NIGHTWING (1979)
Article #480 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 7-8-2002
Posting date: 12-1-2002

An Indian reservation finds itself the site of an infestation of vampire bats.

This movie reaches its make-or-break moment (it’s first full-blown bat attack) at about the halfway point; since my first reaction on seeing the bats was to say to myself, “Look at the puppets,” I would have make a call of “break” on this one. Not that it was batting a thousand before we reach that moment; the movie was suffering from catatonic acting (I was grateful to David Warner for being able to instill some energy in the proceedings) and an abundance of overly-familiar subplots (an evil corporate bigwig who tries to suppress the knowledge of the bats’ existence, for example). Still, for all that, the movie never quite becomes an unwatchable snoozefest; but it never really gets exciting, scary, or convincing, either. It does serve as a nice background movie for working a crossword puzzle, as you can proceed with the full confidence that nothing is going to become so involving (in either the puzzle or the movie) that it will totally distract you from the other task at hand.