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

• Year: 1972
• Released: 01 May 1972
• Country: United States, United Kingdom
• IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0069162/
• Rotten Tomatoes: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_rats_are_coming_the_werewolves_are_here
• Available in: 720p, 1080p,
• Language: English
• MPA Rating: GP
• Genre: Horror
• Runtime: 91 min
• Writer: Andy Milligan
• Director: Andy Milligan
• Cast: Hope Stansbury, Jackie Skarvellis, Noel Collins
• Keywords: england, werewolf, incest, isolation, grindhouse,

	3.4/10
	11% – Audience

The Rats Are Coming! The Werewolves Are Here! Storyline

The Mooneys are an eccentric English family whom live in a large house in rural England in the early 1900s. The invalid patriarch ‘Pa’ Mooney (Douglas Phair) is a retired medical doctor who claims to be 199 years old. His eldest daughter, Phoebe (Joan Ogden), more or less cares for him and is head of running the household. His eldest son, Mortimer (Noel Collins), is a businessman whom conducts the finances of the family and contributes to the family income. Younger daughter Monica (Hope Stansbury) is a sadist who keeps live rats as pets and frequently mutilates them and other small animals. Youngest son Malcolm (Berwick Kaler) is a half-wit with animal tendencies in which the family keeps him locked up in a room of the house with live chickens. The family has a secret: they are all werewolves! They are natural born, not made, werewolves whom turn once a month on the night of the full moon and Pa Mooney has been researching for years to find a way to break the family curse. Youngest daughter Diana (Jackie Skarvellis) returns home from medical school with a new husband, a former classmate named Gerald (Ian Innes), which Pa Mooney heartily disapproves of. Pa tells Diana that she is the last hope that the family has to overcome the ancient curse since she is the only member of the family who does not turn into a werewolf on the night of the full moon. Will Diana succeed? However, Diana is revealed to have other plans.

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The Rats Are Coming! The Werewolves Are Here! Movie Reviews

The Rats Are Coming! The Werewolves Are Here! is quite a hoot if you’re tolerant enough…

In continuing to review werewolf movies in chronological order, I’m now at 1972 and this: a movie written, photographed, directed, and featured in two roles by one Andy Milligan. There are both rats and werewolves, all right, but it’s mostly a dysfunctional family drama between siblings and the elderly father in charge of them all. Like I said, Milligan plays two roles: one who sells rats to one sister Monica, and another who sells a gun to other sister Diana. Dialogue is mostly exposition that one wouldn’t keep saying in real life and it’s constantly said quickly most of the time except for those two scenes involving Milligan. He’s not a good director or writer but I’ll say this about him-I was never bored, that’s for sure! So on that note, give The Rats Are Coming! The Werewolves Are Here! a chance if you’re curious enough…

Another Milligan mess.

Andy Milligan’s unforgettably titled The Rats Are Coming! The Werewolves Are Here! is listed in my trusty The Official Splatter Movie Guide by John McCarty, although its inclusion puzzles me, for it features next to no gore. What it does have are interminable scenes of terrible dialogue, dreadful acting, poor sound quality and the general level of technical ineptitude that I have come to expect from exploitation legend Milligan.

The godawful story sees a young married couple arrive in England to visit wife Diana’s family, the Mooney’s, who harbour a dreadful secret: they are all werewolves. Even with the worst of films, I try to find some sort of positive, but this one has me beaten: I can’t find anything good to say about it. Not one thing. In fact, so excruciatingly amateurish and incredibly dull is this film that, even if it had buckets of bargain basement blood and guts, I can’t see it being much easier to bear.

I rate The Rats Are Coming! The Werewolves Are Here! a pitiful 1/10, although I wish I could give the film 0/10 for including a repulsive scene of unnecessary animal cruelty, the stabbing and nailing of a live mouse.

Atmosphere is here, artistry is coming

The tedious condescension of the other reviews notwithstanding, this film passes a number of screen tests that many a more mainstream big budget flick fails: does it have a horror film’s one essential, i.e., atmosphere? In spades, although an original score would have helped sustain it better; do the characters dispatch their difficult roles convincingly or do they camp it up in a desire to wink at the audience to let us know that they don’t take such an over-the-top scenario seriously? Very convincingly indeed. Mad Monica comes across as especially terrifying, and madness is always one of the hardest personas to bring off. (The actor playing the rather subdued character of Gerald is, perhaps an exception here, but the fault may reside with the part itself, which is the only “normal” voice in the action and suffers from some degree of underwriting.) And finally, the trump question of all dramaturgy: do you find yourself wanting to know how “Rats” ends and what becomes of its characters. Emphatically yes!