Burial of the Rats (1995)
In 19th Century France, a young Bram Stoker is captured by a man-hating, all-female cult of thong bikini wearers. Aided by flesh-eating rats, the warrior women raid the lairs of evil men and punish them. Our hero must decide between his wish to escape the dangerous cult and his love for one of its members.
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An Exercise In Nonsense
The movie is wonderful and true, an act of love in all its contradictions and complexity
All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.
The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.
Not usually my piece of cake but this dedicatedly cheesy treatment is extremely sophisticated in it's subtext. Of course you can't take the story seriously--that would be missing the point. Each step is a mindless cliché so you don't have to concentrate--the plot is wonderfully juvenile, thinly disguised soft core sadomasochistic fantasy--but wow the unreality it creates is absolutely breathtaking. The underground scenes--a utopia in reverse--dawn on you gradually. The dancing is sensual,quite beautiful, extremely well done-skillfully conceived and executed. And a whole cave society of beautiful women--each one more beautiful than the next--dressed in black leather bikini's --their waists severely cinched with black leather belts. Female dominance armed with knives and swords. By the time they attack the prison, you realize that these women don't just look nice they really know how to sword fight as well as any man. It makes me really proud of them. Expertly choreographed fight scenes. Inane special effects violence is intended to be funny instead of realistic--but watching these chicks is well worth it. I've never seen anything like it and enjoyed it very much.
Okay, Burial Of The Rats. The most obscure Bram Stoker book ever! I mean, I never heard of it until this movie came out. Roger Cormen is not the best Producer, writer or director. But he does give respect where respect is due. If you ever watched one of Cormen's Poe pieces, then you know what I mean and I believe that Cormen gives Stoker's Rats the same respect that he did Poe's Raven. But I'm not sure if this particular book translates well into a movie, even one made for cable. I really can't put my finger on it, but BURIAL OF THE RATS is missing something. It's not bad, but it seems to be missing something in the story. But still, the cast do a great job, the rats are cool. It's fairly descent. I give it 7 STARS.
*SPOILER ALERT* *SPOILER ALERT*Bram Stoker gets kidnapped by an all-female cult. The cult of the Rat Women. At first, they want to feed him to the rats because he's another lousy, lying, worthless man. But Bram soon proves his worth to the rat ladies as it becomes clear that his writing powers may be beneficial to their cause. His graphic descriptions of their carnage will drive fear into the hearts of men. One of the rat women, (Maria Ford), starts to fall under his spell. Bram wants to prove his love for his princess and hopefully get out of Rat Women land alive.As goofy movies about rat women go, this was pretty good. I enjoyed it. Adrienne Barbeau showed as much dignity as a woman with rats crawling on her lap possibly could. Maria Ford was pretty good as the naive sex kitten. She gets topless as do many other rat women. The Queen likes to send rats to do her murderous bidding. These rats must be famished because they strip bodies to the bone faster than a piranha. "Burial of the Rats" has blood, guts, hungry rats and topless rat women. It's got most everything a B-movie needs. It's worth a look.One last thing, you might be tempted to rent this because you noticed that Linnea Quigley and Nikki Fritz are in it. Don't be fooled. Fritz is in it for five seconds at the most. Quigley pops up three or four times. Both clock in at less than a minute and do absolutely nothing. I found that slightly disappointing because I rented it with the hopes that all of the rat women would get their chance to shine. But some rat women were greater than others. Rats.
This movie flat sucked. But I sat through every nauseating scene just to see Maria Ford, as I'm sure was the point. This film was probably someone's psych 101 project. "Will Men Sit Through The Most Mind-Numbing Drivel, Just To See A Hot Naked Body?"Yes Mr Freud, we will.