Killer Rats

Killer Rats (2003): It’s nice to see Hollywood make movies about one of the most prolific and hardy mammalian species on the planet. What with ‘The Rats’ movie made in 2001 and the recent remake of Willard, tales of the little rodents are reaching the saturation point. Set in Philadelphia, the rodents do tend to reach the saturation point near the end of this movie and there are a couple of not so little rodents thrown in just for good measure. You’ve seen the plot on this one in many other movies so don’t expect much new here. Girl newspaper reporter goes underground to investigate the new loony tune centers created by the govimint’s privatization policy. Girl meets a number of loonies, a couple of indifferent shrinks and staffers. When patients start to go missing (they get ratified … or eaten as it were), the staff assumes they have escaped and try to cover up the whole mess. Girl reporter now finds she can’t easily get out of the home for paranoids (surprise). Later we learn that the head shrink (poor Ron Pearlman, a real actor) was conducting genetic experiments on rats and had his assistant get rid of them when he lost his funding. Of course his assistant was a nut case (think Igor in Frankenstein) and winds up saving the rats and helping them out to keep the plot going. Most of the cast get e-rat-icated (ate) and a few finally escape the high security nut house. Since most of the people in the credits had last names ending in OV, I suspect this was shot in Bulgaria with American actors. Could have been worse and has some good splatter. The movie is rated R for: poor mental health care, dumb psychiatrists, dumber staff, oodles of blood spray, chomped off hand, computer generated rats, and for really bad padded cells.