Bats (1999)

Very Cool!!!

That was an excellent one.

Don't Believe the Hype

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

Louis Morneau directed this horror picture that stars Lou Diamond Philips as small-town Texas sheriff Emmett Kimsey, who finds his desert community under attack by large bats that are intelligent killers, and quite omnivorous. Dina Meyer plays expert Dr. Sheila Casper, who comes in to sort out the problem, and they both discover responsibility lies at the door of crazed government scientist Dr. McCabe(played by Bob Gunton) who genetically re-engineered their DNA to make them superior to people. Why you ask? Because he can he answers!(Oh Boy) Despite some reasonably good Bat F/X, this is an idiotic and shallow picture, with no real reason to exist, as it has nothing new to offer.

Twenty years after Hollywood made NIGHTWING they decided to tackle the subject of killer bats once again with results that turn out to be less than inspired.It's not that BATS is a particularly bad film; it isn't. It ticks all of the boxes and runs through the scenarios with a modicum of energy and drive. The problem is, as with most Hollywood films made recently, a series lack of originality or indeed intelligence. BATS turns out to be cheesy and predictable in equal measures, delivering up its threat of genetically-modified bats without much in the way of passion or intrigue.The plot follows the likes of THE BIRDS and other classics fairly closely. Moments between the set-pieces are dull, while the bat attacks are spoiled by some average CGI effects work (Hitchcock's superimposed birds are still superior to the creatures here). In close up, the rubbery menaces are about as realistic as the bats in Hammer's SCARS OF Dracula; not Greg Nicotero's finest moment, that's for sure.Cast-wise, it's pretty lacklustre. Lou Diamond Phillips goes through the motions and STARSHIP TROOPERS' Dina Meyer displays a singular lack of presence. Leon's character reveals everything that's wrong with Hollywood's reliance on the clichéd "funny black guy" in otherwise straight films. All in all a largely forgettable movie that disappeared as quickly as it arrived; go back to Hitchcock for a decent winged-menace movie.

Almost ten years old and I never took the time to watch this movie, why, because everybody said that it was bad. But there comes a time when you can find those movies in the sell out section of your local DVD shop. So it happened, although it was the extra beyond limits low budget section. I picked it up and plugged it in. Starts of pretty well I thought with the killing of a young couple. But then the movie declines in a real bad movie. The lead actors are surely doing this to cash in, Lou Diamond Philips was once on top of the list with movies like La Bamba and Young Guns. Here he delivers bad acting. For Dina Meyer we could tell the same. They are both never believable. And the real actors are the bats themselves. We have seen this kind of story a thousand times. Especially in the fifties there were those creature features. Now and then they make a new creature movie like Host and that kind of movies really have a storyline. There is never any suspense in this flick. No blood, no nudity no gore. When the bats attack you will never be frightened, the bats themselves look like Disneybats so you could guess how bat, euh, bad they are. When the town is attacked it made me think of The Birds and the link with the posters "Nosferatu" at the cinema are ridiculous too. They bring in the army, and they couldn't destroy the bats, come on. As this is a real Hollywood product with wellknown actors I just gave it a 2 out of ten. The editing is boring, score is terrible, anyway, it just got a two because at the end of the movie you really got frightened, a bat arises from the earth, frightened that they would make Bats 2, but it is destroyed in a funny way. Avoid it at all costs.

This film is basically about a bat attack and a scientist is brought in to help figure it out. I won't reveal more about this story but however I do have to say two good things about the film: 1.The CG was very good considering the budget was $37 million dollars.2.The bloody bat attacks were great and the R rated film is my preferred version instead of the original PG-13 versions.However to balance the issue (not like Fox news), I will say two bad things: 1.The Script was mediocre at best, being a short film screenwriter, it was made for B-level but some of the dialogue sounds like a straight-to-video movie.2.The Score is way too obvious and a little bombastic.All in all, this is a very good attempt to make a B-level horror film, now if they had made a better script and did some better marketing, this film would have earned more than $10 million dollars domestic gross I give this film 7 out of 10