1010 - IT LIVES BY NIGHT

Genre:  Psychological Horror (1974, Color)

Don’s Synopsis:  This movie is yet another example of those slow moving and incredibly lame horror movies that seemed to spring up in the ’70s which, instead of trying to scare the audience, they try to bore the audience to death.  In this, a couple (Dr. John Beck and Cathy Beck) is driving into the desert to visit a bat cave / tourist trap.  Inside the cave, they decide to sneak off to fool around when bats attack them.  John is bitten and soon begins to undergo some strange behavior: going into seizures, having strange nightmare, blacking out, and... oh, yeah, turning into a giant bat.  Actually, the movie tries to make it appear that John may just be going mad and only “thinks” he’s turning into a bat.  His wife Cathy assures him that there’s nothing wrong with him, it’s all just due to rabies or the anti-rabies drugs he’s taking.  While his ski-bum, porno-star doctor friend also thinks there is nothing to worry about.  But a McCloud-wannabe cop thinks John is responsible for all the murders that seem to happen everywhere John currently is – and Officer McCloud is right, John is killing all of these people!  The rest of the movie shows John having weird nightmares;  John “maybe” turning into a big bat;  and John stealing vehicles so he can drive back and forth between the hospital and the bat cave.  The entire time, the McCloud cop is chasing him around and doing a rather bad job of police work given that he’s got good reason to go ahead and arrest Mr. I-Am-a-Bat at anytime.  And John’s wife Cathy continuously insists that her husband is okay.  But, in the end, she eventually joins him because she too was apparently bitten by a bat and is now also a bat (or something).

Don’s Review:  This incredible boring movie is actually a pretty good MST episode due to great riffing by M&tBs.  A lot of the riffs were very funny, making this one of the best-riffed episode of Season 10.  The host segments also were fairly humorous for the most part.  So, although the movie itself does take some wind from the sails a bit for being so amazingly dull, this is a pretty good episode, overall.

Don’s Rating: 

Forrest’s Synopsis:  There are good movies out there, and then there are bad movies.  But then, there are movies that do not stand out because they are good, nor do they stand out because they’re bad.  They are forgotten one minute after viewing.  They are stoic, emotionless films that are made simply because the person responsible had a camera.  They are not as brilliant as Rear Window, nor are they as inept as Manos: The Hands of Fate.  They are just there.  That would describe this movie best.  It’s about a guy, he gets bitten by a bat, kills a few people, and then, by having sex with his wife, he turns her into a bat (?).  So ends possibly the most pointless movie of all time.

Forrest’s Review:  From writing this, I rewatched this episode only about an hour ago, and the movie is so forgettable, that I couldn’t even make a good synopsis for it. This episode reminds me a lot of Bloodlust, just a very forgettable movie.  The riffing in this was very good at times, I’d be laughing for a long time, and then, suddenly I’d stop laughing for a long time.  The riffing was very unbalanced. Especially the first half.  The first theater segment was filled with some pretty lame riffing, quite possibly the lamest riffing of all of the Mike era.  But then, by the second half, the riffing gets pretty damn good, and the Charlie McCarthy riff had me laughing on the floor.  The host segments were also mostly movie related, and pretty funny for the most part.  So, this is a reasonably good episode, but rather forgettable.  It’s easy to see why this episode got the least votes in the Rhino poll.

Forrest’s Rating: