Vampire Bats
Bats all, folks!
It's Creature Feature Saturday once
again. I was debating whether or not to watch George Romero's “Monkey
Shines” for today, but I just couldn't commit to it's long running
time (around 113 minutes), especially when the New York Rangers are
playing right now. If I accidentally type “Shoot the damn puck!”
that's why. Maybe I'll try it next week. It's not like I'm rushing
to watch the latest CGI SyFy Channel animalfest. I wasn't sure what
else to watch, but I saw that Xena, Warrior Princess herself, Lucy
Lawless, starred in an animal horror movie. She's always enjoyable,
so I figured I'd give it a shot.
Vampire Bats is a 2005 horror/animal
attack movie starring Lucy Lawless (Xena, Warrior Princess, Eurotrip)
as college professor/scientist Maddy Rierdon. Maddy and her husband
Dan are both professors at Tate University in Louisiana. Her students
Jason, Eden, and Aaron go to an underground rave out in the bayou.
They drink punch that is spiked with Ecstasy and Jason wanders off.
Lost in the woods, he is attacked and killed by vampire bats.
Sherriff Herbst questions Eden and Aaron in Jason's death, but Maddy
is able to prove their innocence. She inspects Jason's body and
points out vampire bat bite marks. The bites are strange and don't
exactly match up to those of a typical vampire bat. More bat attacks
occur, including at another rave and at a fancy yacht party attended
by Maddy. After some investigation, it is revealed that a local
chemical company called Carbide Waste Resources has been dumping
chemicals in the local water, mutating the vampire bats. Mayor
Poelker (Timothy Bottoms, The Paper Chase, The Girl Next Door) is
working with Carbide and is trying to keep Maddy and her students
from exposing them. Will Maddy be able to stop the bats and save the
town?
Xena is deadly with a broom
This movie is better than your average
animal-based horror movie, but not by much. The bats are thankfully
not over-CGI'd or look like cheap Halloween decorations on strings.
It's somewhere in the middle, but believable enough to not hinder the
movie. The plot is pretty standard with an evil corporation poisoning
the environment, mutating animals and turning them into murder
machines. Unfortunately, not a lot of time or effort is given to said
evil corporation. That aspect of the story only comes within the last
30 minutes or so. Most of the time is spent with a slow build for a
movie that doesn't need one. It's just mutant bats, let them go nuts
and eat some flesh. There's too much “in-between” time in the
movie. That's not to say there's no action or blood, just not enough
for my taste, and when they have close-up shots of the bats
attacking, it looks incredibly fake.
Lucy Lawless is very good in her role
and pretty to boot. Timothy Bottoms is a nice mixture of George W.
Bush and Rick Santorum, so I feel OK when I want to smash his face
in. The various college kids are fine and I never felt like they
didn't belong in college, which is a problem for some horror movies.
There are some plot holes in Vampire Bats that stuck out to me,
particularly the local police department so easily giving
information to Maddy after Jason's death. Jeez, has this place ever
heard of protocol or standard procedures? They even let her inspect
his body. A lawyer would have an aneurism over this type of
negligence.
"This isn't an old bat...it's a new one! RUN!!!!"
Vampire Bats has it's moments, but
overall, it's nothing special. Lucy Lawless puts in a good
performance along with the rest of the cast, but it's not enough to
overcome a plain story. The action is passable, but I would have
preferred more. For creature features, you could do plenty worse than
this movie, but you could also do better.
4/10
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