Bats is for everyone who misses those old Roger Corman monster movies, only it has animatronics and computer effects instead of papier-mâché. The title pretty much sums up the plot: crazed bats are running amok, disembowelling people and cattle. Only beautiful wildlife zoologist Dina Meyer and stalwart sheriff Lou Diamond Phillips can save the day. Let's be frank: the scenario is ludicrous, the dialogue awful, the special effects unconvincing--try as they might, the bats just aren't that scary--but what does it matter? The movie rips along effectively. There's always a bat attack just around the corner and the director makes liberal use of all kinds of editing and camera effects, including adistorted bat-cam point of view that makes no sense at all but is pretty entertaining. Various scenes imitate Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds, but lack even a hint of that film's eerie precision. The actors play it straight without trying to be particularly serious. All in all, Bats knows what it is--trash-horror--and accomplishes its ends with good humour. Not quite up to the standard of Tremors (still the definitive trash-horror flick), but better than most. --Bret Fetzer,