Kieran Green From Arthur Hiller Director of 'Silver Streak' 'Love Story' 'The Hospital' and many other great films comes 'Nightwing' Nick Mancuso is the deputy tribal policeman, who in a race against time to stop a vengeful shaman elders 'curse' on humanity due to him being against the expansion of western Ideals into his reservation. The premise for 'Nightwing' is a brilliant high concept which can be called 'Jaws' with wings, the bat effects by Carlo Rambaldi which are by todays standard 'fake' but in this day and age of overused Digital Animation these effects stand out and don't look too obvious as modern effects tend to. David Warner plays a determined scientist, Kathryn Harrold is Mancuso's love interest who narrowly escapes the wrath of the bats. the highlight of the film is the sequence with the bigoted evangelists whilst camping in the outback meet a nasty end courtesy of the winged creatures. 'Nightwing' is an enjoyable Nature gone berserk movie which despite it's shortcomings is great fun. Henry Mancini's score is excellent.

seddon-2 Perhaps we have grown harder to convince since the days when John Ford passed off Utah's Monument Valley as West Texas, but showing us the Grand Canyon followed by a radio voice locating us near Tucson when the movie was actually made outside of Albuquerque and Santa Fe, New Mexico, just doesn't cut it except for the kiddie crowd and the geographically challenged. This isn't even a good scary movie. There is no "horror" and less suspense. It centers on a preposterous premise of "bad" science (but that hardly makes it unique). And it includes a mishmash of symbols that should be generally insulting to Native Americans and their religious leaders. Kathryn Harrold is probably still embarrassed she took this role just to prance around and play the lone helpless woman whose only plot function is to be rescued by the hero. It seems more like a movie made in 1959 than one made in 1979. That said it remains my favorite "swarms of vampire bats carrying pneumonic plague on an Indian reservation" movie.

lastliberal Two tribes on the reservation. One, the Maski, is protected by Deputy Youngman Duran (Nick Mancuso), and the other by Walker Chee (Stephen Macht). the problem is that Chee wants to mine for oil on Duran's part of the reservation in an area that is holy ground.High Priest Abner Tasupi (George Clutesi) has a solution and he opens the gates between life and death. It cost him his life - or did it, since he is not in his grave.Enter Phillip Payne (David Warner) with the answer to why animals are dying. He is a vampire hunter - vampire bats, that is. Can he destroy the bats before bubonic plague covers the area? Duran's girlfriend Anne (Kathryn Harrold) leads a group of Quakers on a camping and fishing trip when the bats decide they are tired of animals. The bats coming out of the night sky were really scary creatures. The Quaker men were somewhat unchristian in their efforts to survive, leaving two women to die, but they got theirs. The bat attack on the Quakers was so good, I watched it twice before moving on.Swine flu gets mentioned as a possible cause of death of seven priests, but it was plague. It is suspected that the priests stole Abner's body and got the plague from him.In the end, the bats were consumed the way they always are, with a little Indian magic, of course. Abner still won as the eternal fires will prevent mining.Mancuso, Warner, and Nacht gave good performances, and it was interesting to hear about bats through the ages.

inspectors71 For the lovers of the truly idiotic, there's 1979's Nightwing, a thoroughly ridiculous pile of guano pretending to be a serious story about Native American mysticism and the dangers of great, winged hordes of needle-toothed rodentia.What makes Nightwing so embarrassing is that it's so very watchable. You can get your fill of angelic Indians, stupid (and soon-to-be-dead) Christian missionaries, and maybe the single worst performance in Kathryn Herrold's career (boy, she turned out to be a big star, didn't she?).It's a hoot (or a high-pitched sonar squeal) and I can't think of a better movie to recommend for your weekend living room movie festival, capping off the great cheapjack monster flicks of the 1970's (you'd better have Prophesy, Manitou, and Motel Hell along for the ride!).