Our fearless – and quite possibly senseless – movie janitor is watching every movie on the IMDb Bottom 100 list. Join us now for another installment of Unwatchable.
It’s been quite a journey through the animal kingdom here lately in our Unwatchable series. We’ve met the marsupial werewolves down under in Howling III and the mutant arachnids of Horrors of Spider Island, but nothing can prepare you for the bat people of, er, The Bat People!
In this 1974 tale o’ terror, Dr. John Beck is a bat specialist with a seemingly permanent “Who farted?” expression pasted on his face. His wife Cathy just wants to do a little skiing, but this is a working vacation and there are caves to be toured. She’s reluctant to go along, but once she’s down in the dank underground, the thought hits her: hey, we’ve never done it in a cave before! Their subterranean nookie is curtailed when Cathy falls through into a sub-chamber and a bat divebombs into her hair. John comes to her rescue, but is bitten in the process. A short time later he begins to have convulsions, accompanied by visions of bats pursuing his wife in a black, existential void. This understandably frightens the other people on the ski lift and in the hot tub, so he goes to the doctor to begin the Pasteur treatment for rabies (that’s a series of 20 painful injections in the groinal area, for you laymen).
Despite the treatment, John begins to suffer from some side effects similar to rabies, such as mood swings and dry mouth, and some not so similar, such as actually turning into some sort of, I guess you’d call it, BAT-MAN. When women start turning up dead, the sheriff comes sniffing around, as he can’t help but notice John has a bad habit of leaving incriminating evidence at every crime scene. A series of dull chase sequences ensue, and I think somewhere in the middle John takes refuge in a barn and befriends a philosophical wino, though I may have dozed off and dreamed that part. The plural of the movie’s title is finally explained in the twist ending, which I wouldn’t dare give awa…oh, okay, his wife turns into a bat person, too.
If The Bat People is notable at all (hint: it’s not), it’s as one of makeup guru Stan Winston’s earliest efforts, though I suspect he’d leave it off his resume if the IMDb didn’t exist. When we finally get a full view of the transformed John, he looks less like a bat than an extra who stole a mask from the set of the Planet of the Apes TV series. The movie is also memorable for the insanely oppressive score by Artie Kane, who went on to compose the music for Waterworld. I don’t remember what that sounds like, but here Kane is like a bull in a music shop, bludgeoning keyboards, blaring trumpets, mauling harps, and beating marimbas within an inch of their lives. Apparently he got someone’s attention.
I can’t really get too worked up about The Bat People one way or the other, honestly, so let’s give it two Maurys and be done with it.
Previously on Unwatchable:
91. Horrors of Spider Island
92. I Accuse My Parents
93. Howling III: The Marsupials
94. Invasion of the Neptune Men
95. Marci X