fedor8 The Pentagon kidnaps celebrities just to conduct a psychological experiment, but a bunch of cunning vampire bats foil their wicked military ways. This is no gag; it's the actual plot. Obviously, written by some left-wing malcontent. Hollywood is full of Marxist dweebs who simply cannot watch a capitalist democracy prosper, so they make up nonsense any way they can – and if that means including vampire bats into the plot of a lame thriller, so be it! Yet another deluded and utterly paranoid view of the U.S. government; one which doesn't hold an iota of credibility. Anti-western/anti-capitalist conspiracy theorists should enjoy this, but filmgoers who prefer common-sense over abject nonsense will be offended by the blatant cretinism of the premise. Many logic problems. The government, if it were ever foolish and evil enough to conduct an experiment with unwilling test-subjects, would pick out a bunch of unknowns rather than high-profile individuals whose sudden disappearances would immediately trigger front-page news. The test-subjects include a Nobel-Prize winner, a successful athlete, a famous writer, and even a Congresswoman! Duh! Double-duh! What government in their right (or left) mind would risk needless problems of this sort, i.e. a media circus surrounding the disappearance of so many celebs. I can just see the headlines: "PENTAGON ABDUCTS CELEBS AND HAS THEM POKED TO DEATH BY BATS!"That there are no cameras installed to document this exhorbitantly expensive experiment is absurd enough, but the fact that just one man is overseeing this entire multi-billion-dollar game in the middle of a desert is stupid to the nth degree. There is nobody close-by to step in should something unforeseen happen – and even apes know that in experiments unforeseen events are to be expected, and addressed in advance with a Plan B. This movie's U.S. government doesn't even have a Plan A; it's as if somebody had just thrown billions on a project, willy-nilly, and then decided that one man can handle all aspects of it. But that's how left-wing Hollywood writers are: they usually write baloney, because when your political thinking is skewered, then logically chances are low of producing anything but crappy, moronic bat-mad scripts.Just when I thought the bats had had their day in this flick, they proceed to overrun this thriller, which is when the B-movie horror flick wins over the B-movie thriller. After all, bats ARE very dear to the writer's heart. Even Spielberg's great white sharks and dinosaurs made more sense than these utterly crazed flying rats. Still, at least CS has a major plot-twist half-way through the movie. For a while there I was worried I was stuck with a blood-sucking-bats B-movie horror flick…… When in fact bats make up only 90% of the movie's plot.Very predictably, this left-wing script has the corporate guy as the unbearable prick, while the malcontent writer represents the voice of reason and exhibits typically liberal self-righteous indignation. The grumpy suit even gets drunk and rapes a woman, mere days into the experiment! So much for the government's psychological profiling, obviously conducted by a chimp not much smarter than the film's writer.Once the motley ten find out that there was no nuclear war, and that they will be freed in only 5 days, what do they do? Do they heave a huge sigh of relief and wait for the rescuers? No. They panic even more, showing startling impatience! The result is the black athlete's totally unnecessary 500-m climb up the elevator shaft which, of course, ends with death by bat. Remember: these test-subjects were all hand-picked, i.e. the crème-de-la-crème of American society. Yet in their infinitely small wisdom they figure it makes more sense to try to escape through the elevator shaft and then trek through the desert on foot – rather than simply wait out the measly 5 days and leave the underground can in a comfy helicopter.

zardoz-13 The message in "Chosen Survivors" is don't trust the government. Ten people find themselves stuffed into a "Dr. Strangelove" sanctuary over 17-hundred feet beneath the surface of the Earth. They have been chosen based on a number of characteristics that make them ideal specimens for survival. Above, the Earth smolders in the wake of a global, thermonuclear war. Unfortunately, when the government constructed the tactility, they overlooked a new species of vampire bat in a nearby cavern in New Mexico, and this species invades the place and starts killing people. Our heroes don't have anything with which to protect themselves. Moreover, they don't band together, and one of them, Raymond Couzins (Jackie Cooper of "Superman"), goes berserk after he gets drunk and sabotages the works. A great ensemble cast struggles to make lemonade out of this lemon. Alex Cord, Richard Jaeckel, Diana Muldaur, and Bradford Dillman give it their best, but the screenplay by "House of the Damned" scribe Harry Spalding and freshman scenarist Joe Reb Moffly lacks charisma. Lenser Gabriel Torres' cinematography and composer Fred Karlin's score contribute to the suspense that director Sutton Roley generates. The action turns a momentous turn about an hour into the narrative that is fairly mind-blowing. Everything is spun about 45 degrees. Meantime, a problem occurs, and the chief scientist, Peter Macomber (Bradford Dillman) tries to send a message. Sadly, the message doesn't make it back to surface. When it isn't suspenseful, this exercise in Nihilism isn't very uplifting. The satire is a bit heavy-handed. The production values were strong, and the underground facility looked convincing in a slick, shiny, sci-fi way.

kelela1953-7 My husband found Chosen Survivors on DVD on eBay. It is on a disk with another movie I never heard of, but it is finally available to all those people who have spent the last twenty five years looking for it. I don't know if there are any more copies out there, but if you start there, you might have some luck. I saw this once when it was first out - at a drive in, no less - and have wanted to see it again ever since. As I recall, the twists and turns are not the ones you would expect when you first watch it, but they are interesting. It will be interesting to see if it scares me as much watching it now as it did the first time, now that I know how it turns out. You can email me if you want and I will let you know where in ebay my husband found it.

LMRusso-1 Like most of the other comments for this film I remember seeing "Chosen Survivors" as a kid and being scared sh!tless. It was one of those creepy, apocalyptic, conspiracy types (sort of like "Alien", but done on the cheap).Years ago I remember this and TV's "Trilogy of Terror" with Karen Black standing out as some of the scarier movies of the time. Since it's been over 30 years that I've seen it, I can't really say much else. I vaguely remember it not being the greatest movie- but certainly as a young kid in the theater it left an impression on me. Just thinking about it now conjures up some very creepy chills-I'd love to see it again to compare my childhood memories of it to today (hope it eventually comes out on video).