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The Rats

Here we go with yet another typical made-for-TV monster movie, replete with all the cliches and routine subplots of the horror genre. "The Rats" opens by telling us that rat wiped out half the European population in the Middle Ages, and were the first things to reinhabit Hiroshima after the atom bomb (at least there isn't a giant mutated rat storming New York City, where this movie also takes place). Now, rats are apparently left without a source of food in the underground tunnels and sewers where they live and breed by the thousands. Soon, overpopulating becomes a problem, so they advance upwards, and the humans, who happen to be the snack of choice, simply do not like this. ***

'Everything about this movie stinks like vermon: the kitschy subplot involving a romantic interest between two characters, the various fake scares and closer-than-close calls, the heavy jumps on the soundtrack, and the ending itself, in which our heroes must get all the rats into one place and destroy them together. Come on, people. We've seen better things on television, let alone the big screen, than this pile of rotten cheese!

The 1.78:1 image has been anamorphically enhanced and features nice colors and saturation for a TV movie. Blacks are solid and shadow delineation can be impressive, but is sometimes flawed. Edges are sharp with little artifacting in enhancement, and while the special effects are hardly impressive, they transfer nicely. There is an abundance of noise in many scenes. ***

The sound is mastered in Dolby 5.0, and is largely unimpressive. The score wraps into the surrounds nicely, while dialogue sounds natural and remains centered throughout. Sound effects don't have the range they should, however, and while deep bass is sometimes present, it has almost no .1 LFE enhancement. --