The Bat People

A man wakes from a nightmare about bats. He and his wife go out into the desert for a picnic on their honeymoon. He seems to hear a strange noise, and she is disturbed by the sight of a bat crawling across their picnic blanket. He wants to go on a tour of a cave, which has something to do with some kind of work he is doing, but she wants to enjoy their honeymoon. She relents. They go on the tour, but leave the group to make out. She falls down a slope, where she is disturbed by insects. He follows her. He hears the strange noise again, and seems to know a bat is approaching; one does, and gets in her hair. He fights it off her, and it attacks him, biting his forehead.

They get out of the cave, but when they are in a gondola at a ski resort, he starts having seizures in which he has hallucinations or visions of bats attacking people. He becomes angry when this happens. He's unable to drink alcohol without spitting it out. His wife worries about rabies, and he starts a Pasteur treatment for that, but reacts violently to the injection.

And then some people are killed. We see parts of the man's transformation into a bat person. It seems it is not just in his mind. Whether the bat bite causes these transformations is not clear, since he already was having some symptoms prior to the bite.

While the title seems inappropriate, the implication at the end is that the same thing is happening to another person. Not a very good movie, but I liked the variety of the desert, cave, and ski-slope locations, and some of the weirder scenes. I didn't think this was as bad as other people do, and I didn't think the 1999 movie Bats was as bad as others think either (I rated that one a 5/10).

"The Bat People" is a proud resident of the IMDb Bottom 100. Every once and a while the movie suddenly vanishes from the infamous list, depending on whether there are new movies with Paris Hilton in the lead or documentaries about American Idol stars, but it always reliably returns sooner or later. And why? Because, unlike the majority of crap in that list, "The Bat People" is a legitimate bad film and it deserves to be on there regardless of any media influences or internet buzz! This nearly isn't the worst film ever made, since the basic concept definitely has a certain charm and ingenuity, but it's still indescribably difficult to sit through the whole thing. The script is incredibly boring, with absolutely unnecessary padding footage and gigantic gaps in continuity, and yet the main characters still remain total strangers throughout the entire film. Other than a sensible screenplay, the film also lacks spectacular killing sequences and the make-up effects – although courtesy of a young Stan Winston – are ludicrously inept and remain largely unseen until the end of the film. The film's title is inaccurate, as "people" refers to a number in plural whereas the story actually just revolves on one Bat Person. Much more than Bruce Wayne, the real Batman plays in this movie and he as well has a genuine Bat-cave and a Bat-mobile (a stolen ambulance)! The plot introduces a young couple on their honeymoon-weekend exploring caves. They wander off from a guided tour group and he gets bitten by a bat whilst trying to protect his wife from the animal's vicious attack. Worried that he might be infected with rabies, he undergoes an intense treatment at the local hospital, but still this doesn't prevent him from slowly transforming into a bloodthirsty bat creature. He kills random people at night and toys around with the suspicious police sergeant whilst his loving wife is still vastly convinced the awkward behavior is exclusively due to allergic reactions to the rabies treatment. Sure, honey! The script never explains why a bat would attack people and how come John always changes back into a normal human being at the dawn of a new day instead of gradually turning into a permanent state of bat-guano. So basically, "The Bat People" is a variation on the good old werewolf-theme, but obviously not a very interesting one. The concept showed a lot of potential, but somehow the sub plots center on whiny drunks and perverted Sheriffs instead of on ghastly monsters. Some of the settings and exterior filming locations look impressive, the misfit song playing during the credits is strangely catchy, there's a nice bit of gore during the climax (finally!) and main actress Marianne McAndrew is ravishing to look at (though not to listen to). This truly bad and boring film's current listing in the bottom 100 is spot number 80, and personally I hope it sticks somewhere in that region. The list simply wouldn't feel and traditional without "The Bat People".

After being bitten by a bat in a cave,a doctor named John Beck undergoes an accelerating transformation into a man-bat creature.His wife assures him that there's nothing wrong with him,it's all just due to rabies or the anti-rabies drugs he's taking.The local cop thinks that John is responsible for several gruesome murders."The Bat People" by Jerry Jameson is one hell of a horrible film.The script is deadly dull and there is no gore nor nudity.This pointless piece of crap is so mind-numbingly boring that you'll scratch your head in a total disbelief after suffering through it.Even the design of a man-bat creature by a young Stan Winston is completely pathetic and unmemorable.Avoid this stinker like the plague.2 out of 10.

This movie may not be classic material (to put it charitably), but it does have a couple of things going for it. Not the plot, dialogue, production values, or anything else meaningless like that. But it does have a sense of time and place (a chic Colorado ski resort in the midst of the swingin' Seventies), and it does have Paul Carr as Dr. Kipling, the very archetype of the hip, swingin' Seventies dude. With the blow-dried coif (reminiscent of those old "Dry Look" ads), the bushy moustache, the deep, mellow voice and manner, and overall air of grooviness, Dr. Kipling is the ultimate in Seventies cool! Confident without being smug or arrogant, cool without being aloof, this man is a suitable role model for anyone to emulate.

As for the movie itself, well, it bites.

...it's still a load of crap.

As far as I am concerned, this movie is only notable as an early effort in the career of master make-up king Stan Winston (back when he was still listed in credits as "Stanley Winston". His huge talent is wasted on one halfway decent prosthetic hand, since the rest of the film's "horror makeup" consists of one bruised face and a lot of greasy sweaty faces. I mean, this is a movie about a guy turning into a bat, and aside from the above-mentioned hand, the only time he actually turns into a bat, it looks like they borrowed an ape mask from a bad 1950's werewolf movie.

The acting is horrid, the plot paper-thin, the script awful, the music painfully bad, the ending lame, the effects laughable (except, as always, for the hand), and the directing is atrocious. Heck, even the Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode featuring this movie is mediocre.

Okay, okay, to be fair, the scene with the hospital wristband is not THAT bad, but any movie that features a woman who turns into a bat after having sex with a man who was bitten by a bat...trust me, avoid this movie at all costs. About the only thing I can say in its defense is that it isn't quite bad enough to be too bad even for an MST3K episode.