I cannot imagine how this weird little 1979 horror/drama ever got made. I remember seeing it at a drive in back in 1979, waiting for something to happen. NIGHTWING is a horror film about bats, right?
We meet Indian Reservation lawman Youngman Duran (Nick Mancuso) as he investigates some strange livestock deaths among his people.
His adversary Walker Chee (Stephen Macht) is always there as well, but the film clumsily establishes that Chee is always out for himself and Duran is truly there to protect his people.
Like everything else in the film, its never really explained why, just beaten over our heads so we go along.
Duran is in love with Anne Dillon, played by Kathryn Harrold in a horrible, community theatre level performance. I was hoping the bats would attack her sooner rather than later just to spare me any more dramatic moments. Their love scene together is so badly staged it's just awkward (again, where were the bats when we needed them!?)
So anyway....David Warner shows up as a scientist that lives to hunt vampire bats (why? who cares, the screenwriter doesn't) and the great Strother Martin (Cool Hand Luke, Slap Shot) plays a spitting, racist grocery store owner that kind of comes and goes throughout.
A group of missionaries are attacked by a swarm of vampire bats, who apparently share my low tolerance for people singing "Kumbuya" around the campfire.
Duran eats weeds that make him hallucinate about his ancestors, more bats fly around with special effects surpassed by "The Munsters" and it's all very nap inducing.
Director Arthur Hiller (Silver Streak, Love Story) is really slumming here, as is Henry Mancini who seems lost trying to orchestrate something fitting.
Someone please get bit, get rabies, do something...
NIGHTWING flaps and shrieks its way to an F.
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