Take me Home!

Cinema TimesOut this weekComing soonCompetitionsFeaturesCinema Times
NewsLinksThe MagazineeBay AuctionsTrailersBookmark UsContact Unreel

Bats
Release Date: June 23rd 2000
Distributor: Sony
Certificate: PG
Starring: Lou Diamond Phillips, Dina Meyer, Bob Gunton, Leon, Carlos Jacott
Director: Louis Morneau
Running Time: 90 mins
All hail the 'B-Movie' in all of it's many guises and manifestations, for although we see few and far between these days they do seem to rear up now and again from the warped depths of some writers crazed imagination. Modern day classics have included the seminal 'Tremors' and last year's highly entertaining 'Lake Placid', but here comes something that is more in the minor league of say, 'Piranha' or the gloriously stupid and hilarious 'Night Of The Lepus', as giant mutant rabbits terrorize the American countryside.

Behold 'Bats' in all its tragic ineptitude and unintentional humour. Small town sheriff Emmett Kimsey (Lou Diamond Phillips) finds himself head-to-snout with some darned evil varmints, in the form of Terminator-esque bats, which have mutated from the local variety, having mated with a seriously vicious variety created by government scientist Alexander McCabe (Bob Gunton).
'So where's the sexy love interest for the Sheriff?' I hear you cry 'Can it be in the shapely form of a bat expert … after all 'Jaws' had the shark expert, Richard Dreyfuss'

Yes Her name is Dr. Sheila Casper (Dina Meyer) and there's no-one to match her in this whole wide, animals gone crazy, world. She turns up with her assistant Jimmy (Leon) and as with all assistants, he is scared a lot of the time and gets all the best of the bad one-liners. It's not long before our beautiful scientist realises that the DNA of the original laboratory bred nasty nibblers has been altered by the military so that the virus they carry makes them really clever and aggressive but having had a few escape into the local bat community and mated … well you know that it's not going to be pretty.
Remember what happened in the 70's when South American bees were cross-bred with an African variety to create a better producer of honey? Well kids, the side effect was that that particular species of bee became the skinhead of the insect world intermittently attacking and killing people in cities such as Rio. Such is the same tenet of these bats that our intrepid gang have to track down, which of course give the military a seriously belated kick-in half-way into the movie just to prove it is following a classic b-Movie path. After all, a B-Movie is only worth it's salt if the army has failed to subjugate the mutant foe with all it's power and military hardware and so a handful of 'have-a-goers' do the job.

This film isn't from the top of the pile, unless it's from a pile of guano and then it would be somewhere in the middle, but it's o.k if you're stuck for something to watch and you're left wandering around the cinemas complex because you didn't have the commonsense to book your seats in advance for 'Chicken Run' or 'MI:2'.
One point of interest though is that Lou Diamond Phillips can be also be seen at the moment in the appalling 'Supernova', which must make him an early frontrunner for next March's 'Golden Raspberry' awards for worst actor of the year in worst films of the year.

Go Louie Go Louie

BY DARRELL FINN