Blizzard of Pixels: Bats (1999)

My dear readers, though I am fully aware of the idiomatic implications, I feel it is entirely worth mentioning that my dear Penny Dee and I currently have bats in our belfry. This is no allusion to minds ill at ease but rather an admission that a whole cloud of Myotis septentrionalis have made a residence of the bell tower in our west wing. And what a merry family they seem to be! Chirping happily away as night draws near and making quite a little spectacle of themselves as they exit for their evening. Aside from the one bulky albino chap who scratches little runes in the floorboards and fixes me with the most intelligent gaze, this little colony seems a welcome addition to any home.

Not even the light of midday can chase away the sinister shadows that follow Bob Gunton

No such luck, I’m afraid, with the inhabitants of Bats (1999). While off on what one assumes is a routine bat-minded expedition, renowned chiropterologist Dr. Sheila Casper (Dina Meyer) is approached by the Center for Disease Control to consult on a mysterious crisis. She and her assistant are ferried away to Gallup, Texas, where a pair of escaped experimental lab bats have been messing about with the local population, spreading their flashy new genes and inspiring the surrounding colony to new deadly heights. They are accompanied by the very scientist (Bob Gunton) who whipped up this adorable pair of hell raisers, a man who beams dubious motives from the very start.

Bats checks all the appropriate boxes for a film about mutated creatures on the loose. It features a top expert in her field, a gritty law enforcement officer (Lou Diamond Phillips), a scientist who puts his discovery over the safety of the group and a sidekick (Jimmy Sands) whose every action and statement is rooted in cowardice. All perform their functions admirably. Ms. Meyer and Mr. Phillips are a winning pair and their inevitable personality clashes make for some of the film’s better dialogue. At one point, Phillips asks her if her study of bats makes her, “a bat-ologist,” betraying his position as a man whose grasp of Latin roots is rudimentary at best.

The critical circuit of 1999 was not especially kind to Bats, much of the reviewers being all kinds of discontent over with the film’s “camp” tone and its lack of genuine frights. But now that the smaller screen has been inundated with Crocokrakens and Mechatubers and what have you, I suspect that some of those same critics would be forced to admit that Bats packs a little more charm than your standard issue creature feature. Perhaps time has turned me into a sentimental fool incapable of the critical judgment that my vocation requires but I, for one, am heartened to see someone slapping together a little latex and puppetry amid the computer generated swarm. They may look more like Ghoulies with wings than any recognizable airborne Rodentia but they are still a charming relic from an era where a blizzard of pixels wasn’t the only outlet for the fantastical.

Bats runs 91 minutes and is rated PG-13 for intense sequences of bat attacks and brief language.