Despite All Our Rage...

"Don't be frightened, dear, just a rat. A filthy, slimy rat."
~ Gene Wilder, Young Frankenstein

Fuck the clever segues.
My unofficial brother and best drinking buddy Erik (the masterbatormind behind The Novel Sound) just uploaded his latest podcast dedicated to The Sakonnet River Roller Rats, our absolute favoritest roller derby team straight outta Providence, Are Eye. And, as he was clever enough to drop a few literary rodent references throughout his hour long homage to the girls in green, I decided to one up him and post an article about movies about rats. So there. Because I'm mature as fuck and not at all competitively petty.

But because this was all Erik's idea, I have to give the guy props and promote the hell out of his show, which I've listened to and really dug and which is way cooler than the coolest thing you've ever done, so I recommend you listen to it immediately...especially if you're a fan of toxic psychobilly surfer sludgy freaky tiki tunes.

Erik and I will be rooting for the Rats in Warwick next weekend. 

You can find us there if you know where to look.

Be there or be a plane figure with four equal straight sides and four right angles.

Now onto the rat movie recommendations...

#1 -Dead Alive

So, a bunch of plague infected rats gang bang a group of tree monkeys and the result is Simian Raticus, the Sumatran Rat Monkey. It looks nothing like a monkey. It's a nasty, crusty, super aggressive, punk-fuck asshole of a rat who isn't at all amused at being shipped off from his happy home on Skull Island and locked up in a mangy cage in a Wellington, New Zealand zoo. So he does what any nasty, crusty, super aggressive, punk-fuck asshole of a rat would do in protest and bites the first nosy old bitch who bumbles too close to his bars: Vera Cosgrove, a domineering mother who promptly turns into a pus-filled, rot-faced zombie who infects a few friends, and then they infect more friends, and so on and so on and so on...way to escape the stereotype, Ratty Baby.

#2 -Food Of The Gods

Yeah okay, you know what? If you're stupid enough to scoop up the toxic shit that comes spewing out of the ground and feed it to your chickens, you deserve what you get. The aforementioned shit is a super secret growth chemical that makes whatever consumes it get really big. Like, huge big. We're talkin' big.



#3 -The Abominable Dr. Phibes

Inspired by the plagues of Egypt, Dr. Phibes (Vincent Price) seeks revenge against the surgeons whom he believes responsible for the untimely death of his beloved wife. He dispatches one by unleashing a horde of rats in the cockpit of the dudes private plane. Obviously a total pussy, the flying doc flips out upon discovering he is covered with cute little wiggly, squeaky rats and crashes into the ground like a total spasmo. No great loss.

#4 -Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?

Have you ever had a sister that you hated so much, you tied her to the bed, beat the shit out of her and served her a dead rat on a silver tray for dinner? I have. But I wouldn't have hurt an innocent rat for my sister. I love rats. Used to keep them as pets. Sweet, smart, cute little things. Much better company than my sister ever was. Butcha AH, Blanche! Yah AH in that chaiuh!

#5 -Willard

Oh the lonely, socially awkward, emasculated dorky male - responsible for many a school shooting. Willard isn't much different, except instead of guns, he uses rats as his weapons: sweet Queenie, albino Socrates and big Ben are just a few of the rats in Willard's personal rodent army. They follow his orders and carry out his commands, whether it's stealing or killing.





#6 - The Abyss
Beany the rat, best buddy of Hippy the underwater oil worker and conspiracy theorist extraordinnaire, expert shoulder sitter, required by the script to prove that the pink liquid shit that the Navy Seals say is liquid oxygen really can be breathed, superpilot of the plastic Ziploc bag and all around most likable girl in the whole movie.

#7 - Nosferatu The Vampyre
Nothing like a festering plague of rats swarming into the streets of your quaint 18th century European village to set just the right mood for a vampire flick. Rat faced Klaus Kinski (whom I used to idolize before his daughter-fucking habits became public) runs around with rat teeth, being a dead perv, lusting after Isabelle Adjani who glides dreamlike and untouched by disease through her decimated hometown, rats roiling in rivers at her feet.

Apparently, director Herzog had a little trouble convincing town authorites to allow him to loose 11,000 rats into the streets, but yet everyone was okay with Kinski being there. Priorities.


EDIT: Almost forgot! Erik was cool enough to slip my Pogue's recommendation into his ratcast, but I neglected to recommend to him the most important rat song of them all - the theme song from Ray Dennis Steckler's 1965 superhero masterpiece: Rat Pfink A Boo Boo!