Product Details

• Actors: Nick Mancuso, David Warner, Kathryn Harrold, Stephen Macht, Strother Martin
• Format: Color, NTSC
• Rated: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Sony Pictures
• VHS Release Date: August 15, 1995
• Run Time: 107 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 630279756X
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #233,554 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Nightwing (from ancient Indian myth to reality), January 6, 2001

By 

"mgoerndt" (Ames, IA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Nightwing [VHS] (VHS Tape)

Nightwing has to be the best Horror/Adventure film I have ever seen. The main star is an Indian reservation law enforcement officer, Deputy Duran. His job and life around the desert reservation was always boring and uneventfull until people start dying from a particular cause in the form of both bites and plague. The old man, Abner, who was kind of like a godfather to Duran, has babbled about an ancient Indian curse that was to end the world. When he is killed by the very thing that he told about and many others keep dying, Duran has to spring in to action with the assistance of a strange British scientist who has dedicated his life to the extermination of the problem, Vampire Bats! This is an extremely exciting movie which also carries valuable information about the nature of beliefs and customs of the desert indian tribes. I would recommend this movie to anyone who can appreciate a true classic!

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A bad plague carrying bats attack Indian reservation movie, May 18, 2003

By 

Lawrance M. Bernabo (The Zenith City, Duluth, Minnesota) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Nightwing [VHS] (VHS Tape)

The meaning of the title of this 1979 film becomes clear when we learn that an Indian reservation in New Mexico has been invaded by vampire bats. This situation is complicated by the fact that, in the best tradition of rampant stereotypes, there is oil underneath the tribe's sacred burial grounds and a soulless oil company is out to get it no matter what. The oil is actually in a cave, which is how we work the bats into the story, because companies drilling for oil rarely hit bats. Standing in the way of progress, besides all those bat puppets, is Youngman Duran (Nick Mancuso), a reservation cop, who is basically the only person in the film with both brains and ethics. David Warner is Phillip Payne, the bat expert who shows up to provide the characters and the audience with any and all necessary exposition until the climax, when he comes up with a plan for saving the day because these might be vampire bats, but instead of sucking blood they are spreading Bubonic plague.

Based on the novel by Martin Cruz Smith, the script by Steve Shagan and Bud Shrake is fairly faithful to the original story and wants to evince political consciousness, but resorts to stand Hollywood conceptions about what life is like on the reservation, which is most painful when it portrays the debate between those who want to preserve tradition and those who want to build modern things like hospitals. I remember when "Nightwing" was being filmed in New Mexico, mostly up around Laguna Pueblo and the Bonanza Creek Ranch near Santa Fe. Flavio Martinez, a kid I went to high school with, and who played the part in a forgettable Disney movie that has never been released on video, had a bit part in this film as Isla Laloma. Directed by Arthur Hiller, "Nightwing" also features Kathryn Harrold as the pretty woman who has to be rescued from the bats, Staphen Macht as the Indian who argues for progress, and Strother Martin as a crazy old coot. However, overall the locations are a lot better than the acting or the special effects.

One of the ways "Nightwing" harkens back to the good old days of horror movies, besides the rubber bats, is the way they promoted this film. Consider all the taglines this film had: "In the dead of night they come - Swift - Silent - Savage," "The day belongs to man. The night is theirs," and "What do you fear most - the dark - or something that waits in the dark," all have this inherent ambiguity that could be referring to the Indians as well as the bats. But then "The bats of hell let loose upon the earth" pretty much gives the game away. But it always a bad sign when the taglines are better than the movie. I was going to say that somebody somebody was going to use computers to make a really good horde of monster bats movie, but Louis Morneau tried to do that in the 1999 film "Bats" and it is on the AFI's list of "Bottom 100" movies. "Nightwing" is slightly better, due almost entirely to Warner's performance, which remains the film's only redeeming quality beyond Kathryn Harrold's looks.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Finally on DVD!, May 23, 2011

By 

Carpo Collins (Thailand) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Nightwing (DVD)

This is a dvd-on-demand from Sony, and they did a good job on the transfer. The image is colorful and clear (no 'washout'),looking better than it probably ever will (I noticed very little if any dirts or scratches), especially during the evening and morning shots out in the desert (e.g. Canyon de Chelly). Since this is a bare-bones release, there isn't even a scene selection option, though there is a good trailer (not the 1979 teaser but a lengthier trailer). The sound is a good balance of the melancholy Henry Mancini score, voices and some shrill sound effects in all your TV speakers during the bat attack scenes. It is a shame that they didn't get the running commentary by star Nick Mancuso and producer Martin Ransahoff (which is available for listening on the Internet), but I'm thankful to Sony/Columbia Pictures for finally making this available, and it's probably not going to get any better than this unless it happens to find its way to Blu-Ray. If you're a fan of this film, then get it while you can.