Entry Twenty-One: The Bat People (1974)

The Bat People (1974)

Dir: Jerry Jameson

"After the sun has set, and the night wind has died, comes the hour of the bat people!"

Samuel Z. Arkoff's legendary AIP released this (pretty pedestrian) entry in the 70's "bodily transformation" cycle (see also The Mutations, Ssssssss!).

Newly married Dr. Kirk Langstr...Err...Dr. John Beck (Stewart Moss, Raise the Titanic!) is doing research on bats in the hope of securing a grant in the field of preventative medicine.  On his honeymoon, he decides to drag his wife, Cathy (Marianne McAndrew, TV's Murphy Brown) into some dangerous caves.  BIG mistake.  John is bitten by a rabid bat and soon begins to undergo nocturnal transformations into a bat-like creature.  John attacks and kills a couple of vagrants and horny teenagers, but balances this out by using his medical training to try to help folks during his lucid periods.  He's hunted by Cathy and tough cop Ward (Michael Pataki, Easy Rider, Batman: the Animated Series).  Ward promises to help find a cure for John, but, when Cathy refuses his rapey advances, sets out to kill him instead.  John infects Cathy and, as the "bat-people," they team up to kill Beck and set off to form their own society.

This derivative feature owes a great debt to Frank Robbins' and Neal Adams' Man-Bat stories from Detective Comics and is most notable as the first credited effects job by Stan (here credited as "Stanley") Winston (The Terminator, Aliens, Predator, Jurassic Park).