empathielabs/imdb_v0 huggingface dataset:
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user\nand not in a fun-to-watch way. it's just bad. it's shocking that people have posted positive things about it here. the story sucks, the acting is bad, it's not scary, the special effects aren't special--oh no! the blackboard has hands coming out of it! oh gee--the mirror turned into water! the hair, clothes and makeup in the '50s scenes aren't accurate, and they got a middle-aged man with a receding hairline to play the high-school version of himself. this is like later-on nightmare on elm street stuff. i enjoy sitting down to watch a cheesy horror movie as much as anyone else, but there are better bad ones out there to choose from.
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user\nThis is only related to the first movie by the name. The plot has nothing to do with the first and the whole movie stinks!!! I have no idea what they were thinking but this movie is so bad. Avoid this at all costs, the first movie in the series is acceptable as a slasher flick and so is the fourth but this one and the 3rd are rubbish!!
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user\nWhat is the point of creating sequels that have absolutely no relevance to the original film? No point. This is why the Prom Night sequels are so embarrassingly bad.
The original film entailed a group of children hiding a dark secret that eventually get them all killed, bar one, in a brutal act of revenge. Can someone please explain to me what a dead prom queen-to-be rising from the grave to steel the crown has to do with the first movie then? Prom Night 2 had continuous plot holes that left the audience constantly wondering how did that happen and why should that happen? But in the end, i guess you could call it one of those movies that is so bad, you end up laughing yourself through it.
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user\nProm Night 2 is an OK horror movie but prom night is way better and this movies about how the prom Queen Mary Lou in 1957 gets killed by her boyfriend and comes back 30 years later for revenge.The best actor in this movie is Micheal Ironside and the movie stars other OK actors and actress like Justin Louis (I),Wendy Lyon,Lisa Schrage and Richard Monette(I).And there are some good gore scenes like when Mary Lou kills the girl that is trying to hide in her locker by crushing the lockers together and how one of the students are on the computer and Mary Lou electrocutes him to death.Over all this is an OK/good horror movie and my rating is 4 out of 10.
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user\nI actually prefer Robin Williams in his more serious roles (e.g. Good Will Hunting, The Fisher King, The World According to Garp). These are my favorite Robin Williams movies. But Seize the Day, although well-acted, is one of the worst movies I've ever seen and certainly the worst Robin Williams movie (even worse than Death to Smoochy, Club Paradise, and Alladin on Ice).
Every good story is going to have its ups and downs. This movie, however, is one giant down. I don't need a feel-good Hollywood cheese-fest, but I've got to have something other than 90 minutes of complete and utter hopelessness. This movie reminds me of \"Love Liza\" (which is actually worse) because it seems that the only point of the movie is to see how far one person can fall. The answer? Who cares.
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user\nThe long list of \"big\" names in this flick (including the ubiquitous John Mills) didn't bowl me over to the extent that I couldn't judge the film on its actual merits. It is FULL of stereotypes, caricatures, and standard, set scenes, from the humble air-ace hero to the loud-mouthed yank flyer. The music track was such that at one point, about an hour before the end, I thought the film was over: loud, rising crescendo, grand flourish and finish then silence, but then the movie continued! I found no real storyline, haphazard writing, but smartly-pressed uniforms and the pretty Jean Simmons (pre-nose job) with a rousing little ditty. I cannot say that this picture has any of the ingredients which make a film great. I found it maudlin, mawkish and minor.
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user\nTHE TOY BOX (1971) BOMB
Sure, I like looking at nude women. While I prefer hardcore porn flicks, I'll take softcore exploitation grindhouse junk like this too under the right circumstances. Well, these aren't the right circumstances. These aren't ANY circumstances. There's supposed to be a horrific subplot lurking in here somewhere, but I'll be damned if I can untangle it. This is another of those amateurish steaming piles of badly made manure that bores you to tears rather than stimulates you, despite all the simulated sex going on all over the place. Bah -- if I want to see good sex scenes, I'll watch the real stuff.
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user\n\"Don't Drink the Water\" is an unbelievably bad film. It's based on a 1966 Broadway play by Woody Allen. It stars Jackie Gleason, the comic genius behind \"The Honeymooners\". The director, Howard Morris, has appeared in several Mel Brooks comedies (Life Stinks, High Anxiety, Silent Movie)and has made a mark in animation (characters he has voiced include Gopher from \"Pooh\", Jughead (Archie)and Beetle Bailey) What went wrong?
I think the problem is that the premise is played out too seriously to work effectively. Allen's original play was tongue-in-cheek, which is why it worked on Broadway and in Allen's 1994 remake. The screenplay by R.S. Allen and Harvey Bullock beats the premise to death and makes too many changes from the original play. Making Gleason's wife an airhead in this version when she was a headstrong woman in the original is just one example of why this doesn't work.
The acting isn't much better. Gleason does the best he can with the material, but he can't save this. Gleason was a comic genius , but also a fine actor as he demonstrated in \"The Hustler\" and \"Soldier in the Rain\". His abrasive personality could have worked here, but the lousy script doesn't even give him a chance. Too bad. Estelle Parsons' airhead wife will drive you nuts after 20 minutes. See how soon it'll take for YOU to want to strangle her. That is also a shame because she is also a fine actress, having turned in two exceptional performances in \"Bonnie and Clyde\" and \"Rachel, Rachel\" None of the other actors do particularly well either.
Woody Allen hated this film so much that he remade the film in 1994 with himself and Julie Kavner (Marge Simpson) in the leads. They manage to hit all the right notes and the film itself is a comic masterpiece. It's finally on video after a long battle over rights. Do go out and find that version. All the 1969 original is good for is clearing out unwanted guests who overstay their welcome.
1/2* out of 4 stars
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user\nLeslie Sands' stilted play \"Deadlock\" becomes a poor-choice vehicle for Bette Davis and Gary Merrill, just after their joint-success in \"All About Eve\". After killing her spouse, a scheming woman is visited by her husband's best friend, who passes himself off as her husband once others begin stopping by the house. Irving Rapper, one of Bette's best directors from her peak years, is sadly unable to elevate this ridiculous material, in which Davis is curiously aloof and restrained until the outrageous finale (where she thankfully pulls out all the stops). Production and supporting cast strictly second-rate; only for Bette Davis completists. *1/2 from ****
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user\nIf you want an undemanding and reasonably amusing hour or so, then it's OK to watch this. It's not all that bad, really. Yeah, it's got more lapses in logic than I care to describe here and might tax the patience of people - like myself, I have to admit - who are inclined to throw things at the TV on occasion, but it's funny at least. Just because it's not always INTENTIONALLY funny, there's no need to let that get you down.
However, if you've read the book - or any of the other books by Brookmyre - then you'd probably best avoid it. I've read them all and when I first watched this film, I despised it. I've trashed it in detail and at great length on another site, in fact. The TV plot bears practically no relevance at all to that of the book and served only to outrage and infuriate many faithful (and admittedly rabid) Brookmyre fans.
Best bit of advice..? Watch this, then read the book and only THEN make your comparisons and submit your judgement.
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user\nWhat an absolute pile of pants. Having read Chris Brookmyre's books religiously since I came across \"Quite Ugly...\", I was delighted to find out that this drama had been commissioned.
I obviously had too much faith.
Nesbitt is probably the best thing in this show - and even he doesn't quite fit. How anyone can read the book, and then adapt it to this piece of dross is beyond me.
Entire characters are changed, situations are dropped, and to see Parlablane's dramatic break-in reduced to Nesbitt doing a quick chin up and sliding open a bay window... it brought tears to my eyes.
I dread to think what's going to happen with \"Country Of The Blind\" if this is the benchmark...
Please, just avoid it...
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user\nDid I miss something here? This \"adaptation\" has everything that Brookmyres first novel had. Everything apart from the story, the laughs, the black humour, the political intrigue, the characterisations, the plot, and some semblance of sense.
Spoilers;
Godamnawful, from beginning to end. They made a mockery of the plot, they had a romance between Parablane and a cop, and what was that all about, Dr Slaughter was portrayed as a bystander, and who the hell was Annette Crosby supposed to be?
It looked like they had made a three hour adaptation, then chopped it down to 90 minutes. (Even though the 90 minutes seemed to last forever.) Please, please, do not do this to any other of Brookmyres books, (especially \"Country of the blind.)
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user\nThis movie was a confusing piece of garbage. You never knew what was going on. The characters were poorly written and for the most part they were totally unsympathetic except for Gus (played masterfully by George Eads). I hate this movie but compared to others (Dark Harvest, Dracula's Curse) it should have won an academy award. It was particularly sad to see a talented actor like George Eads in such a disgraceful and tacky film. Lifetime you have sunken to whole new low. Someone needs to make sure that this director never works in movies again. Also was this supposed to be a horror film because it was a lot more funny than scary. For shame Lifetime, For shame.
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user\n1st watched 11/7/2002 - 2 out of 10(Dir-John Bianco): Pretty lame gangster movie about a Godfather-like family in Brooklyn who like to say four-letter words a lot and kill people. The only thing of interest here was their attempt to show the feds being a lot like the gang. This is the only attempt at good film-making. The rest of the movie was predictable, and cheaply-made. The quality of the photography on some of the scenes inside bars and floozy joints almost made you think there was a problem with your DVD player because of the bad contrasts and some of the actors were hard to hear at times because of the bad sound. The acting was pretty-much characatures of all your favorite gangsters from better movies with corny names like Vinnie `Knuckles' and Jimmie `Tattoos', and the plot pretty much followed those patterns as well. So, go see a better gangster movie before you put your money out for this one.
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user\nThis film is so bad I can't believe it was actually shot. People who voted 10 or 9, 8 and even 7, are you insane? Did we really watch the same movie? Or the same sh** should I say. Everything is bad in this film. The story (is there a story?) is going nowhere, completely incoherent, the acting (some dialogs are simply just ridiculous), the music score (what the **** is that?), the editing, and especially the artistic direction, a pure disaster. Reminds me the old Macist movies... To give you an example of the amateurism of the production, the mermaid's costume is a sleeping bag with spangles sticked on it. I'm not joking, that's exactly what it is.
Another example of the enormous mistakes we find here: you see in a scene an extra, a fat woman of about 200 pounds, who's talking on her cell phone. The next shot, which is in a complete different location, you can see this same woman, still talking on her cell phone (!) Yes, it goes that far.
A big, huge, waste of money. Useless.
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user\nI just saw this at the 2006 Vancouver international film festival. The synopsis in the festival guide sounded pretty good so we decided to check this one out. I'm sorry to say I was very disappointed.
Besides being poorly written, it was boring. I won't take away from the actors as there is not much they could do with this bad script.
First bite was cliché without being ironic, over the top seriousness without being funny. The movie would have been better had Hunt Hoe went with a campy horror feel. Instead he took himself to seriously and this resulted with a boring film. I can't recommend this film. It felt too long and all in all just plain weak.
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user\nI had the distinct displeasure of seeing this movie at the 2006 Vancouver International Film Festival. I have been attending this festival for over 5 years, and I have certainly seen some poor movies on occasion. However, 'First Bite' has reached a brand new low in film. In spite of being shot in beautiful locations, with the occasional, exquisite close up of fabulous food, the movie contorts an excessive number of plot twists and stilted characters until I was practically begging for it to end.
The lead actor, David La Haye, completely failed to show any character development throughout the movie, portraying a pompous chef from beginning to end. Additional sub-plots, such as eating disorders, were developed so poorly and completely did not fit within any context that the movie had shown up to that point.
A theme of mysticism was used as a poor attempt to conceal a movie that achieves nothing, goes nowhere, and completely disappoints.
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user\nAfter 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.
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user\nWatching It Lives By Night makes you wonder, just who in the world greenlit this crap. A newlywed couple go spelunking on their honeymoon, get attacked by bats and the husband starts to run around in his pajamas attacking various people. And where exactly are they? They're in the desert, then they're skiing, then they're in a small town that looks like it has mountains nearby. The town is run by a sheriff who likes to watch and has a personal vendetta against whiny doctor boy. The ski hospital is run by a really groovy guy with a nice thick mustache and the wife looks like Mary Tyler Moore or Marilyn Quayle. There's no dramatic tension and the ending will leave you filled with anger. Special effects and makeup guru Stan Winston did the effects for this movie. I guess you have to start somewhere.
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user\nI saw this movie on mystery science theater when it was called \"It lives by night\". That title is much less misleading than \"Batpeople\". In fact it would more accurately be called Batperson. This movie is about a doctor who studies bats I am thinking because he wants to make a better cure for rabies. This is not really clear. What is clear is that he and his wife take a tour of a cave and he gets bitten by a bat. Why a scientist needs to take a tour to study bats is beyond me. Shouldn't he be able to go in by himself. Well after being bitten he and his wife go on their honeymoon where he starts having fits. They go to the worst doctor ever. The guy stays in the hospital and kills a nurse. In the end the guy kills 3-4 people and his wife stands by him and you are supposed to be rooting for him instead of the sheriff investigating the murders.
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user\nOr maybe that's what it feels like. 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. He hassles people, he leers at married women, he steals handkerchiefs from haberdasheries (the FIEND!), he smokes with one of those cigarette holders in his mouth and talks at the same time, making him look and sound like Buford T. Justice in \"Smokey and the Bandit\" and (this is the worst part)... HE'S THE MOST LIKEABLE CHARACTER IN THE WHOLE FILM!
The whole film, though, is just TV movie-of-the-week-like crapola (guano, in this case). It's an AIP, for crying out loud! 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.
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user\n\"The Bat People\" is a proud resident of the IMDb Bottom 100. Every once and a while the movie suddenly vanishes from the infamous list, depending on whether there are new movies with Paris Hilton in the lead or documentaries about American Idol stars, but it always reliably returns sooner or later. And why? 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! This nearly isn't the worst film ever made, since the basic concept definitely has a certain charm and ingenuity, but it's still indescribably difficult to sit through the whole thing. The script is incredibly boring, with absolutely unnecessary padding footage and gigantic gaps in continuity, and yet the main characters still remain total strangers throughout the entire film. Other than a sensible screenplay, the film also lacks spectacular killing sequences and the make-up effects  although courtesy of a young Stan Winston  are ludicrously inept and remain largely unseen until the end of the film. The film's title is inaccurate, as \"people\" refers to a number in plural whereas the story actually just revolves on one Bat Person. Much more than Bruce Wayne, the real Batman plays in this movie and he as well has a genuine Bat-cave and a Bat-mobile (a stolen ambulance)! The plot introduces a young couple on their honeymoon-weekend exploring caves. 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. Worried that he might be infected with rabies, he undergoes an intense treatment at the local hospital, but still this doesn't prevent him from slowly transforming into a bloodthirsty bat creature. He kills random people at night and toys around with the suspicious police sergeant whilst his loving wife is still vastly convinced the awkward behavior is exclusively due to allergic reactions to the rabies treatment. Sure, honey! The script never explains why a bat would attack people and how come John always changes back into a normal human being at the dawn of a new day instead of gradually turning into a permanent state of bat-guano. So basically, \"The Bat People\" is a variation on the good old werewolf-theme, but obviously not a very interesting one. The concept showed a lot of potential, but somehow the sub plots center on whiny drunks and perverted Sheriffs instead of on ghastly monsters. Some of the settings and exterior filming locations look impressive, the misfit song playing during the credits is strangely catchy, there's a nice bit of gore during the climax (finally!) and main actress Marianne McAndrew is ravishing to look at (though not to listen to). This truly bad and boring film's current listing in the bottom 100 is spot number 80, and personally I hope it sticks somewhere in that region. The list simply wouldn't feel and traditional without \"The Bat People\".
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user\nStewart Moss stars as a scientist who is on a working trip with his wife, and one gets the feeling that he was picked for this role for his ability to roll his eyes back in his head...imagine the auditions for this..\"can you...no, that's not quite it, thank you, next!\". Anyway, he's bitten by a bat, and then, he's either changing into some kind of bat creature and killing people or....he's not. For no one else sees his strange transformations, but he himself seems to think that he's changing because his wedding ring pops off when his hands turn into claws, etc. To its credit the movie does kind of hold back on whether he's just nuts or whether he's actually transforming into something until almost the very end. This has some good locations & sort of a decent atmosphere at times but unfortunately none of that can make up for the somewhat lame story and the wonderfully bad acting. Kind of fun in a \"so bad it's good\" way, but leans more towards just plain bad. 4 out of 10.
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user\nOk,so.....guy gets bitten by a bat and then turns into a bat (well,sorta). I can only assume this made sense to SOMEONE at the time! Aren't bats supposed to fly, use radar, and eat bugs instead of attacking humans tho?
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user\nThis movie promised bat people. It didn't deliver. There was a guy who got bit by a bat, but what was with the seizures? And the stupid transformation? Where was the plot? Where was the acting? Who came up with the idea to make this? Why was it allowed to be made? Why? Why? I guess we'll never know.
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user\nA man wakes from a nightmare about bats. He and his wife go out into the desert for a picnic on their honeymoon. He seems to hear a strange noise, and she is disturbed by the sight of a bat crawling across their picnic blanket. He wants to go on a tour of a cave, which has something to do with some kind of work he is doing, but she wants to enjoy their honeymoon. She relents. They go on the tour, but leave the group to make out. She falls down a slope, where she is disturbed by insects. He follows her. He hears the strange noise again, and seems to know a bat is approaching; one does, and gets in her hair. He fights it off her, and it attacks him, biting his forehead.
They get out of the cave, but when they are in a gondola at a ski resort, he starts having seizures in which he has hallucinations or visions of bats attacking people. He becomes angry when this happens. He's unable to drink alcohol without spitting it out. His wife worries about rabies, and he starts a Pasteur treatment for that, but reacts violently to the injection.
And then some people are killed. We see parts of the man's transformation into a bat person. It seems it is not just in his mind. 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. I didn't think this was as bad as other people do, and I didn't think the 1999 movie Bats was as bad as others think either (I rated that one a 5/10).
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user\nThe 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. What else more should I say to you viewers out there? My advice would be to get your Rabies shot if you've already watched the movie. This movie may give you the foam in the mouth if you didn't get your up-to-date shots.
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user\nUnless the title is supposed to be some kind of spoiler for the wife's transformation (the fiends! ruining it for us). Anycase, if this movie wasn't Made-For-TV, it should have been, it's so remarkably low-budget, underscripted, underacted, and hits every 70's cliche except disco. Nobody is likeable, and you could careless what happens to anyone in this one. Eminently forgetable except for the bad, bad performances.
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user\nWhile 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. The Bat People aka It Lives By Night suffers from its senseless story that's awkwardly plotted and lackluster in pacing. The plot never seems to go anywhere much and the movie never offers an explanation for what happens, or even a satisfying conclusion for it all. The cast is fairly mediocre in their performances.
Still I give the film some points for its haunting theme song and nice filming locations. The makeup work of the late Stan Winston is pretty good too, but it doesn't get much of a showcase here. A missed opportunity for sure.
Definitely one of the lesser man-creature flicks out there.
* 1/2 out of ****
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user\nI dunno sometimes...you try and try and try to be charitable towards all the B thru Z grade movies out there, but once in a while a particular movie just tests your patience until you want to slap everyone involved. \"Bat People\" (which I saw under the title \"It Lives By Night\") is just such a movie. You can't watch this without thinking that it really should have been an episode on \"Night Gallery\", and not one of the better ones, either.
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. Meanwhile, the world's most obnoxious and stereotyped county sheriff suspects the doc of being responsible for the brutal murder and exsanguination of several local girls (and one wino). Also meanwhile, the doctor's wife decides that denial IS a river in Egypt and alternately patronizes him and nags him to distraction.
It's not so much that the acting is bad - you can tell that the actors are making professional level choices, and are trying to bring some juice and life to the script, even the guy who plays the sheriff. (Okay, it IS pretty bad, but it's bad in a clichéd, wooden, professional way). It's just that everything about the acting, the way the scenes are paced, the costumes, the dialog, the script and the story line in general sets your teeth on edge and makes you want to, well, slap everyone involved.
I think the movie had an outside chance at being a spooky, unsettling little cult favorite, BUT:
1)The director needed to beat Michael Pataki, an experienced character actor, with a chair until Pataki agreed to ACT, and not just channel Dennis Weaver.
2)He also needed to find a script that made a little more sense with regard to the whole \"Bat Bites Human, Who Then Turns Into A Bat\" scenario.
3) He also needed the actor who played the doctor to find a little more physically believable bit of stage business for his 'episodes', instead of resorting to \"Man Has A Seizure\" page from the Little Golden Book of Clichéd Acting Mannerisms.
4) He needed to rework the whole 'wife' character, make her both more intelligent, less shrill and waaaaay more observant.
I would never voluntarily watch this film again, except with the help of Mike and the Bots. It's bad, but it isn't bad in a silly, humorous or interesting way. Still better than \"Battlefield Earth\" or \"Waterworld\", though.
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user\nOK, don't let my summary fool you. This movie SUCKS HARD. But the worst movie ever? This movie was terrible in ways people shouldn't have to rack their brains to describe. But it is in no way worse than Manos: the hands of fate, hobgobblins, horrors of spider island, or a small handful of movies. As a review the movie sucks, it's terrible. Don't see it with out MST or you may develop health problems. But there are worse movies.
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user\nCurrently, 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.
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user\nI didn't think this was as absolutely horrible as some people apparently do. It passes as one of those cheesy horror movies you might waste time with in the middle of the night when you can't sleep, although admittedly it's no better quality than that. It's true that the acting isn't great - I thought Marianne McAndrew as Cathy Beck, for example, came across as completely passionless - but the main problem is that several aspects of the plot didn't really make sense to me. The Becks are on a trip described by John (Stewart Moss) as part work and partly the honeymoon they never had (now that's romantic!) The work part has something to do with touring caves, which in itself sounds strange (how does being part of a tour group through a cave relate to anyone's work?) but it gets stranger when we find out that he's a doctor doing research in the area of preventative medicine (huh? 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. Here's another problem. The first killing is a nurse in a hospital. At first, everyone thinks her death was an accident. The second murder is of a young girl, who is described as having her throat ripped out. The sheriff (Michael Pataki) then tells us that her death was similar to the nurse's (meaning throat ripped out? - How could anyone think that was an accident?) And what's with the sheriff? He seems pretty no-nonsense until the scene in Cathy's hotel room when he takes a swig of liquor and then almost rapes her, after which everything seems to go back to normal. It's saddled with an ending that left almost everything unresolved, and also with one of the most irritating theme songs I've ever heard in a movie. Even for all that, there was something here that kept me watching. Sometimes pure cheesiness can get you through an hour and a half. Pretty bad, yeah - but not as awful as some people say.
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user\n\"The Bat People\" is a really bad film that deserved the MST3K treatment just as well like that other film \"The Creeping Terror.\"
In it, we are in some sort of mountainous terrain full of bats. We see many things happen, like bats flying out and attacking and stuff, station wagon chases, mishaps at the emergency room, and much more! All this, plus the cheesy mediocrity of the 1970s (hey, think \"Mitchell\" here!), making \"The Bat People\" actually one of the very best of the last \"Mystery Science Theater 3000\" episodes made in the series! Moviewise, it's awful. It should be avoided like the plague, unless Tom Servo and Crow are watching with you.
\"The Bat People\" - more like \"The Bad People!!!!!\" LOL
1/10 of course!!!!!
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user\nThe movie that shoots scenes of a scenic caverns tour.
Remember no one from this movie except for Michael Pataki who dished out extreme pain as JC in \"Five the Hard Way\". He's the really annoying sheriff who I did applaud when he practices nightstick on our rabid doctor. Probably the most laughs you will have is with Dr. Beck's epileptic seizures out of nowhere. Could Mrs. Beck be anymore wooden? Seriously, if you took a 4 foot branch, stuck it in a hot tub, you wouldn't be able to notice a difference. The dread and suspense is looking over at the clock wondering when the credits will roll.
Watch it as a late night movie, MSTified, but don't go out of your way.
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user\n(spoilers)Wow, this is a bad one. I did a double take when watching an old Star Trek episode the other day-it was the one where everyone gets infected with that space sickness and then go a bit nuts-and there was Stewart Moss, a.k.a the unlikable 'hero' of It Lives by Night! He played the first crewmember infected, who dies from terminal depression. All I could think was that he'd watched his own movie too many times, that's what caused the depression. This movie is full of truly unlikable people. There is no redeeming character in the film, not one. 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. And you don't like his shrill, bony wife, or the nasty sleazy Sgt. Ward, or Dr. Mustache Love...So why would you invest any time or energy in this movie? Where there is no empathy with the characters, there is no reason to bother caring about it. Not to mention the horrible cinematography, which made it look like they'd filmed the movie through urine, and the five cent bat special effects, many of which appeared to be pieces of paper thrown into a fan to simulate hordes of bats flying. Not the worst film I've ever seen on MST3K, but down there in the bottom ranks, definitely.
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user\nPainful to watch, and not entirely for empathy with the struggles of the characters. Two of the main characters, Cynthia the mother and Monica the acknowledged daughter, spend the great bulk of the film pathetically mewling and bitterly bitching respectively. Their characters are so firmly established that their redemption into tolerable personalities after a quick family catharsis is unbelievable. It wasn't worth the wait. I wish a worthy pitch for honesty among families was less of a headache to view.
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user\nTime is precious. This film isn't. I must learn to ignore critics who rave about small films like Fargo and this complete waste of time.
The theater was packed and everyone left with the same reaction: Is this the film the critics are raving about? What a piece of crap!
The hook of this film is the upwardly mobile black daughter seeking out and finding her white trash family. Get it?
The acting is superb.
The production (lighting, sets, editing, sound) is about 2 steps above a 60 minutes story. The characters are shallow and unintelligent. I was insulted by the fact that these people could not figure out about each other what was blatantly obvious to the audience; the audience was murmuring to the movie screen what the characters should say next.
I have had more fun doing the laundry.
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user\nAt least among those movies with 100 votes or more. Nominated for best screenplay written directly for the screen? Brenda Blethyn nominated for best actress in a leading role?? Nominated for best picture?? I always disagree with many of the Oscar picks, but this movie might very well be the worst movie of all time to be honored by the Academy. The writing and acting were both horrible. Blethyn's perfomance in particular was one of the worst I've ever seen, and probably the most over-rated acting performance of all time. Awful movie, not worthy of the big screen and not worthy of any cable or television channel that has ever played it, including HBO(where I saw it). I am only thankful I didn't actually pay to see one of the most over-rated movies of all time.
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user\nFirst of all there wasn't really anything in this movie that grabbed me really. It wasn't a bad movie, just another movie where I said \"Well, that wasn't anything special\" after I'd seen it. There was probably drama and stuff, but it simply didn't grab me, but more seamed semi-dull. As I said in the headline it seamed very cheap in a way. The quality of the film itself (the images) seamed like a low quality and reminded me more of some cheap made for TV-movie than a well respected English film-maker. The camera angles and shots were very amateur like in my opinion. Didn't really have any close up shots or similar effects to produce interesting scenes. I haven't seen many English films and the ones I've seen didn't really impress me more than this and they seamed kind of similar done with the camera work, colors and such. \"Game\" tried to be more cool, hip & smart (see my review of \"Lola Rennt\" about this if you wish), but didn't succeed for me either. Overall just a little indifferent movie that wasn't anything special (at best, I'm afraid) and basically unfortunately over two hours wasted.
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user\nWell, EYEboy, I must say that it pleases me to no end when someone singles me out and tries to make fun of me, especially when it is someone who seems as intelligent as you do. My favorite part of your post was \"But no big bang-bang good-guy bad-guy here, kimosabe. Me suggest you stick to movie with lotsa bang bang.\"
Well said! I do like action movies, especially if they are well done, but I also like movies that don't have a whole lot of action, as long as THEY are well done. I'm sorry, but Secret's and Lies does not fit into that category and is simply a very bad movie. I really don't see very many non-American films, so maybe I was spoiled, and didn't realize how bad foreign films really were when I saw Secrets and Lies. Perhaps if I judge foreign movies by a different standard I could some day see how Secrets and Lies could possibly be one of the highest rated movies on the IMDB. Hmm... If true, that is very scary.
Jeremy Barger bits@midohio.net(new e-mail)
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user\n\"Horrible People\" ought to be the subtitle of this horrible film. If you want to see ordinary people doing ordinary things, then look out of your window at real life. But if you want to see unpleasant people doing dull things, you'll have to watch this horrible film by Mike Leigh. The characters talk at length, but never actually manage to communicate with each other. Why not? Presumably because Leigh things that all of us are as ineffective and pathetic as his actors, and he wants to film real life. But we're not, and he failed.
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user\nI have seen a lot of movies...this is the first one I ever walked out of the theater on. Don't even bother renting it. This is about as boring a soap opera as one can see...at least you don't have to pay to watch a soap opera, though.
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user\nThis movie was the most horrible movie watching experience i have ever had to endure, and what is worse is the fact that i had to watch it, and didn't have the opportunity to stop it because it was for school! Admittedly, the storyline was decent...but i found the acting terrible! The exception was Marianne Jean-Baptiste, i thought her performance was wonderful. She was the only highlight, without her, i doubt i would have been able to bear watching the film. Every time i hear somebody say \"daarling\" i cringe! i nearly attacked a customer the other day because they said \"it\". It made me remember one of the worst one and a half hours of my life!
(i apologise if this has offended anybody, i am only expressing my opinion)
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