kaefab Wow i was expecting better from this movie, but i guess too much after seeing foods of the god.I was able to watch the movie on youtube, its not bad but the bats are regular bats nothing more and the movie is slow moving so nothing much happens.

MartinHafer "Chosen Survivors" is a rare film. It has a GREAT story idea but it's completely undone by bad writing. It's a shame, as the main plot is fantastic.A small group of people find themselves sedated and brought to a shelter more than 1700 feet underground. It seems that the dreaded nuclear apocalypse has arrived and the government has picked a few people to secure in various bunkers under the earth in order to propagate the human race. Much of the film concerns how these folks adapt to their new lives--or, rather, how some of them cannot cope. I loved the film up to this point and felt it was a brilliant study of human nature. Then, abruptly, the film took a detour to Stupidville! That's because without warning, insane vampire bats invade the bunker. I say insane because these bats in real life are NOT killers--but here in the film they are worse than killer bees, piranhas and Cobras combined!!! Bats just don't behave that way and then too much of a once-interesting story is spent focusing on how to survive with these murderous beasts flapping about....which is a shame, as the film has a wonderful twist that is lost in the process. A great example of a wonderful story idea that is ultimately ruined.

drystyx The premise for this movie is 11 people in an underground shelter, specially chosen for being doctors, athletes, artists, and the like, are to represent the survival of the human race in a nuclear holocaust.It's made in 1974, so we can expect the worst.However, it isn't the absolute worst.Naturally, then, as today, one wonders if this being an "initial" project, if it isn't a test. The man in charge seems very convincing that it isn't a test.Meanwhile, vampire bats flood the shelter, and they have to be dealt with.One good thing is that not too much detail is spent on how the shelter is self sustaining. That's good foresight, as such details are not only going to change every three years, but also because no matter what the details are, most viewers who think themselves experts will whine about such details being inferior. In such a case, there will never be a majority consensus, except to pout about what is used. The best one can hope for is a plurality, and even then it will usually be a plurality of ignorance.That's the best thing going for this movie.One thing viewers will note is that women scream and panic in movies from about 1960-1975 or so, to the point of silliness.However, lets not forget that "panic of characters in death struggles" is not nearly as silly as the 1975-2000 period in which no one panics, and actors calmly smile at death.Fortunately, we have pre-1960 and post-2000 films which usually present a believable balance.The characters aren't so bad, but they are very formula for the seventies.The events are predictable at first, then it looks like they might have some fresh material in the middle, but then the end is complete Hollywood. The last 10 minutes is so cliché filled that one wonders if it was meant as a joke. And that means "cliche filled for 1974" as well as today.

Woodyanders How's this for a really inspired and effective handy-dandy sci-fi/horror combo premise: Let's take your basic randomly selected motley assortment of everyday folks gathered together in a deep, isolated, self-contained underground nuclear fall-out shelter so they can survive an impending end-of-the-world holocaust tale and embellish on this standard situation with a borrowing from the then hip killer-animals-run-amuck trend by having a horde of vicious, relentless, chattering vampire bats with a taste for human blood attack the understandably terrified bunch at regular bloodcurdling intervals. Sounds like a pretty desperately reaching "high concept" effort, right? Well, that brusque blow-off assumption is wrong. Dead wrong.Under episodic TV show vet Sutton Roley's taut, capable direction the admittedly threadbare story works surprisingly well, resulting in a genuinely scary, creepy and suspenseful nail-biter. The neatly varied cast helps a lot; they fill out their stock roles with commendable conviction. Former child actor Jackie Cooper portrays a cross, feet-of-clay rich jerk grumbler with stand-out sliminess. Constantly reliable B-pic perennials Richard Jaeckel (who later had a fatal run-in with a killer bear in "Grizzly" and got offed by a pack of wild dogs in "Day of the Animals") and Alex Cord (the latter bears a passing resemblance to tough guy thesp extraordinaire William Smith here) make for properly stalwart heroes. The always composed and elegant Diana Muldaur brings a welcome touch of class to the tense, grisly proceedings. Future "Hill Street Blues" regular Barbara Babcock is a lovely damsel in distress. A bespectacled Bradford Dillman (who went on to get stung to death by killer bees in "The Swarm" and had his face nibbled on by carnivorous fish in "Piranha") nerds it up nicely as a duplicitous dweeby scientist. Chronically unsung character actors Pedro Armendariz, Jr. and Lincoln Kilpatrick contribute solid performances as an eminently expendable decent dude and a gallant, rugged Olympic athlete, respectively. The sequence where Kilpatrick tries to climb out of the subterranean shelter on a rope is both gripping and nerve-wracking. The bat attacks are almost unbearably frightening and ferocious. The claustrophobic set design, Gabriel Torres' cramped, closed-in cinematography, Fred Karlin's jazzy, spooky score, the unremittingly eerie tone, and the bleakly ironic ending all add considerably to the gut-wrenching tension. And those nasty screeching bats are truly horrifying little suckers!