User Reviews

Assuming the only way to see this is if you have the 2-sided Hell of the Living Dead/Rats DVD, WATCH BOTH MOVIES FIRST because the documentary contains spoilers for both, especially the incredible secret ending for Rats! I've never heard a director say things of his film career like "I prefer editing over directing", "I go about making movies the same way a cartoonist would", and best of all, "My movies are like my children, but I'd reshoot them all if I could". His attitude of trying to give a flying crap whenever he can was a refreshing bit of honesty. He also seemed to know when to just let his actors improv, the best result of which was a scene stolen by the dark-haired guy in the zombie movie. This also explains why both movies featured a character finding themselves in fancier digs than they're used to, and then deciding to play dress-up. This is one more reason to consider the 2-pack even if you only really want one movie. (I only care about the zombie-movie-of-a-gazillion-titles, but Rats is worth watching once)

This was included on the "Hell of the living dead" Dvd. I knew nothing about Bruno Mattei, so I found this quite informative. Would have been nice if it was longer than 9 min.

I think it's funny that he does not like any of his films, this would explain why he uses a different name than his own as a credit in all his films.

Hell Rats of the Living Dead (2002) *** (out of 4)

This 9-minute featurette from Blue Underground/Anchor Bay is a pretty good interview with Italian director Bruno Mattei as he discusses both RATS: NIGHT OF TERROR and HELL OF THE LIVING DEAD (aka VIRUS). The director tells a couple good stories about the productions and mentions that he always saw RATS as being a homage to Romero's NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD with only the zombies being left out. He talks a bit about the difficulty of filming guinea pigs painted to be rats but he never goes into the countless fake rats that are obviously seen in the film. HELL OF THE LIVING DEAD gets a tad bit more of the running time as he talks about lifting the Goblin score, the need for gore and violence as well as what he was trying to do with the film. Mattei openly admits that he doesn't like his movies and that he would like to re-do most of them (something he pretty much did at the end of his career) and overall this is a pretty enjoyable piece. I'm not sure if the director couldn't remember enough for two different featurettes but one really wishes he would have dove more into how badly of a rip HELL was of Romero's DAWN OF THE DEAD.