La Nuit des chauves-souris

This is not a very good movie. If I had seen it at a theater, I would have felt ripped off, certainly. But at home, I watched it with an undemanding mood, and with the feeling this was a basic update of a low budget animal-attacking movie of the '70s. Seeing it that way, the movie was good enough to pass the time. No more, but I wasn't bored.

Certainly, there's a lot of the movie that's dumb. Some of the puppets and computer generated effects look really bad. The black character is only there for humor, and his treatment is somewhat offensive. Lou Diamond Phillips can't act. Sometimes you can't tell what's going on with all the close-ups of flapping wings and bad editing.

There are a few good things. Some of the cliches I was expecting actually didn't happen. (For one thing, the authorities are quick to the danger for once.) The cinematography is excellent, and occasionally the movie has a "big" feeling that makes it look more expensive that its $6.5 million budget.

So if you like B movies, are feeling undemanding, and can see it cheaply or for free, you might want to give it a try.

Bats, a film that should have premiered on the Science Fiction channel on cable, somehow got a theatrical release. If it had been made fifty years earlier I can definitely see Boris Karloff or Bela Lugosi in the part that Bob Gunton plays as the mad scientist.

The scariest thing about Bats is not the creatures themselves although they are the ugliest looking things this side of the Black Scorpion. The scariest part of the film was Bob Gunton's portrayal of the mad scientist who created this race of killer omnivirous Bats. He's identified as working for the Center For Disease Control. I was watching this figuring out how this creep got government clearance.

Yet Gunton is the most enjoyable thing in this film. And you got to love the fact that he had all these government facilities to work with, he's not hidden away in some laboratory in an old castle the way Karloff and Lugosi used to be. He's bred this race of flying fox bats from Indonesia which are aggressive to begin with and they've taken up residence in a bat cavern in Lou Diamond Phillips's county where he's the sheriff.

After several suspicious deaths with mutilation, the cause is identified and zoologists Dina Meyer and Leon Robinson are brought in to clean out the bat cave. If you care about how and if they do it by all means watch the film and the hint is, think blob.

Bats will never go down as a great science fiction classic, but it does have a certain campiness to it. And Gunton is a hoot.

Bats is a very generic late-'90s killer animal flick that follows most of the genre rules to the letter. All of the expected characters are present and correct—untrustworthy government scientist, brave local sheriff, doomed-to-die deputy, dedicated (and sexy) animal expert, wise-cracking sidekick—and the plot develops in an extremely predictable manner, opening with young couple alone in the dark falling victim to the bats, before introducing a whole townful of potential victims, and climaxing with our brave heroes risking their lives in a showdown against the deadly critters.

It all gets very silly at times, with perhaps the most unbelievable scene being the securing and electrification of a whole school by just four people in the space of a few hours, but it still proves to be quite a bit of fun, director Louis Morneau keeping the action moving at such a swift pace that such nonsense is fairly easy to forgive (unlike the director's tendency to 'skew', stretch and blur the image during the frenzied bat attacks, which I found bloody irritating).

What really helps to elevate this formulaic nonsense to slightly-above-average are the solid cast and some fairly decent special effects. Dina Meyer (of Starship Troopers fame) and Lou Diamond Phillips make for a likable protagonists, and Leon is far less objectionable as 'token comedy relief black guy' than one might expect. As for the bats, they're a mixture of more than reasonable CGI and nifty puppetry from KNB; my only gripe, FX-wise, is a lack of splatter—a bit more gore would have been very welcome.

As usual, I find myself on the opposing side of the critics. This movie has NO BUSINESS in the bottom 100 here at IMDb! It's FAR from a masterpiece, but it's also just as far from deserving that low a rating.

As is often the case, whenever you have a good monster/creature feature, lurking somewhere in the shadows is a mad scientist. Such is the case in this film. In fact, I found the mad scientist a tad too mad. I think that is the main contributor to the low ratings this movie receives here at IMDb. The "doctor's" performance went WAY over the top. Well, he's supposed to be insane, but he plays it like pure camp, and that's horribly out of place in this otherwise serious work concerning a lab experiment gone awry...or has it?

The animated/CGI bats are well done, and all performances besides the doctor are enjoyable and on target. Unfortunately, he was bad enough to have brought down the whole film.

This is fun, generates some good suspense, and isn't afraid to show you the nemesis. The story itself is quite competent to hold up, and does, IF you can ignore the wretched performance given by Bob Gunton. I must say that I do not believe it to be wholly his fault, as he has given some great performances in the past, and since. The fault must lie with the director, Louis Morneau, who has never done much of note.

I like this film and can enjoy it, in spite of the doctor, and do find myself watching it from time to time.

It rates a 6.8/10 from...

the Fiend :.

"Bats" had its theatrical run and was widely distributed on rental VHS/DVD. Videostores carried multiple copies which got rented fluently. Yet from the looks of it - its rating on here - most people thought this was bad. Boy, have they not seen 'bad' yet. Things would get a lot worse in years to come with these type of films. For one thing, try watching the alleged sequel to "Bats" called "Bats: Human Harvest". The thing was made in 2007, for TV and then dumped to DVD as well. Go watch it; it's about 5 times worse than this film. Then come back and tell me which is the bad film out of those two. Or go watch "Fangs" from 2001 (starring Corbin Bernsen). It's the silly version of "Bats". I tell you, things can get a lot worse than this modest piece of killer bats entertainment. It even stars Lou Diamond Phillips and Dina Meyer. In 'worse' movies, you can't even count on a cast like this anymore. So why the complaints & puss-poor ratings on here?

I've seen quite some crappy horror-movies already, and you can say what you want about "Bats", but it's not a bad movie. Clichéd? Yes, kind of. Seen it all before? Yes, most likely. But the production values are more than just okay. It's well made. It looks good. Good camera work. The acting is more decent than what you normally can expect from a movie like this these days (like stuff produced by Sci-Fi Channel, The Asylum, need I continue?). I've seen much, much worse special effects when it comes to the CGI used in this one. And there are actually some cool shots of animatronic bats to be admired (from puppets with full body movement to close-ups of their heads with moving ears, grinning teeth and blinking eyes - it's always a kick to see SFX artists go the extra mile on this). The film's fairly fast-paced, keeps you going and never gets boring. It's basically a B-movie that looks damn good, sort of like stuff similar to "Tremors" (a fine early 90's monster movie classic) and its sequels. Or if you bump down the ladder a bit, you'll find a lot more (lower budgeted) genre outings telling pretty much the same story ("Skeeter" from 1993 comes to mind).

Of course "Tremors" works better on a variety of levels and "Bats" isn't as great by a long shot. For one thing, it misses some wit, and that black guy (Leon playing Jimmy Sands) trying to provide it didn't do a lot of good either. Still, a fun popcorn-movie for the somewhat less demanding horror-fan. If you have this feeling that genetically altered killer bats might amuse you, then ignore the low rating on here and just watch it.

Now, can someone recommend me a better movie with a whole bunch of killer bats in it?