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      The Bat People

      PG Released Jan 30, 1974 1h 35m Horror List
      Reviews 6% 250+ Ratings Audience Score A bat bite transforms a honeymooning biologist (Stewart Moss) into a homicidal blood-drinker. Read More Read Less

      Audience Reviews

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      Steve D I don't think they were in on the joke. Rated 0.5 out of 5 stars 08/07/23 Full Review Chris M Now I know Batman was copyrighted in 1939 and Man-Bat was copyrighted in 1974. But the title of Bat People when there is only one bat creature is just lazy. Considering the bat creature doesn't appear totally until the third act of this 93 minute movie. Also, they are implying that he was bit by a vampire bat. But then showed them skiing while his head was still hurt and unbandaged. Kind of dumb for a scientist to leave an open wound. But the location means the bat attack was in the same area as the ski trip and vampire bats don't like cold weather. So lazy film making. Lastly it the bat that bit him was an ordinary bat. Not a genetically altered bat or even a were-bat. Just a normal bat bites him and BAM! Bat Monster. That's dumb. I was bitten by a alligator lizard once, I didn't turn into a Lizardman or a Sleestak from "Land of the Lost". It's lazy, it's boring and it's dumb. Just avoid this huge pile of bat guano. Rated 0.5 out of 5 stars 11/08/22 Full Review Audience Member Ok so nobody won an academy award for this one but c'mon people! Its the 70s! Rated 4 out of 5 stars 01/21/23 Full Review Audience Member The Bat People (Jerry Jameson, 1974) In the days before direct-to-video, you'd be surprised at the things that found their way to movie screens. If you were born after about 1984, when the VHS player explosion happened and DTV started becoming standard for low- and no-budget movies, it's possible you may not have any concept of this sort of thing. Hell, I was there and I find myself still surprised on a regular basis by some of what found its way onto the big screen between the formation of the MPAA and the proliferation of the VHS player. There are few examples of this that will provide you as much evidence for the lack of judgment of film distribution companies as The Bat People, Jerry Jameson's 1974 cheesefest about werebats. That's right, werebats. Dr. John Beck (Raise the Titanic's Stewart Moss) and his wife Cathy (Hello, Dolly!'s Marianne McAndrew) are on vacation in the American southwest. Everything is going along swimmingly until, while caving, John is bitten by a bat. Much to his wife's chagrin, he starts experiencing bat-like qualities. Can she and a local doctor (Blood: The Last Vampire's Paul Carr) find a way to reverse the process before it's too late? Everything you would expect from the lowest no-budget fifties Z-movie crapfest is here. Problem is, the movie was made in 1974. This is not to say the Z-grade creature feature had entirely died out by the early seventies, but the genre had at least gotten a little cachet when George Romero proved you could take a minuscule budget and non-actors and come up with a movie like Night of the Living Dead. Problem is, not everyone was George Romero. Sometimes even George Romero wasn't George Romero. (Between Night of the Living Dead and 1974, Romero would release his two greatest commercial failures, 1971's There's Always Vanilla and 1972's Jack's Wife.) Jerry Jameson? He wasn't even in the same zip code. As of this writing, Jameson has not attempted to direct another horror film. This was, I believe, a very good decision. * ½ Rated 1.5 out of 5 stars 02/11/23 Full Review Audience Member Stupid, not scary, and pointless. Rated 1 out of 5 stars 01/20/23 Full Review Audience Member It Lives By Night (AKA The Bat People, AKA It's Alive) is one of those bad movies that you struggle to stay awake and get through. I am definitely one of those people as I didn't make it the first time through. Thank goodness for the Mystery Science Theater 3000 crew to liven things up a bit, and even then, it's still difficult to get through. I just wanted to smack the leading man who spent most of the movie in a state of whining. He looked like he needed someone to give him his bottle and lay him down for his nap. He's transforming into a bat, sure, but did he have to be so annoying? In any other case, the movie is horribly slow and uneven as hell. The lack of talent in the cast is just the rotten icing on an otherwise rotten cake. Rated 0.5 out of 5 stars 01/26/23 Full Review Read all reviews Post a rating

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      The Bat People

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      Movie Info

      Synopsis A bat bite transforms a honeymooning biologist (Stewart Moss) into a homicidal blood-drinker.
      Director
      Jerry Jameson
      Producer
      Nicolas Jenna, Matthew F. Leonetti
      Screenwriter
      Lou Shaw
      Distributor
      American International Pictures
      Production Co
      American International Pictures (AIP), Eastborne Productions
      Rating
      PG
      Genre
      Horror
      Original Language
      English
      Release Date (Theaters)
      Jan 30, 1974, Limited
      Release Date (Streaming)
      Aug 25, 2018
      Runtime
      1h 35m