Lucybespro It is a performances centric movie

Baseshment I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

Odelecol Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

Forumrxes Yo, there's no way for me to review this film without saying, take your *insert ethnicity + "ass" here* to see this film,like now. You have to see it in order to know what you're really messing with.

Charles McGrew This was a movie that had one too many bad-things.We start with a group of strangers (reminding one of TZ's "five characters in search of an exit," in all the right ways) tossed into a it's-the-end-of-the-world survival pod. Add in one maintenance man (the always reliable Richard Jaekel), and one... well, traitor (Bradford Dillman in strangely fitting glasses, for some reason). And pretty much everybody falls to pieces with the knowledge of what's happened to everyone they know.That's a great story. Add in the possibility that this is some sort of macabre psychological experiment, but that no matter what, nobody can leave. That's a greater story. Add in... vampire bats?!? Suddenly a human story is converted into a piranhas-are-out-to-get-me scream-fest. And suddenly ridiculous. Now we're just waiting for someone to be killed, screaming, by swarms of vampire bats, while some try to find a way out, and are killed, screaming.This could have been a fantastic movie (along the lines of another 'survivor' tv-movie, the superb "Sole Survivor" (1970), or the equally superb "Groundstar Conspiracy" (1972)), but somebody decided "there needs to be an immediate danger", and that it should be vampire bats. Too bad.

MartinHafer "Chosen Survivors" is a rare film. It has a GREAT story idea but it's completely undone by bad writing. It's a shame, as the main plot is fantastic.A small group of people find themselves sedated and brought to a shelter more than 1700 feet underground. It seems that the dreaded nuclear apocalypse has arrived and the government has picked a few people to secure in various bunkers under the earth in order to propagate the human race. Much of the film concerns how these folks adapt to their new lives--or, rather, how some of them cannot cope. I loved the film up to this point and felt it was a brilliant study of human nature. Then, abruptly, the film took a detour to Stupidville! That's because without warning, insane vampire bats invade the bunker. I say insane because these bats in real life are NOT killers--but here in the film they are worse than killer bees, piranhas and Cobras combined!!! Bats just don't behave that way and then too much of a once-interesting story is spent focusing on how to survive with these murderous beasts flapping about....which is a shame, as the film has a wonderful twist that is lost in the process. A great example of a wonderful story idea that is ultimately ruined.

microx96002 and was it worth the wait? The answer is no, all the time I thought I was missing something, I wasn't! Just think your average 1970's TV movie of the week ( but this one got released to theaters), with your average TV movie cast i.e. Jackie Cooper,Richard Jaeckel etc. All capable actors, but even capable actors need a script. This one didn't have much of a plot, and the effects even by 1970's standards were not very good. I don't want to give away much of the story, but I've seen better, more realistic bats in 1940's Universal Dracula movies! Except for the occasional close up of a real bat, they are all badly animated. So, if you're into cheesy 70's sci-fi this one's OK to rent, however I'd think twice about shelling out $12-$15 for it. The black and white B-movie Earth Dies Screaming (that accompanied it on DVD)is more entertaining, in a 1960's Black and white B Movie sort of way!

Woodyanders How's this for a really inspired and effective handy-dandy sci-fi/horror combo premise: Let's take your basic randomly selected motley assortment of everyday folks gathered together in a deep, isolated, self-contained underground nuclear fall-out shelter so they can survive an impending end-of-the-world holocaust tale and embellish on this standard situation with a borrowing from the then hip killer-animals-run-amuck trend by having a horde of vicious, relentless, chattering vampire bats with a taste for human blood attack the understandably terrified bunch at regular bloodcurdling intervals. Sounds like a pretty desperately reaching "high concept" effort, right? Well, that brusque blow-off assumption is wrong. Dead wrong.Under episodic TV show vet Sutton Roley's taut, capable direction the admittedly threadbare story works surprisingly well, resulting in a genuinely scary, creepy and suspenseful nail-biter. The neatly varied cast helps a lot; they fill out their stock roles with commendable conviction. Former child actor Jackie Cooper portrays a cross, feet-of-clay rich jerk grumbler with stand-out sliminess. Constantly reliable B-pic perennials Richard Jaeckel (who later had a fatal run-in with a killer bear in "Grizzly" and got offed by a pack of wild dogs in "Day of the Animals") and Alex Cord (the latter bears a passing resemblance to tough guy thesp extraordinaire William Smith here) make for properly stalwart heroes. The always composed and elegant Diana Muldaur brings a welcome touch of class to the tense, grisly proceedings. Future "Hill Street Blues" regular Barbara Babcock is a lovely damsel in distress. A bespectacled Bradford Dillman (who went on to get stung to death by killer bees in "The Swarm" and had his face nibbled on by carnivorous fish in "Piranha") nerds it up nicely as a duplicitous dweeby scientist. Chronically unsung character actors Pedro Armendariz, Jr. and Lincoln Kilpatrick contribute solid performances as an eminently expendable decent dude and a gallant, rugged Olympic athlete, respectively. The sequence where Kilpatrick tries to climb out of the subterranean shelter on a rope is both gripping and nerve-wracking. The bat attacks are almost unbearably frightening and ferocious. The claustrophobic set design, Gabriel Torres' cramped, closed-in cinematography, Fred Karlin's jazzy, spooky score, the unremittingly eerie tone, and the bleakly ironic ending all add considerably to the gut-wrenching tension. And those nasty screeching bats are truly horrifying little suckers!