The Rats Are Coming! The Werewolves Are Here! Review (1972) Worth Watching?

It’s about bloodthirsty werewolves and man-eating rats – together at last.

The Rats Are Coming! The Werewolves Are Here was written and directed by Andy Milligan (Surgikill and The Man with Two Heads) and stars Hope Stansbury (Blood and The Body Beneath), Jackie Skarvellis (Cyberon and Sky Bandits) and Noel Collins (Never Never Land).

Where oh where can werewolf workers go when all they want is the wherewithal to withdraw?

The Mooneys are an Addams-family-esque band of misfit werewolves. There’s the father, a retired physician, and five children: Phoebe, Mortimer, Monica, Malcolm, and Diana. Phoebe runs the household, Mortimer keeps the books, Monica tortures rats, and Malcolm is a carnival geek who shares his quarters with several chickens. Diana returns home with a fresh husband in tow. When she announces it’s time to cure the family curse, it’s bound to upset the lycanthropic equilibrium, and it sure does!

Some bad films are glorious. Some are mindless. Unfortunately, The Rats Are Coming! The Werewolves Are Here! is a shining example of the latter. It’s wretched. It’s got one thing going for it and one thing only: a spectacular title.

The dialogue isn’t bizarre. It’s just dull. The pacing is abysmal. The score seems to have been performed by a middle school band where all the student musicians quit except some third-rate oboes, a clarinet with a split reed, and a bent French horn.

Most of the scenes are devoted to discussing what hasn’t happened. Or what may happen but hasn’t yet. We don’t even see any werewolves until the end. Granted, the make-up, cheap as it is, is potent.

According to internet sources, director Milligan’s first cut was rejected because it was too short. So, he padded it with stationary dialogue. Lines like: “Do you really mean it?” and “Oh, I do mean it, I do, I really do. I meant it the first time I said I meant it. And I mean it still. I mean it.”

It was already a bad film and it needed padding. Then, as the film was nearing final editing, in the summer of 1971, Willard hit the screens – and in a big way, revenue-wise. Rats were suddenly profitable, the producers reasoned, so rodents ought to be inserted. Millard was thus instructed; he the set and filmed an interlude or two with Monica and her rats.

The rats have nothing to do with the rest of the film. They’re unconnected to anything else. The scenes are also good justification for requiring PETA to sign off on movies. They wouldn’t have signed off on this one. Nor will I.