You’ve got to hand it to Andy Milligan. He has a way with a title. The Rats are Coming-The Werewolves are Here is one of the greatest titles in cinema history. Unfortunately, it also happens to be one of the worst movies of all time.
The story goes Milligan originally planned to make a straight werewolf picture called The Curse of the Full Moon. The producers got a bit nervous that werewolves on their own wouldn’t sell tickets, so they made Andy add some new scenes of rats to cash in on the killer rat craze that had been spearheaded by Willard and Ben. That legend (two of the rats are even called Willard and Ben, just to show how crassly it all was) is much better than the movie itself, although the incongruous way that the rats are pasted into the narrative at the very least is enough to make this mess memorable. Sadly, it’s mostly memorable for all the wrong reasons.
Diana Mooney (Jackie Skarvellis) brings her husband Gerald (Ian Innes) home to meet her family. Naturally, the family is full of nutcases (her crazy brother is kept in a room full of chickens) and is keeping a terrible secret from him. FINALLY (in the last reel), it is revealed they are werewolves.
There’s only about one minute of plot stretched out to ninety minutes. Until the predictable finale rolls around, you have to stomach lots of dull scenes of mindless exposition, bickering sisters harping on at each other, and family members alluding to their big secret. I’m of the mind that a movie can be anything except boring. This one can’t even clear that low bar. This one of those films where you watch it and think you’re an hour in and you check the timer on the remote and only five minutes have gone by.
The new rat scenes are ill-fitting at best and downright despicable at worst. Why anyone would go to a shop and buy rats that bit the shopkeeper’s arm and half his face off is beyond me, but at least it gives you a chance to get out of the castle and take a breather from all the mind-numbingly awful family squabbling. However, the cruel scenes of a mouse being stabbed and nailed are unpleasant and meanspirited. I mean, I don’t even like mice and it’s fucking hard to watch. I rarely hand out No Stars reviews anymore, unless the film is a detriment to the human race or at least the moviegoing public. I’d give it Negative Stars if I could.
In fact, the rats show up way before the werewolves do, which is weird. Because of that, it should’ve been called The Werewolves are Coming-The Rats are Here. Of course, that would’ve made too much damned sense.
Like most of Milligan’s movies, this is a boring costume drama parading as a horror flick. It also happens to be even more technically inept as usual. The piercing music often drowns out the dialogue (which might be a good thing) and none of the costumes or locations look or feel authentic. The muddled accents coupled with the muffled sound and overbearing soundtrack makes a lot of the dialogue unintelligible and the constant onslaught of dull family drama is enough to put you in a coma ten minutes in. At all times, it feels like you’re watching a filmed community theater production or something.
Milligan’s other movies were bad, but they at least had a gore scene every now and then to liven things up a little. This one doesn’t even have that (unless you could the geek show scenes of animal cruelty). Without them, there’s no real excuse for this piece of shit to exist.
The good folks at Severin, who released The Dungeon of Andy Milligan box set, also added Milligan’s original version of the film, The Curse of the Full Moon as a co-feature on the Blu-ray. It’s missing titles, but it’s essentially the same movie, minus the producer mandated rat scenes. I only skimmed through this cut (I’m not a total masochist), and I have no intention of ever really sitting down and watching it, but I’m glad Severin preserved it for posterity’s sake, especially given the fact that so many of Milligan’s earlier efforts are lost to time.
Milligan scholars can amuse themselves by spotting some of the motifs that permeate his work. Most of his movies are either filmed in Staten Island or England. This one was filmed in both places. Like many of his films, it’s another period piece costume drama with high school production values. It’s about the family strife surrounding the continuing of their bloodline, which is a theme we’ve seen throughout his pictures. Also, the overuse of canned library music is pure Milligan.
Milligan usual suspects round-up: Hope Stansbury was later in Blood, Jackie Skarvellis was also in The Body Beneath, Berwick Kaler was in many Milligan features, and Milligan himself (who has two roles) was in a lot of his own films too.
AKA: The Curse of the Full Moon.
Here’s a reprint of my first review of the film, which was originally posted on July 17th, 2007:
THE RATS ARE COMING-THE WEREWOLVES ARE HERE (1972) NO STARS
God awful tale of the Mooney family, who are cursed to become werewolves during the full moon. (MOONEYS! GET IT?) In one scene, one of the weird sisters buys a rat from a scarred rat catcher (writer/director Andy Milligan) and even names them Willard and Ben! Milligan shot this as a straight werewolf movie but added the rat scenes later to cash in on Willard’s success. Let’s forget the bad acting and terrible make-up and the fact that the werewolves don’t show up until the 80-minute mark of this 90-minute movie. The thing that really makes this reprehensible is the scene where a real mouse is tortured, cut up and nailed to the ground. Not only is this the worst werewolf movie ever made, it’s also the worst killer rat movie ever made. Lucky theater patrons in ’72 were given a free rat when they saw this. The ads proclaimed: “Win a free rat for your mother in law!”
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