Angie Truscott (Elizabeth Sellars) is a bored housewife, she lives in her remote country home with her husband Roger (Anthony Bate), a successful businessman. After taking an afternoon nap one day, Angie is awoken suddenly from her slumber, had she imagined the blood curdling screams that woke her? they seemed so real, Angie is shook up, matters aren't helped by the fact she is all alone and that there is a sudden scratching noise, its origins unknown, coming from below the floor or is it the walls, she resorts to turning up the music full blast to drown out the incessant noise. Roger duly returns home, he's had a hard day business wise, but its the weekend and all he wants to do is have a quiet night in, so he is a little irked to find his wife in a bit of a state. She tells him of her dream and the persistent scratching, Roger tells her its just a rat under the foundations, he calms Angie a little by telling her the rat can't get in. As for her dream Roger puts that down to her simultaneous mixing of sleeping tablets and booze. Angie overhears a phone call Roger makes to a colleague, where he is asked if the commotion out his way has ended, Roger oblivious to the news report, continues talking business. Angie however now concerned again, decides to put on the radio to hear the news report, she tunes into to the Barty Wills Party Hour, Barty is an annoying DJ, prone to funny voices, bad jokes and the occasional prank., he reports of an odd event taking place near their home, where thousands of giant rats stopped traffic for ten minutes as they crossed the nearby motorway. Roger dismisses it as a hoax and the show as intellectually below them and castigates his wife for listening to such rubbish. However Barty soon has a rodent expert on the show, he tells of a new breed of super rat, more intelligent and immune to modern poisons. Roger is now beginning to get scared, their dog is missing too and the abandoned sports car (presumably belonging to would be lovers) at the end of their road is still come nightfall. The noises however continue, there now seems to be more than one rat, Angie notices that they seem only to scratch at the floor of the rooms they are in, Roger is now the nervous wreck and Angie is left to make the decisions, she rings Barty's radio show only for the phone to inexplicably get cut off, soon the power goes too and they are left in the dark, both terrified the scratching becomes deafening, the rats are almost through the kitchen door, Angie decides to make a run for it, but as they do so, they hear their neighbours car pull up, the scratching stops, the Truscotts relieved think they are safe, all in quiet now but as they call to their neighbours, they see them attacked and over powered by thousands of gnawing rodents. In the headlights of the car outside, Angie and Roger huddle together and await their fate...
The genius of the great horror writer Nigel Kneale (Quatermass, The Stone Tape) shines through in this episode of his "Beasts" series, a series based entirely on animals and other exotic creatures. Kneale is known for his intelligent science based stories, renowned for their credibility and just that hint of "it could happen", his tension filled script is given meticulous direction by Don Leaver, a TV journeyman perhaps best known for his excellent Hammer House of Horror films, Witching Time and The Mark of Satan. The script is taut and the film is loaded with dialogue, full of important little notes that build up the characters and drive the plot on to its excruciatingly horrific finale. Of course all the horror is in the mind of the viewer, we never see the rats, we only hear them, a fact lost on modern filmmakers is that imagination is the greatest horror, you don't need to show everything to make a scary film, Kneale of course was a master of this craft. Right from the first scene, the brooding horror is evident, an abandoned car within sight of the Truscotts and in the distance we hear some laughter from the unseen lovers which are replaced almost immediately with that of blood curdling screams, this leads straight into Angie's nightmare, was it all a dream? There are only two actors in the film and both Sellars and Bate perform admirably, showing a range of emotions as their lives are slowly turned upside down. Overall the film is rather dull visually and it can't hide its TV origins, but the fear factor and psychological tension it musters along with some very inventive sound effects more than make up for this.
The genius of the great horror writer Nigel Kneale (Quatermass, The Stone Tape) shines through in this episode of his "Beasts" series, a series based entirely on animals and other exotic creatures. Kneale is known for his intelligent science based stories, renowned for their credibility and just that hint of "it could happen", his tension filled script is given meticulous direction by Don Leaver, a TV journeyman perhaps best known for his excellent Hammer House of Horror films, Witching Time and The Mark of Satan. The script is taut and the film is loaded with dialogue, full of important little notes that build up the characters and drive the plot on to its excruciatingly horrific finale. Of course all the horror is in the mind of the viewer, we never see the rats, we only hear them, a fact lost on modern filmmakers is that imagination is the greatest horror, you don't need to show everything to make a scary film, Kneale of course was a master of this craft. Right from the first scene, the brooding horror is evident, an abandoned car within sight of the Truscotts and in the distance we hear some laughter from the unseen lovers which are replaced almost immediately with that of blood curdling screams, this leads straight into Angie's nightmare, was it all a dream? There are only two actors in the film and both Sellars and Bate perform admirably, showing a range of emotions as their lives are slowly turned upside down. Overall the film is rather dull visually and it can't hide its TV origins, but the fear factor and psychological tension it musters along with some very inventive sound effects more than make up for this.