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6 out of 7 people found the following review useful: Pretty good by 1979 standards and if you're a Nick Mancuso fan as am I., 30 January 2000 Author: mj18 from Brooklyn, NY
I rented this movie because the Martin Cruz Smith book had recently come my way and I found it quite good. The movie is not unfaithful to the book, though it does suffer in comparison in the strength of the characterizations - in the book we learn why Youngman Duran, Mancuso's character, is so tortured which, of course, makes his ordeal much more significant and meaningful. I'm writing mainly to defend David Warner whom another reviewer characterized as as "bad actor". Warner is a terrific character actor who can presently be heard doing a rich villiany voice on the Saturday morning "Men in Black" cartoon (which is better than the movie, in my opinion). It seems Americans have trouble with classically trained English actors whose diction and style may seem too broad if your only frame of reference is Brad Pitt. Recently went to "Peeping Tom" and sat next to a group of teenagers who laughed all the way through, completely oblivious to the historical context of the film and its quality. So "Nightwing" is pretty good - good character acting (also love Strother Martin), lovely cinematography, nice Mancini score. Blood and gore special effects quite restrained a la 1979 technology, so if that's your thing this isn't your movie.
4 out of 5 people found the following review useful: Love it!!, 11 January 2006 Author: charlenelv from United States
I liked this movie so much that it prompted me to take a trip to New Mexico and to eventually move there!! Unfortunately, due to medical problems, I was forced to come back to Kansas, but I will never regret moving to the Southwest.Okay, so Nick Mancuso, who played Duran, sounded like he was from the Bronx occasionally and the tribes were renamed, but I purchased the VHS tape many years ago and check out every DVD web site hoping to find it there. It is probably the only reason I still have a VCR.++++++The book was written by Martin Cruz Smith, an accomplished author, it was directed by Arthur Hiller, and the musical score done by Henry Mancini. Just how bad could it be?? If it is a horror movie you are looking for, this is not going to satisfy you. But a movie about the hardships and superstitions that still persist on the Navajo and Hopi reservations is as relevant as it was when Nightwing was made back in the 70s. I think that if the movie had not been billed as a "horror" flick, it would have gained much more of a following. I find it quite amusing that although it has never been made as a DVD, it is still found almost every other month on one of the pay movie channels. So I guess I'm not the only one who thinks that Nightwing is worth watching!
5 out of 7 people found the following review useful: The Day belongs to Man...The Night belongs to Them, 7 March 2004 Author: sol from Brooklyn NY USA
******SPOILERS****** One of the main reasons that I like "Nightwing" is that the movie educates the audience about the subject matter in it. You learn more about Vampire Bats in just a five minute conversation between Phillip Payne, David Warner, the Bat investigator and Walker Chee, Stephan Macht, the Indian official then you learned about the same subject in all the movies that Hollywood made about Bats put together. The movie also gives you an interesting look about what I think is it's main subject; the mystical and religious as well as the cultural customs of the American Indians of the American South-West. The movie "Nightwing" has a dual story in it. Deadly Vampire Bat attacks on people and livestock in the South-West, the state of Arizona. There's an attempt by a big oil conglomerate, Peabody Mining, to buy up and strip mine a large section of two Indian Reservations, the Pahana & Maskie. This is being done with the help of a corrupt top Indian official, Walker Chee, in the Bureau of Indian Affairs. A number of cows and horses are found dead and the local farmers as well as government officials are left confused and baffled by what caused it. These incidents have attracted Phillip Payne who's a bat researcher or as he calls himself "The Exterminating Angel" to the area. Payne has been tracking down the migration of Vampire Bats since 1973 from South America Mexico and now to the southern part of the United States and he thinks that a large colony of Vampire Bats are responsible for whats been happening in the places effected with dead livestock and now people. There has also developed a number of deaths due to Bubonic Plague which Payne feel that the Bats are transmitting to both people as well as animals. Both the Peabody Mining Corp. and Walker Chee want to keep all this out of the news in order to protect their attempted land grab in the area.With nothing able to stop the "Killer Bats" advance as they attack and kill people and cattle almost undeterred as a last resort Indian Police Sheriff Youngman Duran, Nick Mancuso,tries something new to stop the killer bats. With the help of ancient Indian Mysticism that Duran learned from his friend and Maskie Indian High Priest Abner Tasupi, George Clutsei, he's able to stem the tide of the Vampire Bat invasion. Defiantly better then most of the movies about the same subject with it's focus on detail science and history instead of horror shock and gore. The rivalry between the upright and honest Indian Sheriff Youngman Duran and the corrupt and deceiving Indian official Walker Chee alone makes the movie interesting all by itself.The Bat menace in the movie was intelligently handled and the film tried as much as possible to keep the supernatural and mystical angle in check making it more real as well as effective. The final sequence of "Nightwing" in the deadly "Bat Cave" as Duran Payne and Duran's girlfriend Anne Dillion, Kathryn Harrold, were working against the clock, or better yet the night, to destroy the giant Vampire Bat colony before it woke up was nail biting and very effectively done. The scenes of the Bat attacks in the movie, there were only three, were believable as well as shocking even though the special effects back then, in 1979, were primitive to what they are in movies today. All and all "Nightwing"is one of the most unknown, it's almost impossible to find it on VHS today and it's never been released on DVD, and at the same time best movies about "Killer Bats" that you'll ever see.
5 out of 7 people found the following review useful: Not as bad as you'd think, not quite, 22 July 1999 Author: (otter_c@ix.netcom.com) from Mountain View, Ca.
Okay, it's not a good movie, how could a movie about a plague of killer vampire bats in the American desert possibly be good? Especially with all the corpses covered with bat pee, and a mad scientist played by a ham bad actor?But it has some redeeming qualities. It's set on a beautiful southwestern Indian reservation, and our hero is a likeable tribal cop like my fave rave Jim Chee (and a stud). The location photography is nice to look at, most of the acting is decent, and the finale is worth a look. How do you kill off a whole cave full of vampire bats at once? I like their method...
3 out of 4 people found the following review useful: Mysticism Uber Alles, 30 October 2005 Author: skallisjr from Tampa, FL United States
This movie's fun, if based on a questionable premise. We have the stereotypical Menace -- in this case, vampire bats -- who have to be exterminated before they Get Us All, and the pivotal character is an American Indian cop.A tribal elder on a reservation is apparently behind the appearance of the bats, as he apparently shamanistically summoned them to "end the world." This because sacred grounds are being threatened by an industrialist, who wants to exploit resources.Now, a word of reality here: movies to the contrary, real Vampire Bats don't suck blood. They evolved from fruit bats, and they nip their sleeping victims and lap the blood. The astonishing thing is that they do this without waking their victims. Their bite and anticoagulant saliva are being studied by medical institutions for new technological advances (in surgery and anesthesiology). They're neither aggressive nor dangerous.Nonetheless, the movie bats are a menace, and a force of nature. The film reaches a satisfactory ending, which solved the problem set up by the industrialist, too. Fun, but not to be taken seriously.
3 out of 4 people found the following review useful: My favorite killer bat movie., 15 February 2004 Author: Aaron1375 from Alabama
Not that I can think of any others. In fact, the only other killer bat movie I know of is "Bats" and it looked really bad. This one though I liked...as a kid anyway. It used to come on HBO and Cinemax all the time when I was a kid and I watched it numerous times, it was a horror movie that was PG and easy to see, a rarity in those days. This movie is of course about killer bats terrorizing an Indian reservation. There are conflicts of culture and other messages of this sort, but for me it was the killer bats. David Warner is in this one as a researcher, and he has a rather good scene where he is stuck hung up in a most dangerous position. There is also another Indian, who I think was some sort of law enforcement agent or some sort of park supervisor who is also trying to find out what is behind the strange killings. There is a good scene where the bats attack this group in the desert and many other good bat attack scenes. There are also a number of scenes that may be happening or they may just be a hallucination.
1 out of 1 people found the following review useful: Forgotten chills., 12 October 2007 Author: haildevilman from Tokyo, Japan
This was better than it's rep.A horror film about bats? Why not? It seemed like a good idea. But in Mr. Hiller's hands it became a bit more soap opera than horror. That's not to say there isn't any horror however.The effects sucked. Sorry. It's the only way to describe it. But the atmosphere was great. Dark nights in the desert already had most people eeried out.The critics crushed this one with extreme prejudice. And fans of M.C. Smith's novel weren't that nice either. (Kind of like they wouldn't be later when they did 'Gorky Park.') A lot of good build-up, but the story was second rate. It's worth a watch though. It used to play late-night cable once in a while. Some vid-bins still carry it too. If bats are your thing...
2 out of 3 people found the following review useful: What do you mean 'we', Hollywood Man?, 27 October 2008 Author: SanFernandoCurt from L.A.
This movie is beautifully shot in the breathtaking reservation area of Northern New Mexico. It has some really fine actors - some of them unfortunately wearing "Indian" pancake. And it has some really foolish ideas about, like, man, our cultural priorities. ...Man.Released at the tail-end of the first wave of "social consciousness" in the 1970s, "Nightwing" is a wicker basket full of all that decade's mumbo-jumbo curios: fetishistic treatment of Native-Americans, kneejerk "environmental" shortsightedness and a relentless anti-Christian slant. In short, this pow-wow is drummed up straight from the Hollywood Hills reservation; it so reeks of tapas-bar manifesto, the air around it practically bends light waves. The most amusing aspect is its application of what can only be called Carlos Casteneda Forensics: The tribal cop ingests some hallucinogenic roots to break the case. Cool! If this crap mindset didn't still blinker us so relentlessly, this nonsense would be amusing, as is the idea of "protecting" native lands from voracious oil exploration (and... gosh... tribal employment) by setting the canyons afire! Sometimes the most progressive ideas are the most bust-out stupid.Best scene: Some cardboard evil/cowardly honkies drive campers over their own to escape the hysterically funny mechanical bats.
Vampire bats take backseat to peyote hallucinations, 7 September 2009 Author: udar55 from Williamsburg, VA
A group of vampire bats descend upon two Indian reservations that stand as the ground for a feud between honest Deputy Duran (Nick Mancuso) and money hungry Walker (Stephen Macht). Also cruising around the desert is Phillip Rayne (David Warner), a guy who hunts vampire bats. What the heck is going on with this film? What should have been a straightforward "JAWS with wings" gets turned into a bizarre commentary on Indian mysticism, politics and environmentalism. But PROPHECY (1980) this ain't. Anyway, I dig someone trying to do something original and all this would be fine if the film wasn't so boring. The few moments there are bat attacks are so poorly handled by director Arthur Hiller, that you can only dream of how someone with a sense of suspense could have pulled them off. All of the actors are fine, but their motivations are paper thin. "I kill them because they are evil," is how Warner justifies his ridiculous supporting turn as the vampire bat hunter with a state-of- the-art van and no means for financing. On the plus side, there are some stunning locations in New Mexico and a great score by Henry Mancini.
One man's superstition is another man's religion!, 22 May 2009 Author: lastliberal from Florida
Two tribes on the reservation. One, the Maski, is protected by Deputy Youngman Duran (Nick Mancuso), and the other by Walker Chee (Stephen Macht). the problem is that Chee wants to mine for oil on Duran's part of the reservation in an area that is holy ground.High Priest Abner Tasupi (George Clutesi) has a solution and he opens the gates between life and death. It cost him his life - or did it, since he is not in his grave.Enter Phillip Payne (David Warner) with the answer to why animals are dying. He is a vampire hunter - vampire bats, that is. Can he destroy the bats before bubonic plague covers the area? Duran's girlfriend Anne (Kathryn Harrold) leads a group of Quakers on a camping and fishing trip when the bats decide they are tired of animals. The bats coming out of the night sky were really scary creatures. The Quaker men were somewhat unchristian in their efforts to survive, leaving two women to die, but they got theirs. The bat attack on the Quakers was so good, I watched it twice before moving on.Swine flu gets mentioned as a possible cause of death of seven priests, but it was plague. It is suspected that the priests stole Abner's body and got the plague from him.In the end, the bats were consumed the way they always are, with a little Indian magic, of course. Abner still won as the eternal fires will prevent mining.Mancuso, Warner, and Nacht gave good performances, and it was interesting to hear about bats through the ages.
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