This film was made at a time when science fiction was actually making a comeback. Giant creatures of some kind or another, mostly created by modern means and mistakes like bombs, radiation, pollution, and nuclear waste, once again dominated mainstream cinema. The giant villains this time are mostly rats. Anyway, the story follows a famous football player who needs a little vacation before an important game. He takes along a few friends, his coach, and some teammates to an island getaway.
A narrative theme begins with a man talking about how nature will someday rebel for all the shitty things we do to it, unfortunately, the victims are innocent people who only suffer the wrath of the actual polluters. They arrive on an island only to be met with giant wasps. The crappy special effects begin here... the wasps are transparent, you can see right through them. There's one close-up of the attack which shows a most obvious big plastic bug. One fatality... more to come.
The group comes across a chicken coop that looks like it's been partially torn apart. Our main protagonist peeks inside only to be met with a giant chicken (well, a big plastic chicken head that someone is thrusting toward the actor). This scene is sidesplittingly funny. The plastic head doesn't move its mouth or blink or anything, pretty pathetic. The owner of the chicken coop is located in the nearby farmhouse. It's an old lady that explains how some weird chemical started bubbling up in her backyard. She feeds it to the chickens (Yeah, that would've been my first choice too). The chickens grow and Grandma thinks she's got the solution to hunger. The problem is, other creatures are grubbing on this chemical that Granny has now spread all over the place, resulting in large bugs, large worms, and mostly large rats.
The pests reign supreme and kill most of what's left of a forgettable cast. The big plastic rat heads are as funny as the big plastic chicken heads, so obviously fake and totally laughable. When a giant rat is shot with a gun, the special effect used for this was simply shooting real rats with a paintball gun. The problem is, those things shoot really hard, maybe not much for people, but these poor rats were looking mighty stunned and rendered completely unconscious upon impact. Really cruel treatment for an animal just for the sake of making a movie when you think of it.
One of the last people left alive theorizes that even though rats are really good swimmers, the fact that they have been enlarged, the same rules of gravity do not apply, and that if the rats are submerged in water they will sink and drown. This is absolutely not true by the way. Does anyone know what a hippopotamus is? Four tons of rats then float along the water like a swimming pool of floaties. Anyway, these two guys plant pipe bombs on a nearby dam (on an island?). The damn blows and the rats drown.
You would think or hope that it would end here, but it doesn't. Creepy aftermath is hinted at. Some of the growth chemicals make it into a nearby stream and out into freshwater areas where cows drink from. You then see a cow on a milk machine, then some schoolchildren enjoying their afternoon milk and cookies. I guess it's hinting that we can soon expect large ravenous children, not to mention larger-than-life cows (now maybe a good steak won't cost so damn much) and whatever other life that the chemical will now come in contact with while in the water. I predict a much scarier sequel with giant crabs and crawfish.
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