Deadly Eyes

Deadly Eyes
Deadly Eyes theatrical release poster
Directed by	Robert Clouse
Produced by	Paul Kahnert Jeff Schechtman
Written by	Charles H. Eglee James Herbert
Starring	Sam Groom Scatman Crothers Sara Botsford Cec Linder Lisa Langlois Lesleh Donaldson James B. Douglas Lee-Max Walton Michael McManus
Music by	Anthony Guefen
Cinematography	René Verzier
Editing by	Ron Wisman
Distributed by	Warner Bros. Pictures
Release date(s)	October 28, 1982 (CAN)
Running time	87 min.
Country	Canada
Language	English

Deadly Eyes is a 1982 Canadian film directed by Robert Clouse, based on the horror novel The Rats by James Herbert. The story revolves around Giant Black Rats who begin eating the residents of Toronto after ingesting contaminated grain.

Plot

The plot and subplots center on the movie's leading man, Paul Harris (Sam Groom), a divorced high school teacher and basketball coach and his interactions during a killer rat infestation with a health department inspector (Sara Botsford); a high school cheerleader, Trudy (Lisa Langlois); his students; and his friend, Dr. Spencer (Cec Linder), a college professor and rat expert.

Giant rats the size of small dogs living in mountains of grain full of steroids are rendered homeless when a health department inspector orders it burned. The rats migrate to a suburban home occupied by unsupervised high school students. The rats' first human victim is a toddler left unattended in a high chair. The next victim is a senior citizen, walking the snowy streets alone late at night.

Scatman Crothers, who briefly plays a health department field inspector, is destined to become the next victim. Inspecting the bowels of the city's sewer system, he encounters a pack of rats. Scatman commences with 'the running of the rats' in the sewer, followed by his demise.

Paul telephones his friend, a professor who is a rat expert, who instantly concludes that the steroid feed had spawned a new breed of 'super-rat' that had migrated into the sewers in search of food. Upon hearing this information, the Health Inspector immediately orders the fumigation of the entire city sewer system, which is immediately and efficiently carried out with no apparent effect.

The futility of this action is confirmed when the rat expert himself is attacked and killed. The rats then move on to a bowling alley and a movie theater and make their first brazen mass attack on the unsuspecting public. The rats select the viewers of a Bruce Lee movie, resulting in numerous deaths and a scene of fleeing film patrons.

Meanwhile, the city's mayor prepares to make an inaugural run of a new subway section - straight into a hungry pack of rats.

Paul attempts to stop the festivities. He is forced to assault a cop and take his revolver. Paul proceeds down the tunnel and finds a disabled subway train with passengers just emerging from the cars.

Paul meets his girlfriend and his son just as the rats attack. The three are able to escape down the tunnel and find refuge in a fenced-in maintenance area which is the rats nest. Fortunately, they discover cutting torches and drums of flammable liquids. They are able to burn all the rats.

But in the final scene, as the three survivors reboard the subway train to reach safey, they only realize when the train reaches the station that several of the rats have survived, whom are on the train itself and eating the remains of the dead subway victims. When the train arrives at the station, the rats attack all the people on the platform and the movie ends on this sudden and downbeat note.

Production

Actual dachshunds wearing rat suits were used in the filming of Deadly Eyes to achieve the effect of super-sized rodents.^[1]

References

1. ^ "Losing My Head: An Interview with Lesleh Donaldson - June 1999". The Terror Trap. http://www.terrortrap.com/interviews/leslehdonaldson/. 

External links

• Deadly Eyes at the Internet Movie Database
• Deadly Eyes at AllRovi