I think the film is educational. However, it fails to treat the issue which sparked so much controversy: plural marriage. Also, the film fails to reveal what the LDS church espouses. Big opportunity was missed to tell the world what they actually believe. I could not get a clear idea of what it is LDS views are on central topics of religion.
I have many LDS friends and they are nice people. Would have been nice to get a clearer picture of how they view their prophet's more controversial statements. Maybe these statements are just too controversial to be treated in a film format, but it would have been great to hear the whole story of Joseph Smith's truly interesting life. After all, it gives insight into American thought on religion in the 18th century. Hope they do some documentaries on this fascinating subject, allowing historians to comment on Smith's life. We may have a Mormon president some day. After all, Smith ran for president.

Currently, this film is listed on IMDb as the 42nd worst film ever made--which is exactly why I rented it from NetFlix. However, I am saddened to report that the film, while bad, is no where near bad enough to merit being in the bottom 100 films ever made list. I have personally seen at least 100 films worse than this one. Hardly a glowing endorsement, but it just didn't meet the expected level of awfulness to be included on this infamous list.
The film begin with Stewart Moss and Marianne McAndrew on their belated honeymoon (by the way, they are married in real life as well). He's a doctor who is obsessed with bats and insists they go to a nearby cave. Once there, they behave very, very, very stupidly (hallmark of a bad film) and are soon bitten by a bat. According to this film, bats love to attack people and there are vampire bats in the US--both of which are not true at all.
Oddly, after being bitten, the man doesn't even bother going to the hospital!! The first thing on anyone's mind (especially a doctor) is to get medical help immediately, but not this boob. Soon, he's having seizures--yet he STILL isn't interested in seeking help! Again and again you keep thinking that this must be the stupidest couple in film history!!
After a while, he eventually goes to see a doctor and is sent to the hospital. But, by then it's too late and his attacks become more violent and he begins killing people to suck their blood. When it's totally obvious to everyone that the man is a crazed killing machine, the wife (who, like her husband, has a grapefruit for a brain) refuses to believe he's dangerous--even after he attacks people, steals an ambulance and runs a police car off the road!!
Now most of the time Moss is going through these episodes, his eyes roll back and he looks like a normal person. Oddly, however, a couple times he develops bat-like hands and towards the end they used some nice prosthetics on him to make him look quite bat-like. Had this been really cheesy, the film would have merited a 1.
In the very end, in a twist that hardly made any sense at all, the wife inexplicably turned into a crazed bat lady and had a swarm of bats kill the evil sheriff. How all this was arranged was a mystery as was Moss' and McAndrew's belief that this film would somehow help their careers--though they both have had reasonably long careers on TV playing bit roles since 1974.
Overall, very dumb. The plot is silly and makes no sense and strongly relies on people acting way too dumb to be real. Not a good film at all, but not among the worst films of all time either.
NOTE: For some reason, IMDb shows the graphic for the three DVD set for IT'S ALIVE and it's two sequels of the web page for THE BAT PEOPLE. While THE BAT PEOPLE has been seen with the title "It's Alive", the two movies are not at all related. It's easy to understand the mistake--especially since they both came out in 1974, but the movie I just reviewed starred Stewart Moss and Marianne McAndrew and the other film starred John Ryan and Sharon Farrell.