There are not words to express the joy and exuberance I feel after paying $9.50 for the likely Oscar contender Bats, a cinematic masterpiece well on its way to breaking Titanic's box office record. Never has a film contained such emotional resonance, or carried me to such lofty intellectual heights, as has Bats, a film about... bats. My life can now be broken into two distinct eras: B.B. (Before Bats) and A.B. (After Bats). As with all great movies, it can be said that I was not the same person coming out of Bats as I was going into it. Unfortunately, that truth also applies to my wallet, and to an even greater degree, my propensity towards sarcasm...
Where shall I begin in detailing this enchanting cinematic journey? See, the plot of Bats is very, very complex, and raises an abundance of challenging questions. (Questions like why it didn't go straight to video, or when it's going to be over... but anyway.) Bats tells the untraditional, not-at-all-clichéd tale of a Small-Town Sheriff (Lou Diamond Phillips, desperately awaiting that La Bamba sequel), a Female Scientist (Dina Meyer, who between this, Starship Troopers and 90210 has filled her cheese quotient for the next four centuries) and a Token Black Male (the undeservingly one-monikered Leon) who battle a swarm of Killer Bats.
As is true of all of these idiotic, inept, Z-grade movies, no one is quite certain where these lethal creatures came from, although I'd venture one would find a helpful "Made in Taiwan" sticker under their wings upon closer inspection. Regardless of their mysterious origin, the crux of the matter is that these fiends must be stopped, before they do something terrible like bore an audience silly for 90 minutes and produce some of the worst dialogue of the last ten years -- oh wait, too late. Of course, the trick to Bats is that it isn't really the winged rodents doing the attacking -- that task goes to the film's mad editor, who cuts every action sequence like Michael Bay on steroids. The film is one grainy, poorly-lit blitzkrieg of a shot after another; the fast pace is meant to heighten tension but only further proves the lack of imagination and competence of director Louis Morneau.
And for all my kvetching about the soulless big-budget CGI of The Haunting a few months back (reviewed in issue 3), after seeing Bats I have never been more grateful to have no memory of a time before VCRs and video stores. If this is what theatrical B-movies were like, you can have them, and I'll just go watch Mystery Science Theater 3000. Bats is something that should have never, never gotten theatrical release; not just because its main villains are pieces of rubber on strings, but because this cheap, half-ass mentality permeates the movie as a whole. My advice to those brave and still curious souls: wait until Bats is out on video (in, oh, say, a week), and then just keep on waiting.
DROOL FACTOR: Oh Lou Diamond Phillips, what has become of thee?! My fourth-grade crush has mutated into a...um...a star of Bats! (Believe me, there is no greater turn-off. Except maybe Leon.)
GROSS-OUT FACTOR: There's a scene in which Lou Diamond wades knee-deep in bat shit. And no, I'm not just being metaphorical.
STRONG CHICK FACTOR: The thing is, I really dig Dina Meyer. Much to the horror of my co-editors, I absolutely adored Starship Troopers and thought Dina was terrific, even if she had really weird breasts. Here she is useless, suffering through a role that makes her 90210 stint as Lucinda Nicholson look like a reworking of Hamlet. Oh well -- at least she didn't take her top off.
--Sarah Kendzior
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