Release Date: Feb 22, 2000 Region: 1 Runtime: 91 mins Studio: Columbia / TriStar Audio:
ENGLISH: Dolby Digital 5.1 [CC] ENGLISH: Dolby Digital Surround [CC]
Video:
Widescreen 2.35:1 Color
Subtitles: English Packaging: Keep Case Rating: R Features:
Director and Lou Diamond Phillips Commentary Bats Abound Featurette Isolated Music Score Direct Weblink Photo Galleries SFX and Storyboard Comparisons Talent Files Theatrical Trailers Animated Menus Scene Selections
Bats is for everyone who misses those old Roger Corman monster movies, only it has animatronics and computer effects instead of papier-mâché. The title pretty much sums up the plot: crazed bats are running amok, disembowelling people and cattle. Only beautiful wildlife zoologist Dina Meyer and stalwart sheriff Lou Diamond Phillips can save the day. Let's be frank: the scenario is ludicrous, the dialogue awful, the special effects unconvincing--try as they might, the bats just aren't that scary--but what does it matter? The movie rips along effectively. There's always a bat attack just around the corner and the director makes liberal use of all kinds of editing and camera effects, including adistorted bat-cam point of view that makes no sense at all but is pretty entertaining. Various scenes imitate Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds, but lack even a hint of that film's eerie precision. The actors play it straight without trying to be particularly serious. All in all, Bats knows what it is--trash-horror--and accomplishes its ends with good humour. Not quite up to the standard of Tremors (still the definitive trash-horror flick), but better than most. --Bret Fetzer, Amazon.com