Sunday, October 05, 2008

31 Days of Halloween - Day 5 Movie








You'd be hard pressed to find many genre movies made during the 1970s that didn't look like they were made for tv. "Chosen Survivors" (1974) is no exception. A group of eleven people selected to repopulate the earth after nuclear annihilation are sequestered in a high tech bunker 0ver 17,000 feet beneath the ground. Initially, the only problem they need to overcome is loudmouth CEO Jackie Cooper, who turns out to be the only character who isn't a complete cypher, and he's pretty one dimensional.

Before their first night is through they have a bigger problem. An elecrical problem causes the lights to go out and somehow let in hordes of vampire bats which start working their way through the human population, no matter how they try to fight back.

The premise behind this movie isn't bad, and I was never bored, but the script and execution are pretty poor. Aside from the group of undeveloped characters, this movie spreads inaccurate, and negative bat propaganda, and clearly did not have the ASCPA on hand, as you can clearly see Richard Jaeckel smacking real bats out of the air with a pillow. You can argue they might only have been stunned, but hitting animals is hitting animals. I had this same problem with "Food of the Gods". Most of the bat attack scenes mix poor chroma key superimposition with rubber prop bats. It's a real hokey movie.

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