Bats! Bats! Bats! 🦇

 

Bats! Bats! Bats! 🦇

By Kristin Battestella

It's time to put on our serious film criticism caps for some chiroptera pictures that don't take themselves so seriously. 🦇

Bats – Terribly dressed necking teens suffer flapping whooshes, bat shrieks, and strobe splatter in this 1999 mutant bats run amok so bad it's good written by John Logan (Penny Dreadful) starring Sheriff Lou Diamond Phillips (La Bamba) and scientist Dina Meyer (Starship Troopers). Picturesque Mountains, blue skies, desert rocks, technobabble, batology jokes, and Latin names are for the audience as CDC credentials are repeated and multiple plane trips finally get everyone to the scene. Everything before the autopsy analysis, gory cadavers, and jugular bite marks suggesting what's afoot could have been excised because we know bats are the culprit. The escaped subjects, scientific deduction, and government red tape move fast as the mayor worries about the newspaper headlines. Old computer graphics and folding maps demonstrate the spread risk despite the human arrogance, shady officials, and talkative, repetitive dire. It is smart, however, that we don't see some ridiculous monster bats immediately – screeches, swooping, bats breaking in, and the colony eyes lighting up at fresh prey provide innate unease. Most of the comic relief is unnecessary and misplaced when the situation is already preposterous yet chilling. People freak and flail while country music plays, babies lay in cribs beside the open windows, and bats await while the trucker eats his tater tots. The mayor warns people, but “everybody in Texas thinks they know everything about everything,” a surprisingly spot on observation on how people who don't listen and think they know best acerbate the horror. Although this wants to be The Birds and it isn't that clever, trapped deaths, wings enveloping the face, and bats seeming to enjoy pinning their terrified victims are disturbing. Guns aren't going to do anything, and the growling cloud comes on so fast to those unprepared. Distorted bat points of view accent the well done animatronics and lengthy action sequences – the CGI looks better than today's rushed fix it in post effects – but the melodramatic exclaims and stupid behaviors get old fast and the bats retreat for cinematic convenience. Fortifying the school while listening to opera, making lots of coffee, going to the roost itself, military not helping them, military dropping gear, convenient mines – pointless activity and mixed motivations make for a disjointed back and forth almost deliberately designed for flicking the television channels or missing something after commercial breaks. Maniacal, laughable scientists and deliberately released bats aren't shocking as reveals we already know pad the one step forward two steps back to meet ninety minutes. It takes an hour for anyone to consider using a frosty fire extinguisher or air conditioners, dialogue is lifted directly from Aliens, and the military is taken out off screen so our heroes can swim in the guano. Bombing countdowns, keys to the machinery, and bat shootouts add one snag in the plan after another, and it's easy to zone out or forget what the goal is. One wonders why this fly by night product is Rated R, and the science and government serious or self aware humor and horror never finds the right approach. Fortunately, it's all a bemusingly bad romp perfect for a fun midnight roast.

Nightwing – Desert silhouettes, sunset vistas, and Anasazi ruins are beautiful but eerie, rocky, and perilous in this 1979 adaptation directed by Arthur Hiller (Love Story). Henry Mancini (Romeo and Juliet) music and Crystal Gale on the radio accent the dusty roads, rustic jeeps, and cowboy hats as unexplained animal deaths acerbate Hopi Reservation friction between Maski police, Pahana councils, and Indian Bureau technicalities. Our deputy can't believe in prophecies to embrace your inner coyote warrior when the trailer clinic doesn't have neonatal necessities and basic medical care to which all Americans are supposed to be entitled. Stereotypical white savior Strother Martin (Slap Shot) is married to a local yet complains how the Meskwaki are ungrateful for his bare minimum services. Arguments keep the horror succinct – blood lose, bite marks, ammonia – as the outcast shaman warns of broken circles and beasts coming to end the world. The tricked out station wagon with backseat microscopes and satellite dishes on the roof encounters stampedes, dead sheep, bubonic plague, and doctors paid off despite the blood on the white burial cloth. Patronizing oil men say there's no time for stoned priests and visions of the deceased when there is money to be made. Souvenirs and superstition versus tissue samples and sulfur research increase gossip about who's Christian or believes in witches and rain dances. Those wanting to prove that they aren't drunk doll making fanatics aren't wrong. Do you prospect on sacred ground because money is the white man's god and that means schools and medicine for your people? Nature is indiscriminate but people will profit on the deceased for the right price. Backstabbing villains reveal their true selfishness, more concerned about oil deals then quarantines or alerting state authorities. Hymn singing white tourists don't want to hear blasphemy that all religion begins as superstition, but those disbelievers of local ways are who we see horribly attacked – before trampling old ladies to save themselves. Some swooping action and bad bats are laughable, but the practical effects look nicer than our poor CGI as the howling winds, screeching, hissing, and screams shatter the bleak desert night. Torches and hazmat suits lead to empty graves and underground chambers amid broken down vehicles, 128F heat, and transistor trackers. Bat specialist David Warner's (Wallander) flourishing, no fear vampire bringers of death soliloquies paint bats as the quintessence of evil in Shakespeare meets Jaws chilling as the freaky little teeth chew their way in when the electric fence falters. For those expecting horror a minute, this will be slow and overlong. Outside of George Clutesi (Prophecy), the cast is also unfortunately not Native American or First Nations. Despite some weak effects and mystical convenience, the well done drama comes full circle thanks to real bat footage, dangerous spelunking, and conflict beyond the horror warning us not to dismiss practices we don't understand. I'm surprised the ahead of its time statements were so ill received then, but it's downright eerie to watch this now in the Covid world – and not because of the bats.

Vampire Bats – Professor Lucy Lawless (Xena: Warrior Princess) leads this 2005 TV movie padded with unnecessary hip college action, dated music, bad dancing, cool lingo, and terrible style. The raves, booze, neon, and bad aughts attitudes should have been excised for opening with mom Lucy struggling with breakfast, no air conditioning, house renovations, and back to school. This domestic stress doesn't need the frenetic camera work thanks to boxes, toys, and pesky sister Brett Butler (Grace Under Fire) babysitting. Night fisherman Craig Ferguson (The Late Late Show) also adds enough winking humor in a stereotypical attack with a lot of looking up, spinning cameras, and screams. Seeing police question students as the teacher intervenes is better than the unnecessary party beginning as our professor inspects the deceased – identifying bite marks, unknown fangs, and the absence of blood. The nettlesome mayor doesn't want to panic the public over bat droppings, but strobe transitions of newspapers with vampire headlines held up to the camera are lame, distracting from debates about putting family first and letting the authorities handle the unexplained. It's shrewd that we don't see bad special effects attacks, however setting up a scary frat scene only to cut away from the potential horror seems pointless. The batty overlays and cartoonish CGI at the cocktail party also don't match the action as people knock over tables and fall amid dizzying, hectic photography. Fortunately, bats under the dock, hanging from the church eaves, or swirling above the moonlit waters and up close shots of the little bloodsuckers are choice atmosphere. Classroom discussion about habitat and environment or bats as parasites not killers should be the only time we see the campus. Waste disposal whispers, rabies, experiments, and students offering to help capture the critters lead to teeth mutations, the need to feed, and rushing to the car once the wings start flapping. Gloves, cages, nets, and chemicals invoke science while the overhead projector and chalkboards create nostalgia. The biology couple, however, doesn't need students tagging along to spy on the local toxic plant, and the story suffers once the husband is reduced in favor of the kids accidentally discovering how the bats react to music. Wouldn't unusual sonar be the first thing scientists test? Though feeling long for ninety minutes, the final fifteen minutes rushes with missing family and luring the bats planning. The close calls are well done, and the entire movie should have had this intensity, but whether toxic waste, corruption, and EPA failures were the mutant cause goes unresolved. This wants to poke fun at horror cliches but is neither humorous nor scary and tries so, so hard to be cool when it doesn't know its audience. Ironically, this yarn is better than it has any business being if you can take it for what it is.

Did you know that the vampire bat's species name is Desmodontinae? I like it. 🦇