Dr. Leach, a famed geneticist who has developed a serum that can repair damaged tissue, meets with millionaire Charles Deaver, wheelchair bound, badly disfigured, and in very poor health from a fiery car crash that he narrowly survived. Deaver is willing to pay top dollar for Leach's miracle cure and Leach could use the money since his wife is suffering from a potentially fatal disease. The serum is a glowing green concoction that has some potentially nasty side effects - always a surefire sign of trouble in a movie like this. Taken, the serum will begin healing and repairing any physical damage to the human body, but as it works it also causes one to experience an insatiable hunger. Leach has created this meta-protein substance (A glowing blue liquid, no less!) that the person should consume to help quench the hunger and prevent mutation from occurring. The big catch-22 with his regeneration formula is that if you consume anything other than this pure protein liquid he's created when experiencing the voracious hunger the cellular regeneration process will begin taking on properties of whatever it is the person is consuming. You literally become what you eat.

Hearing this does not please the millionaire, who had been promised a miracle cure with no strings attached. The ruthless millionaire has his henchmen savagely beat Leach, shoot him in the legs, inject him with his own serum, and then lock him in the basement of this dilapidated building where they'd chosen to meet. Deaver's mentality is that if it heals Leach's wounds without incident in a few hours then it's perfectly safe for him to take it. It does work, but since they didn't give him the protein formula, when the hunger takes hold of Leach he begins munching on the only thing edible he can find - live rats. This causes his cellular regeneration to begin transforming him into a perpetually mutating man-rat monster with a voracious appetite and a bad disposition.

Tom Sizemore is Vince, the head of a small group of city maintenance workers being sent to the abandoned university complex where the previous events are still on-going. Vince's group consists of himself, long-time co-worker Otis, a young screw-up with a loser complex, and Vince's niece in the midst of experiencing her first day on the job. Why they were even sent in to do anything at this decrepit facility becomes secondary to Vince and Otis going on scavenger hunt to see if they can find anything that got left behind before the building was abandoned that they might be able to salvage and sell, while the other two find themselves searching for the missing dog belonging to a Rastafarian derelict squatting in the place.

Unbeknownst to them, the dog has been added to the man-rat's menu. Now the man-rat is a man-rat with some canine thrown into his genetic mix. That might explain why a half-man/half-rat creature growls so much.

Things become even more complicated when Deaver, still on the premises in his limo, orders his main henchwoman, the ball-busting, tough-as-nails Krendle, who may have an outside agenda all her own, to go check on Leach and see how he's reacting to the serum. Seems there's a massive tunnel system below this entire area for mutated scientists to lurk about in; pretty soon the maintenance crew, the vagrant, Krendle, and the other henchmen will all find themselves trapped in these subterranean tunnels and being stalked and killed by a monstrous man-rat.

I've never seen a single episode of the VH1 reality series "Shooting Sizemore" but I understand the making of this movie factored into the program. Given some of Tom Sizemore's well publicized shenanigans ranging from drug addiction to abusive relationships to assorted legal problems to starring in homemade porn on the internet, having a movie starring Tom Sizemore that's titled BOTTOM FEEDER almost feels like a punchline waiting to write itself. Here he plays an average Joe; a performance low key he really doesn't even standout as the star of his own film. It's really more of an ensemble film anyway. Everyone does a decent job with their roles but outside of the grand b-movie villain performance of the disfigured millionaire and the overacting on the part of the fellow playing the crazy Rasta - to be fair he's just overplaying the role in the manner it appears to have been overwritten - nobody really stands out. Pretty much all your standard issued stock characters for this type of movie.

Everything about BOTTOM FEEDER is adequate. Nothing stands out as being particularly good or bad and it's never scary in the slightest. First-time writer/director Randy Daudlin has crafted a fairly standard creature feature that's too run-of-the-mill to be anything special yet still competently made. It has a few choice moments, such as the film's opening encounter between Leach and Deaver that sets everything into motion and much later when the creature that was once Leach attacks the unscrupulous millionaire's limo while he's inside it on the phone with Vince negotiating a price for them to come rescue him, still trying to lowball his potential rescuers even as his life is in mortal jeopardy. Unfortunately, there's also the usual dull lulls in the story that typically accompanies monster movies that revolve around people lurking about a series of tunnels building up to and in-between appearances by the feature's creature.

That featured creature is a mixed bag indeed. Another fairly one-dimensional movie monster; aside from reacting to hearing his name called, the fact that it was once Dr. Leach is all but ignored in favor of the usual monster chasing, clawing, biting, beheading, etc. Gorehounds will be happy to know that the kills are fairly gruesome. Now I know this might sound odd but I was a little disappointed by the creature's lack of fur. Outside of its one rat-like ear, it looked to me more like a hairless, mongoloid werewolf than the man-rat it was supposed to be. Though obviously a rubber and latex creation, the make-up work is still quite good. I guess I was just hoping for a full blown humanoid rat or something along the lines of Marvel Comics' villain, Vermin.

Extras on the disc include a couple trailers, including one for the movie itself, and a ridiculously self indulgent behind the scenes feature that clocks in at just shy of a half hour in length. I mean, really now... I'd say this about a lot of movies, better and worse; you just don't need a "behind the scenes" this lengthy for a movie like this, especially when the material it covers is the same grounds as the typical, much shorter "making of" featurettes you'll find on other DVDs. It's primarily a collection of interviews with the cast members talking about their roles. Listening to Sizemore talk about what it was about the character he was playing that appealed to him, I just sat their rolling my eyes thinking, "Dude, just say 'the paycheck' and be done with it."

The bottom line on BOTTOM FEEDER is that it's nothing special, nothing terrible - inoffensively routine. If you like this sort of monster movie then BOTTOM FEEDER will satisfy your cravings without any seriously adverse side effects.