HALLOWEEN HORRORFEST 2021/RATAPALOOZA NIGHT ELEVEN: Bottom Feeder (2007)

We're still in Ratapalooza Randomizer territory, which delivered onto me a sort-of companion piece to yesterday's entry, namely 2007's Bottom Feeder--known mainly for being the film Tom Sizemore walked out on during the reality show following this ignoble phase of his career.

Before we begin, it's time for the ever-expanding Ratapalooza Checklist! 

1) IS CANADA SUBBING FOR AMERICA?  Yes.  The film was shot in Hamilton, Ontario and it is implied that the story is set in the state of Michigan.

2) DOES SOMEONE OFFSCREEN THROWS A RAT AT SOMEONE TO MAKE IT SEEM LIKE IT'S ATTACKING HIM?  No.

3) ARE THERE CUTE RAT PUPPETS?  Hard to tell--at one point our titular character eats a rat puppet, but it's too dark to determine said puppet's adorability factor.

4) IS THERE A SPEECH ABOUT HOW BAD-ASS RATS ARE?: Not really...there is an extended speech about how an animal will grow to fill the size of its environment, but no direct references to rat bad-assedness.

5) IS A CAT VICTIMIZED BY RATS?: No, but like in Graveyard Shift, a dog meets its grisly end offscreen.

6) IS THERE AN EXTERMINATOR CHARACTER, AND IS HE COMIC RELIEF?  No.  Comic relief comes from a stereotypical Rasta Homeless Man.

...and the latest box...

7) DOES THE RESEARCH RESPONSIBLE FOR THE RAT CATASTROPHE INVOLVE CANCER? Yes.

Today is Samantha's (Amber Cull) first day working for her uncle Vince (Sizemore) as a member of the maintenance crew of an unspecified park.  They've been tasked to clean the tunnels under an abandoned hospital of vermin...and Vince and his partner Otis (Martin Roach) are secretly planning on raiding a secret area for supplies they can sell to medical personnel under the table.  Unfortunately, a severely burned businessman named Deaver (Richard Fitzpatrick) and his lackeys locked a scientist in those tunnels after dosing him with a healing serum that causes him to mutate if he eats anything...and wouldn't you know it, he had to chow down on a rat....

Watching this I assumed Bottom Feeder was shot with the intention of releasing it as a SyFy (the pop culture channel that sounds like a veneral disease!) feature much like last year's Mansquito.  However, it turns out this was intended to be a direct to video feature.  And I think contrasting this with yesterday's...mistake makes it clear that just because you are restricted by a low budget doesn't mean you have to use it as an excuse to half-ass it.

Okay, admittedly, I have to assume that Bottom Feeder's budget is higher than the one for The Mutation, but I'm willing to bet it's not by much--and that a big bite of that budget went to Sizemore.  But unlike yesterday, writer/director Randy Daudlin views his lack of budget as a challenge, not a hindrance.  So your Ratman costume might not be up to snuff--let's just keep it in shadows and tight shots and space out our full-on money shots strategically.  So you only have access to a park, a warehouse and the basement of some community center--lets structure the story around these three spaces and not try to pass them off as what they're not.  So you're shooting in a foreign country--make your references to an American state very obliquely.  The only thing that both this film and The Mutation get wrong is in the realm of scientific equipment, as both resort to flourescent liquids in tubes to represent them.

Don't get me wrong--Bottom Feeder is relentlessly mediocre.  It plays to all the tropes of cheap monster movies of the '00's and there are moments that are pretty dire, especially those involving Evil Businessman Deaver--I'm not sure if knowledge of Jeffrey Deaver's scumminess was as widely known back then, but it sure put a pall on things to me--and his henchpeople, including a silent Asian gentleman who knows martial arts (Tig Fong) and a Hard-Ass Sexy Woman named Krendel (Wendy Anderson) but is pronounced so I thought she was named 'Ms. Grendel' until I saw the cast listing.   But I wasn't nearly as annoyed with this film as I was with the others, and I was mildly engaged throughout.  I don't think I could recommend it enthusiastically, but you could do a lot worse if you're looking to waste eighty-six minutes.  You could choose to watch Gnaw: Food of The Gods II, for instance.

Tomorrow the Randomizer allows me to move away from Super-Low-Rent-Rat-Men movies (I've got one more in the pipeline that I know of) and visit the butt-end of Roger Corman's career as a film producer with a period piece based on a classic horror writer's work of literature.  No, I'm not talking about one of those Edgar Allen Poe flicks starring Vincent Prince...I'm talking about 1995's Bram Stoker's Burial of The Rats starring Adrienne Barbeau.  I'm only seven minutes in and I'm beginning to suspect that liberties were taken with the source material.

There are presently ten open slots for this year's festival, and if you'd like to be included, there are four ways to get your share of the spotlight:

1) You can become a Domicile of Dread Patreon.  Patreons always get a free slot, as well as advance access to podcasts and other goodies!

2) You can buy me a coffee at Ko-Fi.  Suggested donation is $3

3) You can make a donation to Queens Community House Covid-19 Relief and Recovery Campaign.  Suggested donation is $10.  Please forward your receipt to me as proof.

4) You can choose to make a donation to the charity chosen by a sponsor on his/her/their day. Like with the third possibility, please forward me proof of donation.

It is not necessary to choose a rat-based horror film.  However, if you do, I will forward you a special Ratapalooza banner you can display on your website.