I saw this film on the television show, Mystery Science Theater 3000 under the title, It Lives By Night. That title is a lot better than the main one, The Bat People. The problem is that there is only really one person in this film to turn into a bat on screen, thus making the people part of The Bat People null and void. I guess Bat People does sound better than Bat Person. Granted, the wife was obviously becoming one, but she is never shown transforming in anyway. Heck, even the husband is shown one time in the film in full bat form. So, yeah, I would say they should go with It Lives By Night as the official title as the title Bat People suggests to me a whole race of people living in caves and terrorizing a small community which would have probably been a better film than this one. About the best things to be said about this one is the fact you get to see one of Stan Winston's earlier films which is not really a big deal seeing as how you only get to see the full makeup once and the mustache of the doctor! Seriously, it is not a horrible film, just kind of dull and annoying.
The story has a pair of newlyweds going on an overdue honeymoon which apparently includes them going on a very boring cave tour. He is either a doctor of preventive medicine or a bat specialist, not sure which as the movie implies both. All I do know is that he wants to go on this tour to study the bats which makes me wonder why he could not get in and have a private tour? He is studying rabies, you'd think he could get in without having to deal with the boring tour guide droning on. Well, his wife feels frisky and they get stranded in a cave and he is bitten by a bat. Of course, this really does not cause the problems as he is shown suffering from nightmares before this even happens. I think it was his little secret that he wanted to turn into a bat. Well, at a crummy ski resort he starts showing signs of rabies and soon he and doctor mustache try to combat the condition, but seems it is more than rabies! He is turning into a bat person and killing and a sheriff that seems to have plenty of evidence to take the guy in, but would rather just hound the good doctor instead. The sheriff is an idiot, but I am still more inclined to root for him to take the good doctor in considering the good doctor is killing people for their blood while his wife says he has done nothing wrong despite the growing evidence and body count!
As an episode of MST3K, it was rather good as there is a lot of fodder offered to them thanks to the film. From cave tours that happen days apart, but feature the same people, to a guy turning into a bat and a hobo who is very proud of his stink...this episode has it all! The bumps in this one are good too as they poke fun of the fact the wife looks vaguely like Mary Tyler Moore, they have a rabies shot bump and one featuring the guys on the satellite of love sporting a mustache like the doctor. An all around good episode and one of the episodes that just really brings it home that I prefer Mike episodes to Joel. They just always seem to hit on all cylinders in Mike's episodes. I do like Joel too, just seems he had more episodes that had dead spots and were a bit more clunky.
So, this film was not great, but not completely terrible. I could easily name ten films or more that were not even done by MST3K that were worse, that being said I could easily name thousands of films better too. The effects are okay, Stan Winston did not really get to showcase his work in this one much as the full beast is only shown once and it seems to be only a simple makeup job. I usually associate Rick Baker with makeup and Stan Lee with mechanized props more. Perhaps the film could have bee a bit better had they had some nudity in it and some more kills as horror films in this time were beginning to skew more into that formula, instead it plays out more like a late 60's horror film that is less horror and more other things like drama and such.
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