Kyle Kellams: It’s the time of year when nominees for movie awards are announced, but not all movies are destined for the red carpet. But still, in their own way, enjoyable. For example, 1985. Rats! Night of Terror.
The 1985 Italian post-apocalyptic film certainly delivers on its title. Rats have survived a nuclear nightmare. They’re on the rampage. They deliver a night of terror.
This cult favorite now has an accompanying novelization. Northwest Arkansas-based writer Brad Carter will read from his adaptation, and the film itself will be screened Saturday, Jan. 17 at the Fayetteville Public Library.
Brad Carter also writes original horror novels like his supernatural thriller Only Things. He says he admires writers like Stephen King, H.P. Lovecraft and Carl Hiaasen. And like those authors, he says, he connects with his readers beginning at the same place.
Brad Carter: It all comes down to writing good characters, I think, and I hope that that’s a strength that I have, and I’ve always approached it as the situation can be as ridiculous as possible. But if you have relatable characters, the reader’s willing to go down any dark place with you, I mean, no matter how strange you get.
Kellams: One of my favorites, if not my favorite, of yours is Only Things. You get us from the beginning because it’s set in a storage unit sort of area. What kind of research do you do for this horrific scene that opens the book? That makes me think, oh, he knows exactly what he’s talking about writing about in this storage unit?
Carter: Absolutely none for being a... I’ve seen a storage unit. I’ve unloaded stuff into one. And I’ve seen night watchmen at different places. And beyond that, I didn’t really do anything. You know, if it’s a more specialized or exotic type of profession that I’m writing about, then I usually just, if I can’t find anyone to talk to, go to the internet and see what’s out there.
Kellams: It’s funny, I did not realize until I read Only Things that those storage unit places are kind of inherently scary, or at least creepy to begin with. Did you think that before you wrote that scene?
Carter: Yeah, I’ve always thought any kind of storage unit or closet or an accumulation of someone’s old stuff is just a little, if not creepy, unsettling, maybe. Garage sales, estate sales, especially because you know going in that, hey, this is someone who just died, and here’s all their stuff. And with that book, you know, so much of it is about hoarding. I collect records, I collect movies. I’m a collector. And spiraling into hoarding is a fear that I have for myself.
Kellams: Interesting. Interesting.
Carter: I feel like I could very easily cross that line if I didn’t think about it enough. And so that’s kind of where that book came from. The genesis of that idea was just, oh man, I hope that I don’t let this get the better of me.
Kellams: Oh I love that, I hadn’t thought of that. At the library later this month, you’ll be talking about your novelization of a 1985 movie called Rats: Night of Terror, which I just watched a few hours before our conversation. How do you get into the role of novelization of movies?
Carter: I was approached by Severin Films to do one back in 2019. I had over the years gotten to be friends with David Gregory, one of the founders of the company. And he was putting out Cruel Jaws, which was sort of an infamous Italian Jaws ripoff, and wanted to do a movie novelization, sort of in the style of the old paperback novelizations. And so I agreed and went at it. I tried to approach it the same way that I approach something a little more serious in nature. And I took a ton of liberties with the plot, and it turned out to be a pretty successful book for me, for Severin. And so we’ve started just doing more. We did Night of the Demon, which is a killer Bigfoot movie. I did Mardi Gras Massacre, which is exactly what it sounds like, and then two which were Virus: Hell of the Living Dead and Rats: Night of Terror.
These books were really special because I got to work very closely with Claudio Fragasso and Rossella Drudi, who were the screenwriters of those movies. They wrote these when they were younger and sort of naive to the exploitation film world and wrote these huge screenplays that would have been big-budget affairs. And obviously, they couldn’t do that. So I had Rossella, especially—she was the main writer—dig up all her old notes and stuff from back then, and decided to base the novels on the screenplays that they had written rather than the final product.
And Rats is a huge novel. I mean, if you saw the movie, you know that the final screenplay was probably about 80 pages. Well, I got like a 500-page book out of it, right?
Kellams: Right. In any hour-and-a-half to two-hour-long movie, you can only get so much into a character’s head. This, and let’s point out that Rats: Night of Terror—the title tells you what it’s about. It’s about rats, and it’s a night of terror. So what freedom do you have to tell us much more about the characters in your novelization?
Carter: Sure. With the Severin stuff that I’ve done, complete freedom. David’s never—the only guidance he’s ever given me was for Cruel Jaws. The movie was sort of PG-13, and he wanted it to be a hard R, which is more on brand for what Severin does. And I just sort of ran with that.
My model for how I approach it is when Richard Matheson was adapting all those Edgar Allan Poe stories for Roger Corman films with Vincent Price. Those stories were very short, and he had to get a movie out of them. Usually what he did was the first act is the story, and then you go from there. And so that’s kind of what I do, but I don’t necessarily restrict it to the first act. I just take what’s there and build out from it.
I went really far with the first one I did. I changed the ending of Jaws. I added characters and plot lines, and I guess the thinking is that if someone’s going to pick up a novelization of Rats or Virus or any of these things, they most likely have seen the movie and enjoyed it, but they don’t need me to just give them a recap of it. So I try to almost do reimaginings or expanded universe versions. It’s hard to explain how I do it, I’m a big fan of this stuff. I come at it from that perspective. I love these movies. I’m a huge fan of Italian horror in particular, and I have the utmost respect for the people who made them and for the material. So I give it the full effort.
Kellams: Right. When you’re writing, say, an original story of yours that’s going to become a horror novel, do you ever get creeped out, or are you just so in the process that now I’m writing, this is normal?
Carter: Usually when I think of an idea at first, before I really start attacking it as a novel, it usually starts from something that sort of creeps me out. But by the time I’m really cooking, I’m so deep into it, I’m mainly thinking about this character, how they talk, is this a reasonable action for them to take, things like that. But initially, when I sit down to do a novel, I start with something that sort of scares me or creeps me out.
When I do writing workshops, that’s what I tell the writers. I say, you know, a good way to write horror is to think of something that scares you, because you can write about it very vividly. And so I usually start from that perspective. But once I’m into it, it’s more just about making the writing as good as I can do it.
Kellams: The screening will take place. You’ll also read from your novelization, will you not?
Carter: Yeah. I’ll read. And people usually have lots of questions about this because it’s kind of an unusual career these days, writing novelizations of movies that are, you know, 40 years old. But yeah, I’ll be reading, answering questions, and I’ll have books and movies on hand.
Kellams: Brad Carter will be at the Fayetteville Public Library on Saturday, Jan. 17 from 2 p.m. until 4 p.m. Rats: Night of Terror will have the screening. He’ll also read from his novelization.
All right, Brad, I have a wish list. If you could do any novelization of a movie from this era—there was one, I don’t know if you’ve heard of it, let alone seen it—but it starred Ray Milland. It came out in the ’70s. I saw it in the theater when I was a kid, and it scared the heck out of me, and it was called Frogs. Have you ever heard of this movie?
Carter: Oh yeah. Often double billed with Food of the Gods, I believe.
Kellams: I actually saw it double billed with Asylum for whatever reason.
Carter: “The Amicus”. With Peter Cushing. Yeah. I think Herbert Lom was in there.
Kellams: Yes.
Carter: Severin Films just recently did a 4K big special edition of Asylum. So coincidentally enough, I would—yeah, I would love to do Frogs. Squirm, the one about the electrified worms, would be a lot of fun. Yeah, I like writing creature stuff. But yeah, I’d love to do Frogs.
I mean, you know, I’m a working writer. And so, you know, I do things that I think will sell. And of course, you know, if the check is going to clear, I’m going to give it my best effort no matter what the material is. But it just so happens that I do love these old B-movies, exploitation movies, genre film, whatever you want to call it. It’s a big passion of mine. So getting to cross that love over with my love of writing has just—it’s really been a dream come true.
Kellams: Brad Carter, thank you so much for your time. Congratulations on your continued success. I can’t wait to read the next novels, be they novelizations or not.
Carter: Oh yeah, well, you know, I’m always working. I have things in the pipeline, and thanks for reading. You know, it’s, I think, increasingly rare.
Brad Carter will read from his novelization of Rats: Night of Terror at the Fayetteville Public Library on Saturday, Jan. 17 at 2 o’clock. The 1985 film will also be shown. The event is hosted by the NWA Film Club.
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