DEADLY EYES (1983) **
Rats eat grain infused with steroids and grow to enormous size. After the health department orders the tainted grain burned, the rats scurry into the city to find a new food supply. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that they’re going to start eating people. A health department worker (Murder by Phone’s Sara Botsford) and a high school basketball coach (Sam Groom) try to put a stop to the ravenous rodents before they can take over the city.
It's nice to know that twenty-four years after The Killer Shrews, filmmakers were using the same special effects methods to create giant killer rats. Of course I'm talking about dressing up puppies in rat costumes. If you couldn’t already guess, the “rats” in this movie look fucking terrible. (Piss-poor hand puppets were used for the close-ups.)
Because of the cheesy effects, director Robert (Enter the Dragon) Clouse botches most of the rat scenes. The sequence where the rats kill a toddler in a high chair would’ve been deeply disturbing, if not downright objectionable, if the rats didn't look so awful. The other attack scenes (which take place in a bowling alley and a subway) lack… (ahem)… bite.
Clouse does score one awesome sequence that almost makes the whole thing worthwhile. That’s the sequence where the rats take over a packed movie theater (that just so happens to be showing Clouse’s Game of Death). This scene is a real hoot and features lots of carnage. Not only do the rat puppets chow down on lots of moviegoers, the ensuing panic results in people being trampled and thrown through plate glass windows by other hysterical theater patrons. It’s a shame the rest of the movie isn’t as fun.
Groom makes for a bland hero. He has no chemistry with Botsford, but at least their lousy love story subplot pays off with a topless sex scene. You also have to feel for poor old Scatman Crothers. One year he’s getting killed by Jack Nicholson in The Shining. Three years go by and he’s getting killed by puppies dressed up like rats in this.
The adorable Lisa (The Man Who Wasn’t There in 3-D) Langlois is the only bright spot in the cast. She plays a sexy student who has a crush on Groom. Even though her scenes are written like a bad After School Special, she remains a vivacious presence in an otherwise middling movie.
AKA: Rats. AKA: Night Eyes.