entire thing without the slightest bit of sympathy for the so-called heroes.

"Altered Species" (packaged this time around as "Rodentz") is just such a film. So loathsome were its main characters that I found myself hoping, almost praying, that these brick-stupid chunkheads would fall victim to the leader of the rats - a six-foot critter that looks like a guy in a bear suit that has seen better days. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

"Altered Species" stars no one and features little more. It's lead actors - okay, it's ONLY actors - all look vaguely familiar, but you can't place the faces. If I had to guess, I would say that at least one of them has asked me, personally, if I "want fries with that."

The story, such as it is, revolves around a group of drunken people who visit their scientist friend, Walter, at the laboratory where he works with a cranky old guy who is continuously yelling at him that "the formula is FINE!"

During Walter's initial scenes, we get a taste of the back story, and it seems that clumsy Walter accidentally lets a crate full of lab rats loose in the building's basement. These rats, in turn, have been drinking from the experimental formula that they had previously been injected with.

After the cranky guy's cat (a cat?!? In a science lab full of rats?!?) disappears, he goes off to find him, and bad things happen to him. Walter, brick-stupid dolt that he is, doesn't find it the least bit suspicious that his boss also disappears, and proceeds to let his idiot friends in, where they can swill tequila from a plastic gallon jug. The friends are typical - almost cardboard cutout-like - horror film fodder, and it's not long before you begin hoping the rats get fed up with them and start eating them. It is not long before our prayers are answered.

Without giving away too much about this film, I think I can safely say that most of the people that deserve to die, do. I would say ALL of the people who deserve to die, but that wouldn't have left anybody to whimper and limp off into the sunset at the end of the film (as is required for this sort of flick).

Of course, with any horror film that feels it is worth its weight in celluloid, there is an obligatory nude scene, but it is played in such a way that the viewer isn't even given any gratification on that front, either. The girl is a sleazy tramp, and the guy is dumber than a box of hair. It was like watching Sylvester Stallone during his pre-Rocky, Death Race 2000 days, trying to get lucky with one of Calvin Klein's anorexic, heroine-addicted underwear models. Fortunately, the girl stops the greasy butt-steak from violating her long enough to ask if he has a condom. He doesn't, and a trip to the van downstairs is required. While the big, dumb lump rifles through the glove box, his beloved skank is having her face eaten by the above-mentioned six-foot rat.

Stupid? Yes. Banal? Without a doubt. A waste of money? Absolutely. But... Er... Okay, I was going for something here, but I don't remember what it was. Suffice to say, this is a not-good movie. Not a "bad" movie, mind you. Those are at least watchable on some level. A not-good film is sort of like setting your shirt on fire - fascinating at first, but you're going to end up hurting when it's finished.