Whether you like this or not will probably depend on your enjoyment of 80's style horror. It's a fun, cheesy 80's flick. Dachshunds dressed up in rat costumes terrorize the city. There's really nothing more to it than that. Set in an unnamed city with Toronto doubling up for a cold, snowy location in the US, jobsworth government health official Kelly Leonard (Sara Botsford) seizes a huge batch of imported grain that has been found to be loaded with steroids. As the owner of the offending batch watches on, Kelly and her righthand man George (Scatman Crothers of The Shining) burn the whole containment which inadvertently forces the resident rat population scurrying for the city sewer system. Not a huge problem as the underground tunnels are already home to thousands of the furry critters but as these particular rodents have chowed down on the steroid infused grain these are not your normal vermin. Mutated, oversized and extremely aggressive, the super rats are now loose in the city and seemingly growing in numbers attacking anyone or anything unlucky enough to cross their path.Despite a rather tired premise The Rats remains entertaining enough as long as you can ignore plot holes, hokey science and questionable special effects. Robert Clouse keeps the pace brisk and the movie is well worth seeing alone just for the cinema attack scene and the subway train finalé (which leaves The Rats wide open for a sequel that for whatever reason never materialised). Why the filmmakers attached James Herbert's name to the credits when not one soul could muster the energy to read the source novel is beyond me; Herbert should have taken legal action appropriately, but hopefully (if he did not) he received a payment of substantial worth anyway. This is not an adaptation of the Herbert novel at all, as the screenwriters seemed to have invented every other plot point on from the time when the boy gets his hand bitten by a rat. True, Herbert's book would have been too gross and expensive to film but this is a ludicrous movie counterpart at best.Overall rating: 6 out of 10.

I had wanted to see this movie for a long time, but none of the video stores in the various cities I lived in stocked it. Finally, I had to purchase the Blu-ray. Was it worth the wait? For the most part, no. Now, the big feature about the movie that made me want to see it - giant rats played by dachshunds - does provide a little amusement, as well as the equally not convincing puppetry work when we see close-ups of the giant rats' faces. However, the bulk of the movie surrounding the rat stuff is extremely tedious to sit through. There simply isn't a lot of story here, and the characters are written in a way to be extremely uninteresting. The script is bad enough, but under the direction of Robert Clouse, the movie moves at a glacial pace and without any real tension. Clouse also makes some very big continuity goofs, like how the weather changes from shot to shot in some scenes, and how the movie seems to be taking place in Canada in some scenes but in other scenes in the United States. If you must see this, wait until it comes on cable and record it, then watch it with your finger hovered over the fast-forward button on your remote. Make sure your remote has fresh batteries, because this movie will give your remote a workout.

Grain tainted with steroids spawns a new strain of giant killer mutant black rats that attack and eat various folks in a big city. It's up to high school science teacher Paul Harris (a solid and likable performance by Sam Groom) and health inspector Kelly Leonard (a fine and appealing performance by Sara Botsford) to figure out a way to stop the foul beasts before it's too late. Director Robert Clouse lets the enjoyable story unfold at a snappy pace, delivers a handy helping of grisly gore, and stages the rat attack set pieces at a bowling alley and in a movie theater showing Clouse's Bruce Lee opus "The Game of Death" with gusto. Moreover, the filmmakers warrant extra props for their take-no-prisoners attitude towards the premise: The vile vermin munch on a baby and several old folks. The fact that the rodents are played by Dachshunds in pretty obvious and unconvincing costumes gives this honey a considerable amount of infectiously kitschy charm. Charles Eglee's endearingly hokey script not only includes a familiar subplot about a smarmy mayor who just cares about the opening of a new subway line (guess what happens here), but also tosses in a sappy romance between Groom and Botsford for good corny measure (cue an excuse for a love scene in front of a raging fireplace with Botsford bearing her breasts). This movie further benefits from the pulchritudinous presences of Canadian scream queens Lisa Langlois as flirtatious cheerleader Trudy White and Lesleh Donaldson as Trudy's sassy gal pal Martha. Scatman Crothers contributes a lively and amusing turn as a crusty sanitation worker who curses out the rats prior to meeting a gruesome untimely end. Bot Rene Verzier's slick cinematography and Anthony Guefen's spirited shivery score are up to speed. A total campy hoot.

Contaminated grain breeds overgrown, killer rats in this Golden Harvest production. Dachshunds were dressed up as rats for the special effects. That is all you need to know.Exactly how to judge this film is something of a mystery. By no stretch of the imagination is it good in any critical sense. The acting is average, the plot is incomplete, multiple subplots turn up for no reason and never get resolved. The editing is choppy. The special effects are good, even if funny.Horror fans who like their films cheesy will love this. Others might be a bit more let down, as there is something lacking. The gore is glorious, though, and you can never take that away from them.Available now on Blu-Ray from Scream! Factory, with more than a handful of bonus interviews.