Deadly Eyes

The Trylon microcinema and Moon Palace Books have an amazing book-and-movie club called “That movie was a book?”. As the name suggests, they read a book and watch a movie that uses the book as source material. Deadly Eyes could be a movie they tackle some day, as it's roughly based on the James Herbert horror novel The Rats. Yes, this giant killer rat movie is based on a giant killer rat book.

The plot unfolds something like this: A city health inspector has discovered a grain storage facility's rat infestation. She orders the effected, steroid boosted, corn to be burned to ensure it won't be consumed by humans. This sensible act has the unanticipated side effect of leaving a population of dachshund sized rats in search of a food supply abundant enough to meet their insatiable hunger. But where will these massive scavengers find their next source for food?

Reasons to watch: A male teacher thwarting a much younger student's advances to pursue a woman his own age! Canadians in the 80s biking in the snow like it's no big deal. Enter the Dragon clips. Fighting off rats with a blowtorch. Did I mention dachshunds dressed up as rats?...

Dachshunds dressed like rats: The special effects crew made a pretty interesting choice when it came to the rat effects. They made individually fitted rat costumes for a small army of dachshunds (and a few terriers) who were only able to work in 5 min bursts over period of 2 hours a day. Whether that worked out to be easier than building mechanical rats we couldn't say for sure, but the effect is spectacularly creepy. There's not an everyday reason to notice how much a dachshund moves like a huge rat, but you can't really forget once know.


“That guy!” moment with: Scatman Crothers!

The director: This is the only horror movie that Robert Clouse directed (and the only horror movie Golden Harvest produced), mostly he directed amazing and amazingly bad action films: Gymkata,  Force: Five, Golden Needles, Black Belt Jones, and Enter the Dragon (again for Holden Harvest, explaining why clips from this movie are featured in Deadly Eyes).

What we learned: Sweaty dachshund wrangler is now on our list of jobs we don't want.