The Bat People

Plot synopsis:
Dr. John Beck, recently married, decides to take his wife, Cathy, spelunking in Carlsbad Cavern for their honeymoon. While there on a tour, the couple gets lost in the bat cave. Dr. Beck, who specializes in bats, is bitten by a fruit bat. He then, inexplicably, begins to transform into a vampire bat. He visits a doctor who attempts to help his condition. Unfortunately the doctor’s treatment did not seem to be working. In fact, they are aggravating his condition. As he begins to transform, Dr. Beck unwittingly goes on a killing spree, catching the attention of the cruel Sergeant Ward. The doctor begins to wonder if Dr. Beck is just imagining everything, and suggests he seek a psychiatrist. Beck returns to the original cave to seek solace. In the end, Cathy becomes a vampire (after having sex with Beck) and rejoins her husband in a bat cave.

Tags: violence

Review:
The only one who could talk some sense to him was his wife.Directed by Jerry Jameson (Airport '77, Raise the Titanic) made a watchable but disjointed horror film that attempts to be truly scary but fails.
Moss gives a good performance and there's early make-up effects work by the late five time Oscar-Winner,Stan Winston (Jurassic Park Trilogy, Aliens, Interview with an Vampire).The DVD is a double feature with "The Beast Within" from MGM.
Because, unlike the majority of crap in that list, "The Bat People" is a legitimate bad film and it deserves to be on there regardless of any media influences or internet buzz!
The film's title is inaccurate, as "people" refers to a number in plural whereas the story actually just revolves on one Bat Person.
They wander off from a guided tour group and he gets bitten by a bat whilst trying to protect his wife from the animal's vicious attack.
The prosthetic hand Stewart Moss wears looks good but his face makeup after his transformation makes him look less like a bat and more like the ugliest extra in the PLANET OF THE APES.
This movie would have been much better had they used a monster that looked something like those creepy bat people on the Marc Singer BEASTMASTER film.This movie centers on married couple Stewart Moss and Marianne McAndrew, who are married in real life.
Near the end of the film, Marianne is getting busy with her man when he changes into his bat form midway through the Barry White ballad)..
After being bitten by a bat in a cave,a doctor named John Beck undergoes an accelerating transformation into a man-bat creature.His wife assures him that there's nothing wrong with him,it's all just due to rabies or the anti-rabies drugs he's taking.The local cop thinks that John is responsible for several gruesome murders."The Bat People" by Jerry Jameson is one hell of a horrible film.The script is deadly dull and there is no gore nor nudity.This pointless piece of crap is so mind-numbingly boring that you'll scratch your head in a total disbelief after suffering through it.Even the design of a man-bat creature by a young Stan Winston is completely pathetic and unmemorable.Avoid this stinker like the plague.2 out of 10..
Anyway, "The Bat People" is about as flat as a rug, bland as a sack of flour and as exciting as a rock...and as intelligent as all three combined.Okay, plot in a nutshell (fitting vessel, that...): a doctor (Moss) gets bitten by a bat while checking out a cave with his wife (McAndrew) and subsequently turns into a bat - well, not exactly a bat but a bat-like creature that looks more like a werewolf who kills his victims in a first-person camera viewpoint....But then there's the business of the sheriff (Pataki), who is about the WORST kind of sheriff: the hick kind.
What did you expect, Oscar caliber stuff?And what else can you say about a film that not even MST3K can save?How about...no stars for "The Bat People", full version OR MST3K version!By the way, if there's ever a sequel for this movie, I'm burying my TV..
A ten star review may be reaching a bit, but notwithstanding some of the insipid and exaggeratedly low reviews here, this film DOES have a plot, takes it time getting there, and features good acting and a satisfying conclusion.
If you appreciate B films with merit, and if you also like bats, check out The Chosen Survivors, also available from MGM Midnite Movies, and also a 1974 release, which makes a terrific companion piece to this film..
Whether the bat bite causes these transformations is not clear, since he already was having some symptoms prior to the bite.While the title seems inappropriate, the implication at the end is that the same thing is happening to another person.
Not a very good movie, but I liked the variety of the desert, cave, and ski-slope locations, and some of the weirder scenes.
Stewart Moss & Marianne McAndrew play a newlywed couple(married in real life as well) who go exploring Carlsbad Cavern, where Moss(Dr. John Beck)is bitten by a fruit bat after he falls into a hidden crevice.
He is helped by his sympathetic wife, but pursued by the local sheriff, who has designs on Mrs. Beck...Film has a distinct aura of melancholy about it, and isn't badly acted at all, but is awfully slow-paced, with inadequate make up F/X by future Oscar Winner Stan Winston.
Real life husband and wife team (Moss & McAndrew) are enjoying a delayed honeymoon on the ski slopes, when Dr Beck (Moss) is bitten by a rabid bat during a cave tour, transforming him into a murderous bat freak.
The metamorphosis scenes are pretty lacklustre to say the least; each time Moss' eyes roll back into his head, the grainy stock footage of bats appears amid psychedelic hallucinations, while he goes into convulsions on the floor.The doctor's lovely wife becomes completely deranged, impregnated with the bat freak chromosome after an intimate, 70's loop-style embrace.
McAndrew is a dark, brooding beauty, but with precious little to do except look neglected or supportive dependent on Moss' mood, and former 20th Century Fox studio player Paul Carr is also on hand to offer medical support.If perchance you're wondering what would a bat manimal look like, it's not dissimilar to one of John Chambers' primate creations from the Apes movies.
I mean, this is a movie about a guy turning into a bat, and aside from the above-mentioned hand, the only time he actually turns into a bat, it looks like they borrowed an ape mask from a bad 1950's werewolf movie.The acting is horrid, the plot paper-thin, the script awful, the music painfully bad, the ending lame, the effects laughable (except, as always, for the hand), and the directing is atrocious.
Heck, even the Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode featuring this movie is mediocre.Okay, okay, to be fair, the scene with the hospital wristband is not THAT bad, but any movie that features a woman who turns into a bat after having sex with a man who was bitten by a bat...trust me, avoid this movie at all costs.
I found this one interesting, it's a pretty cool film.This really is your classic werewolf story - kinda like The Wolf Man but replacing wolves with bats.
After a doctor is bitten by a bat, he goes on a killing spree as a man-bat creature.The Bat People is a slow and sluggish film with very little thrills or excitement.
It's about this guy who gets bitten by a Bat while he, and his wife are in a cave.
He then goes through these symptoms, and then becomes a human bat like creature himself killing other people.
The movie is just as fun as staring at the sun.Sheriff Pataki is a total retard that loves nothing better to do than sit on his fat rear making a smoke ring from his puffy cigars and drinking booze while the doctor acts like a zombie version of Nicholas Cage sucking up all that so called "Blood" which in reality seemed like Fruit Punch.Most of all the plotting seemed very horrid to even call this piece of crap a movie.The rest of the characters in this movie are total wastes of time, the ending was awful, the outlines were cheesy, and the scenes were terrible.
While exploring some caves with his wife, a doctor is bitten by a bat which causes some alarming side effects...Occasionally creepy atmosphere and some decent (though under used) makeup effects don't save this B horror flick from being a sub-par tale of man-becomes-creature.
After being bitten by a bat in a cave, a doctor (Stewart Moss) undergoes an accelerating transformation into a man-bat creature, which ruins his vacation and causes considerable distress for his wife (Marianne McAndrew, Moss' real-life spouse).So, yeah, there is a lot of unnecessary fluff, such as scene of skiing and sentimental music playing.
That connection completely lost me.) Bitten by a bat while he's in the cave, he begins to transform into what I guess was supposed to be a human-bat hybrid (although when we finally see him in makeup he looks a lot more like an ape-man of some sort) and a killing spree starts.
The problem is that this sequence happens about fifty minutes too late to save the film, most of which consists of one or more people running around, screaming, waving their arms about at jabbering excitedly about some poor goofball who managed to get bitten by a bat during his vacation.The fear is that he is coming down with rabies, which does indeed suck, so their vacation is ruined, as the plot synopsis on the top of THE BAT PEOPLE's reference page does indeed point out.
So here is an effective summary of the movie: A young couple goes on a romantic getaway which is ruined when the guy is bitten by a bat.
You don't try to give him drugs, you don't try to tell him you love him, you give the guy his space, go home, and try that scenic getaway next year.But no, the people in this movie all behave like morons, insist on pushing the guy to his brink, and he flips out, mutates into a part man part bat type creature, and kills a bunch of non-essential secondary characters.
Instead of a monster movie, we get lots of people running around trying to get this guy to take a chill pill, and eventually he runs off into the hills looking very much more human than he should have, people insist on trying to chase him down and pay the expected price.The main thing wrong with the movie is that this should have happened in the first fifteen or twenty minutes, thirty tops, and the movie should have been about the guy AFTER he had turned into a Bat Person, rather than about the journey there.
It takes a good eighty minutes to really pick up steam on that front, with some interesting character sketches along the way involving the always entertaining Michael Pataki as a small town cop who's lost his moral edge, and the late Paul Carr as a physician friend who doesn't quite get the message.The movie is dreadfully boring, about fifteen minutes too long and missed the opportunity to be a nice, forgettable little Creature Feature about a mutant run amok like the Italian horror favorite RATMAN, which I watched today and was sadly inspired to try this one after seeing.
I was very young at the time and couldn't remember much about the movie except that it was about a guy who is bitten by a bat and morphs into some huge bat creature.
The MST3K version has the good taste to edit out the rape attempt scene involving the sheriff and Bat-guy's wife.
The Bat People starts as a scientist researching Bat immunology Dr. John Beck (Stewart Moss) & his wife Cathy (Marianne McAndrew) take a public tour of an underground cave system, like a typical woman Cathy gets into trouble & ends up at the bottom of a crevice.
Sergeant Ward (Michael Pataki) likes a quiet life & all these murders are upsetting him, he sets about tracking John down & putting an end to his murderous reign...Directed by Jerry Jameson & despite it's bad reputation I rather liked The Bat People, it certainly isn't any sort of masterpiece but as monster on the loose type thing I though it was watchable if nothing else.
The script by producer Lou Shaw is hard to defend, if I'm honest its a bit slow, it can get dull at times, it's silly & never explains why John turns into the Bat creature he does & when all said & done not that much happens.
The Bat People is one of those films I can't recommend as if I think about it with my head it's total crap but there's something in my heart which made me enjoy it, I'm sure monster film fans would like it to some extent although more casual viewers may want to skip it.Director Jameson does OK & I just love the 70's atmosphere, the clothes the fashions & the way it's shot.
This was Stan Winston's second film as a make-up artist & he probably did the best he could on a low budget but if John turns into a Bat creature where are his wings?
The acting is alright with Pataki as the sleazy police officer standing out.The Bat People is crap if I'm completely honest, having said that I liked it despite it's faults however I think many won't.
He is turning into a bat person and killing and a sheriff that seems to have plenty of evidence to take the guy in, but would rather just hound the good doctor instead.
From cave tours that happen days apart, but feature the same people, to a guy turning into a bat and a hobo who is very proud of his stink...this episode has it all!
"Bat People" (which I saw under the title "It Lives By Night") is just such a movie.
The movie has something to do with a doctor who gets bitten by a bat and consequently starts to morph into a Were-Bat who drinks human blood.
(Actually, you'd think if he was turning into a real bat, he'd be eating mosquitoes by the gallon bucket, but because this is a cheap, lurid horror movie, blood's the word.) In spite of the fact that he has grand-mal seizures at the drop of a hat, and black-out episodes almost every night, his friend and fellow physician, Dr. Mustache Aspen-Extreme, insists that he's just having an 'allergic reaction' to the rabies shots.
After getting bitten, and turning into the werebat creature, Dr. John Beck (Stewart Moss) attacks and kills a number of people (while unconscious).
With the body count mounting, he is soon the focus of the police manhunt and he becomes less and less human and more of a wild bat.*Special Stars- Stewart Moss, Marianne McAndrew, Paul Carr, Michael Pataki.*Theme- Modern science can only do some much.*Trivia/location/goofs- The couple in the film were really married in life.
Everything in the film plot is boring until the odd ending when the wife of the infected man goes off to join him in his misery rabies holding bat cave..
But it's definitely not very memorable overall, even if one takes it on a "so bad it's good" basis.Dr. John Beck (Stewart Moss) and wife Cathy (Marianne McAndrew) make the stupid, fateful decision to wander off on their own while exploring caves with a tour group, and he's soon bitten by a bat.
This leads to a standard enough plot wherein John starts to suffer violent seizures and succumbing to homicidal impulses, while his distraught wife stands by, unwilling or unable to believe something weird is going on.The movie serves as an early credit for makeup effects legend Stan Winston (here billed as 'Stanley'), but aside from one cool hand-turns-into-bat-wing sequence, it's clear his best work was ahead of him.
Veteran actor Arthur Space does a nice job as a drunken, philosophizing hobo, in another of the movies' better scenes.The main problem is making the effort to care very much about the characters or this tragic story as it plays out.
Whilst all this is going on, a local sheriff looking like poor man;s McCloud with jacket, hat and all is hot on the trial of bat droppings and making moves on the missing doctor's wife in one truly bizarre scene.
The guy playing Bat Man is Stewart Moss - the real life husband of his screen wife Marianne McAndrew.
One of the main plot points of this movie is that we don't really know whether Dr. John Beck is turning into a bat, or just imagining it.
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!!
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!!
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.
While THE BAT PEOPLE has been seen with the title "It's Alive", the two movies are not at all related.
"It Lives By Night", "Bat People", whatever you choose to call it - well, to quote the "Video Movie Guide" - "It sucks under any name."   The cast has two real actors (Arthur Space, who plays said drunk; he was in, according to IMDb, 163 films!; and the more recognizable character actor Michael Pataki as the skanky Sgt. Ward), and a bunch of no names.
It's very hard to feel bad about Dr. Beck's turning into a bat(or whatever he actually turned into), because you just don't like him.
This bad movie tells the story of a man who's bitten by a vampire bat and eventually turns into a giant one himself.
The entire movie is pointless as nothing really comes out of it as the man (bat?) and his wife live.
After being bitten by a bat, people near Dr John Beck begin dying in weird and horrible ways.
Dr Beck believes he may be going through some sort of weird bat-like transformation and may be responsible for the murders.
I love the scene where Beck's hand changes from human to something more bat-like.