The Rats are Coming! The Werewolves are Here! (1972)

DIRECTOR: Andy Milligan
PRODUCER: William Mishkin
WRITER: Andy Milligan
PHOTOGRAPHY: Andy Milligan
CAST: Hope Stansbury, Douglas Phair, Jackie Skarvellis, Ian Innes
COUNTRY: USA
GENRE: Horror
MISCELLANY: 91m

After the wacky opening segment, part of me had seen enough. Low production values and tacky period costumes cried made-for-TV fairy tale, but that vibe was at odds with the freak show unfolding. And the way the opening credit music halted mid-note in a choppy segue to the feature suggested in the filmmaker a certain sloppiness. But the first few minutes were so brutal — albeit amateurishly so, arousing horror but also amusement — I was curious enough to watch, just a little bit longer.

Plus the description of the film had sounded good: A man marries into a family of werewolves. I was wondering where the rats fit in.

After the bloody first scene, I stared into the abyss of flying chicken feathers, frustrated in my search for meaning. Harsh lighting burned a glare into the upper frame, souring the color and obscuring the scenes in grainy shadows. As I strained to make sense of the film visually, the audio proved unhelpful as well. Probably due to poor miking and the actors rushing their lines, I missed large blocks of dialogue, and if curiosity kept me watching even that had its limits — I wasn't about to rewind. Making matters worse, the actors were assuming aristocratic accents, but their point of reference seems to have been W.C. Fields. And the soundtrack varied from scene to scene, the stock compositions continuing to halt abruptly wherever scenes stopped, creating a patchwork quilt of sound.

From what I could make out, the conversations mostly comprised petty in-fighting among the Mooneys — a bitchy, inbred, lycanthropic, moneyed clan — all competing for the favor of their aging patriarch, who is fighting to stay alive to conduct certain experiments with his least crazy daughter, Diana, the only one not completely sheltered (because, it's explained, her mother was "pure"). Pa Mooney even risked sending her to medical school in Scotland, but she bitterly disappointed him by bringing home a husband, who finds sponging off his wealthy in-laws not all it was cracked up to be.

For a stupid horror film, this is way too talky. The dysfunctional dramatics coupled with the bad period costumes and set lend the air of a low-rent soap opera, which is what it would be mistaken for if one stumbled upon it while channel-surfing — although that would never happen because I cannot imagine a scenario in which a station would air this film, even in the dead of night. And yet the sheer weirdness — of everything and everyone, from the Mooneys to the "normal" townsfolk — is almost visionary.

Or maybe I'm giving the film too much credit: a case of cinematic stockholm syndrome. (Admittedly, I feel like a bully when taking cheap shots at a low-budget movie, kind of like the out-of-shape dude on the couch yelling at the TV that he could have caught the ball that the professional athlete just missed.)

The rat scenes add nothing to the plot, and are rather disturbing from an animal rights perspective, but they give Monica a chance to shine as the looniest Mooney of them all.
— Becky