Rat Man (1988)

I was not a huge fan of the show Friends, even when it was at its most popular.  Maybe it’s because I was severely inebriated much of the time it was first being shown.  Maybe it’s because these characters and their lifestyle were so alien to me.  Maybe it’s because the show isn’t very good.  Maybe it’s a combination of a multiplicity of factors.  Regardless, there was one bit they did on the show that has always stuck with me, and I still refer to it to this day.  Ditzy blonde Phoebe is talking with smarmy Chandler, and she inquires why Spider-Man isn’t pronounced like Goldman, Silverman, etcetera.  Chandler, astonished by this (more or less his permanent state of being throughout the series), explains that it’s “because it isn’t his last name, like Phil Spiderman.  He’s a Spider…Man.”  I catch myself far too often pronouncing the names of superheroes like Phoebe would, and, even though it’s not laugh out loud funny, I do find it endlessly amusing.  This is possibly the elitist comic book fan in me taking a poke at people who “aren’t in the know” or maybe just taking a poke at elitist comic book fans themselves.  That said, even though Peter Parker is not, in fact, part spider (I’m not as up on the character as I once was, so this may have changed), the little fella dubbed Mousey (Nelson de la Rosa, whom most people know, ironically enough, from the John Frankenheimer/Richard Stanley version of The Island of Dr. Moreau) in Giuliano Carnimeo’s (under the genius pseudonym Anthony Ascot) Rat Man (aka Quella Villa in fondo al Parco, which translates roughly to That Villa at the Bottom of the Park, which may very well be a better title or may simply be the film’s producers desperately trying to cash in on The Last House on the Left sixteen years later; leave it to the Italians to beat a dead horse into glue) most definitely is part rat.  The problem is, he’s also part monkey, so, if anything, the film should have been called Rat Monkey, but I guess that just sounded more like a nature documentary than a horror film.  I would rather watch that fictional documentary than either Friends or Rat Man ever again.

Crusty, sweaty Dr. Olman (Pepito Guerra) is set to unveil Mousey to the world at the next scientician conference when the little rascal makes good his escape.  Next thing you know, bikini models like Marilyn (Eva Grimaldi) are being spied on and chased around, and her sister Terry (the divine Janet Agren) has to team up with perpetually-open-shirted crime writer Fred (David Warbeck) to track her down and save her.  

Rat Man owes the entirety of its existence to two sources.  One is the Slasher film.  On top of Mousey’s natural predilection for murdering people thither and yon accompanied by copious amounts of blood, Carnimeo delights in two types of Slasher-esque shot whenever Mousey is around (which is constantly; this little fucker is more ubiquitous than air).  The first is the classic point of view shot, and, of course, it’s from Mousey’s perspective.  The thing of it is, these POV shots are overused, so they are not nearly as effective as they could be.  Every now and then, it might be nice to build a little tension by not signaling to the audience that the tiny terror is lurking just out of sight.  The second type of shot which is repeated early and often is the extreme closeup.  There are multiple cutaways to a detail of Mousey’s dark, little eyeball.  Later, there are closeups of his fangs and claws as he attacks.  These shots, in my opinion, work better than the flood of POV shots, but even these wear out their welcome and detract from what the audience wants to see, namely, the “critter from the shitter” (that’s part of one of the film’s taglines, and he does, indeed, crawl out of a toilet at one point in the movie) gnawing away at young, pink flesh and innards for minutes on end.

The other major influence on this movie, as you may have guessed, is H.G. Wells’ The Island of Dr. Moreau.  To be more precise, Carnimeo and company ignored the anti-vivisection angle of the novel, focusing on the juicier aspects.  For example, Mousey is a combination of animals in humanoid form.  Dr. Olman walks around in a Panama suit, was shunned by the scientific community for his activities, and cares more about proving the value of his work (the purpose of his experiments is never explained to us) than he does for any living thing.  Olman has a loyal assistant, Tonio, who fills the Montgomery role, though far more incompetently.  Marilyn and skanky photographer Mark (Werner Pochath) come to be at Olman’s villa because of a car wreck instead of a shipwreck, but the effect is the same.  Mousey revolts against Olman and causes havoc on the villa and its occupants, and this is the heart of what the film is in its entirety.  It’s little more than a drawn out, constant stream of “animal” attacks, none of which are suspenseful, and none of which are all that satisfying in the gore department, either.  Why Fred and Terry are in the film at all is mindboggling, since all they do is tool around looking vaguely inquisitive, are flat as a pancake character-wise, and serve no narrative function whatsoever other than to facilitate the indifferently obvious “twist” ending (though, I’ll be honest, I could stare at Agren all day, every day).

I’ve read in several places how this film is supposed to be a sleazy piece of trash.  I can verify the latter half of that statement, but the sleazy part has me confused.  There’s some nudity from Grimaldi, there’s some shitty gore (including a skull sitting in a puddle of what looks like Ragu spaghetti sauce), and Mousey himself certainly appears greasy as all hell.  But outside of that, Rat Man is tame stuff.  Worse than that, it is hardly a movie, as it doesn’t attempt to develop a story in any way.  It’s a very simple idea that, instead of doing anything interesting with, the filmmakers simply padded out with somnolent sequences that don’t go anywhere.  Mousey may be a critter, but perhaps he and this film would have been better off left in the shitter.            

MVT:  I want to give it to Janet Agren, just for being Janet Agren, but I’m going to have to go full-pig and give it to Grimaldi for stripping down and showing off her appreciable assets.

Make or Break:  Probably around the third or fourth time Carnimeo cut back to Terry and Fred driving around in the dark, as if they’re going to find anything remotely interesting in what is the ultimate in cinematic blue balls.

Score:  4.5/10

Night Of The Sharks (1987)

People often ask (and even moreso on the internet), "Why did that actor make that movie?" "Why did this actor stop being good?" "Why doesn't that actor seem to give a shit anymore?" What people fail to realize though, is that actors, like everyone else in this world, need to make money to survive. Believe it or not, actors still need to pay for things, they still need to eat, they still need to have health insurance, and all the pedantic bills you and I bemoan on a monthly basis. I grant you, actors (the bigtime superstars, not necessarily character actors and the like) are paying for these things on a different level from you and I. I doubt Robert De Niro eats much Ramen Noodles in the course of a week. I'm not sure, but I'd wager a guess that Al Pacino doesn't drive around in a 1989 Coupe Deville (well, okay, maybe he does, but still…). The point is, they have to turn a buck, and they do that by selling their talents. And since few producers and studios in Hollywood strive to make meaningful films with strong characterization and parts that talented actors would kill to play (yeah some do, but this isn't an argument we're having here), working actors are forced to act in a lot of shit (particularly as they grow older). These movies can often diminish an actor's standing in many people's minds, but I tend to think that usually we simply don't see the forest for the trees. In other words, you don't know Dustin Hoffman's pain.

David Ziegler (Treat Williams) has forsaken society and now lives a beach bum's life in Cancun, along with pal Paco (Antonio Fargas), and sort-of-girlfriend Juanita (Nina Soldano). Everything is going along just ducky, until perpetual screwup and brother of David, James (Carlo Mucari) decides to blackmail his criminal employer Rosentski (John Steiner) and needs some help from his (I assume) big brother. So naturally, things are going to go bad.

Why I'm covering another Tonino Ricci (aka Anthony Richmond) film is beyond me, especially after the apocalypse-heralding garbage that is Thor The Conqueror, but here I am. In all fairness though, it really wouldn't be right to dismiss the man's entire filmography based on one movie, particularly after penning the introduction above. While The Night Of The Sharks (aka La Notte Degli Squali, aka Jaws Attack) is not nearly as appalling as the aforementioned sword and sorcery lump, it's also not particularly well-made, coherent, engaging, or all that exciting. Regardless, let's press on.

Fargas, much more than Williams, stands out in the film, playing what is essentially a trickster character. Like Br'er Rabbit, the Coyote, and so on, ad infinitum, Paco loves to bedevil other characters for his own amusement. He produces a pack of rubbers to embarrass Juanita. He cheats at a bet involving sticking his hand in a shark's mouth (but in fairness, the people he was betting against were also poised to cheat). He even carries a double-bladed, handmade razor device, which never really pays off beyond one trivial usage, but does signify that Paco has two sides, both of them sharp but also reliable. Paco will stand by David towards the end, because of everyone, David is the only person that Paco trusts. Oh, he'll still try and cheat and irritate him, but the two have a connection, and Fargas does a solid job at playing both ends. That the filmmakers squander this talent is a shame.

Filmmakers have always taken liberties with the laws of physics and nature in their work, and we the audience have always forgiven them up to a point, so long as the violations are either motivated or fairly unobtrusive. This is why we accept the rumble of engines on a spaceship, even though we are told, "In space, no one can hear you scream," or the sound of a planet exploding, or that a radioactive spider's bite would induce superpowers rather than cancer. But this film goes the opposite direction. Ever since Joseph Sargent made a great white shark leap out of the water and shriek at the end of the baffling Jaws: The Revenge, it was only a matter of time before someone in Italy latched onto this idea as if it were truth and "borrowed" it for their own movie. Consequently, we get the one-eyed shark Cyclops, who appears to always be nearby whenever David goes anywhere near the water, rams his boat like it's a grudge match, and roars like he's about to be run through by Lorraine Gary. If Cyclops were a wild boar, it would be one thing, but to put a vocalizing shark in a movie which presents itself as being quasi-realistic is like putting dancing snakes in a horror movie (see Snake Island for further research).

David's grudge with Cyclops is interesting in that it does provide a type of metaphor for his character arc and his struggles. It's alluded to that he is a dangerous man, and that there is very little that he hasn't done, so we assume that he decided to take up the easy life in Cancun to put all that behind him. Yet Cyclops is ever-present in the water, a symbol for predation, revenge (did David take out its left eye?), and violence. Discounting the ridiculousness of a shark holding a grudge (ahem), violence perpetually looms over David's life and the lives of those who he allows/allowed into his life. However, this subplot is never sufficiently tied in to the rest of the film to give it any resonance as anything other than a time killer of sorts and a convenient plot device (and it's alarming how many people are menaced by sharks rather than by the human villains in a film which is not really about shark attacks, but stock footage of sharks is cheap, I suppose). And here is where we come to the movie's biggest problem.

As with Thor…, the movie is hampered by a heavy pall of arbitrariness. The scenes go through their paces, there is an end to be seen, but there's nothing really tying it all together. It's like going down a laundry list, checking off the requirements, and then finishing up for the day. The scenes with Cyclops have him change size, direction, and even makes his eye scar appear and disappear. The viewer is actually tricked (not intentionally by all appearances) into thinking that David has killed Cyclops offscreen at one point, when no such action has occurred. Steiner plays the villain as someone who doesn't want any real trouble if he can deal his way out of it, which is interesting, but it also robs he and his lackeys of any menace, since he's never motivated to escalate matters, and the filmmakers don't seem to care one way or the other. And since they don't care, neither did I.

MVT: The locale is nice for what we see of it, but Williams gets the MVT for being mildly charming despite the entirety of the movie trying to prevent him from doing so. Fargas runs a close second, but he has the juicier part, so his work was a little more cut-and-dry, I think.

Make Or Break: More a missing scene than anything, the Break is the cut between David chumming the water for Cyclops to him on a dock with a dead shark (I would swear it even has a wound where its left eye should be), which is not Cyclops at all, but we're never given any clue about this state of affairs, so it's somewhat baffling when the halfsighted fish makes a random kill later.

Score: 5/10

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