As part of their honeymoon, Dr. John Beck (Stewart Moss, Raise the Titanic) and Cathy (Marianne McAndrew, Russ Meyer’s The Seven Minutes) tour the Carlsbad Caverns. Itching for a quickie, Cathy breaks away from the group to look for a humping spot … and proceeds to tumble into a crevice full of creepy-crawlies. Being a he-man hubby, John leaps to her rescue, but in doing so is bitten by a bat.

You know what happens next, yet you will watch The Bat People regardless. (Directed by Airport ’77’s Jerry Jameson, the film is known alternately as It Lives by Night.)

Allow me to spell out the obvious: John starts turning into a man-bat. The first thing that something is awry is when his eyes roll back in his head before hitting the ski slopes, and he shakes violently. Thanks to the facial tic, it looks like an uncontrollable orgasm every time it happens … and it happens a lot across 91 minutes: at the hospital, in a hot tub, while fleeing the police — you name it. Eventually, hairy hands give way to a full transformation into the titular (but singular) creature, which looks less like a bat and more like a Planet of the Apes denizen confined to the short bus. Adding insult to injury is that the changed doc likes to slaughter people — you know, like real bats do.

Michael Pataki (Dracula’s Dog) co-stars as a perverted sheriff who’s on to Mr. Beck’s crime spree, but really just wants to get into Mrs. Beck’s silky britches. Interestingly, Moss and McAndrew were married in real life, and their union remains unbroken today; not even this AIP stinker could kill it. Actually, for all its chintziness, The Bat People sent one career soaring: that of Stan Winston, here (in his first feature) credited as “Stanley” and eventually the Oscar-winning effects artist of Jurassic Park, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Aliens and other movies that illustrate he clearly got better (as did the gigs). —Rod Lott

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Two years after the events of the first film (yet only one year after the release of that hit horror remake), The Hills Have Eyes II sends a squad of U.S. Army National Guard trainees back into Sector 16, that stretch of desolate desert where the wild things are. In this case, “wild things” refer to the inbred family of radiation-mutated hillbillies who live in the mountain caves, yet kill largely out in the open.

Working from a script from Wes Craven (director of the 1977 original and its 1984 sequel) and son Jonathan Craven (Mind Ripper), Martin Weisz (Grimm Love) makes the movie look like it belongs to Hills 2006, yet doesn’t do quite the same thing, which would have been easier … and lazier. Instead, he ups the ante of gore and general discomfort, opening with a scene certain to have cleared its theater audiences of noncommittals, as a newborn who is clearly a product of mutant rape slimes its way out of the bloody orifice of a nude, bound blonde (Cécile Breccia, Starship Troopers 3: Marauder).

Competing with that most unconventional home birth for sickest scene are a forced French kiss from Pustule Man, a sledgehammer to the scrotum and, involving our likable-enough protagonists (Banshee Chapter’s Michael McMillian and the Prom Night remake’s Jessica Stroup), a port-a-potty surprise! The details of each, I leave for you to discover. That’s not to say every move Weisz and the Cravens made was a good one; no matter their intention, having one of the deformed cannibal clan members assisting the American soldiers smacks of Sloth in The Goonies: greasy kids’ stuff perfectly at home in PG family fare … and wildly out of place for hard-R horror.

Nothing in these Hills distinguishes itself from being a Wrong Turn sequel (to name-check another blood-drenched 20th Century Fox franchise). Not when one of the redneck mutants machetes an arm off a good guy hanging from a cliff, then uses that lopped-off limb to wave at the G.I. falling to his death. I get it. —Rod Lott

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Here is why parents should never get divorced: Wounds cut deep. Resentment boils and festers. Kids are hurt the most. Dad sprouts fangs.

Okay, so I skipped a few steps.

This happens first: Dad, aka Robert Bridgestone (Kerwin Mathews, The 7th Voyage of Sinbad), takes his only child, Richie (Scott Sealey, in his first and last movie), to his mountain cabin for the weekend. With trusty walking stick in hand, he and the boy saunter outside toward a juicy steak dinner they never get to order, because Robert is bum-rushed by a wolf man (Action Jackson stuntman Paul Baxley). They tussle until Robert is able to toss his attacker off the cliffside, fatally impaling the toothy stranger on a highway road sign.

Later, having been bitten in the scuffle, Robert sprouts fangs, as well as a black nose like my Shih Tzu has, gnarly fingernails, hair frickin’ everywhere — the works! Since The Boy Who Cried Werewolf is in the directorial paws of Nathan H. Juran (1958’s Attack of the 50 Foot Woman) and not of John Landis, the transformation plays out as a series of still photographs, with Robert increasingly appearing like The Shaggy D.A. stuck in an O-face.

To the authorities, Robert denies he was assaulted by anything other than fellow man, despite their face-to-snout encounter taking place in broad daylight. “Stop this monster nonsense!” he yells at Richie, who won’t shut up about the pee-your-pants awesomeness he witnessed. Robert’s occult-friendly shrink (George Gaynes, all seven Police Academy outings) tells him not to rush to judgment, because children can see monsters. (Or something like that. What other advice could Robert possibly expect from a man whose office shelves are stocked with tribal tchotchkes and a thick book whose spine is imprinted with the word “ALOE”?)

Turns out, turning into a lycanthrope isn’t just a one-off. With every “full moon” — I surround that in quotes because Juran has to hold the record for most scenes depicting darkness in the rays of the sun — the elder Bridgestone’s wild side emerges. In these sequences, a lot occurs: Fleeing from his werefather, Richie cock-blocks a young couple. A makeshift commune of hippies (led by screenwriter Bob Homel) prays for Jesus to keep them safe. The curmudgeonly sheriff (Stripes’ Robert J. Wilke) blames the carnage on a puma. And, as Richie’s MILF of a mother, Elaine Devry (A Guide for the Married Man) makes parental concern appear downright sexy.

Looking every bit like a Universal TV series of its era, The Boy Who Cried Werewolf is executed quickly and cheaply, yet also competently. When he’s running around wearing the monster mask, Mathews is an inadvertent hoot; the juvenile Sealey, then around 12, gives the more believable performance — and trust me: He’s no Haley Joel Osment or Jacob Tremblay. But his presence and POV help make the movie equally fun for adults and their offspring, harmlessness and all. It’s cornball horror at its log cabin-comfiest. —Rod Lott

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For 14 years, the murder of a maid in the home of a woman named Miyako (Aya Sugimoto, Flower & Snake II) has been a cold case. With the statue of limitations about to kick in, the young and not-yet-disillusioned Detective Hoshino (Kanji Tsuda, Ju-on: The Grudge) makes one last-ditch investigation effort for the sake of the victim’s still-grieving family.

Hoshino finds himself captivated by Miyako, and hell, no wonder: Asian actresses rarely arrive as sultry and curvy. (The Naked Killer herself, Chingmy Yau, is another of this rare breed.) Unbeknownst to Hoshino, a portion of his attraction is not under his control, because she’s not merely a vamp, but a genuine vampire. Practically deflecting questions about her maid’s death, the cunning Miyako points blame on a hedge fund manager (Jun Kaname, Casshern). Jealousy between the two men quickly breaks out, as do the eventual swords.

Immediately, Shinobi: Heart Under Blade director Ten Shimoyama establishes a look for Blood that is dark and seductive. Peppered with bursts that action that incorporate a proper amount of martial arts without going full chopsocky, the story moves slower than it should. When the Japanese film starts to drag — and it does, inevitably — Shimoyama injects passion through several sex scenes, which are actually erotic. Certainly uninhibited in her dead-sexy performance, the gorgeous Sugimoto gets — how you say? — kneaded like bread dough. Call it gratuitous if you must, but the vampire, as it was created in literature centuries ago, was intended as a sexual creature. —Rod Lott

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If horror masters from Edgar Allan Poe to Stephen King have taught us anything, it is this: Cats are no damn good. A compelling piece of supporting evidence is The Uncanny, a feline-themed triptych from Milton Subotsky, a producer who specialized in the horror anthology (with 1972’s Tales from the Crypt being perhaps the most enduring example).

In present-day Montreal, fidgety author Wilbur Grey (Peter Cushing, The House That Dripped Blood) shares the details of his latest book to his publisher (Ray Milland, Terror in the Wax Museum), who expresses misgivings about its commercial prospects — after all, who would believe that adorable kitty cats are actually vessels of unbridled evil? In an attempt to change his host’s tune, the pussyphobic Grey shares three such cases, all helmed by Naked Massacre’s Denis Héroux, in his final film as director.

First up, in pre-WWI London, a miserable crone (Joan Greenwood, 1961’s Mysterious Island) excludes her ungrateful cad of a nephew (Simon Williams, The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu) from her new will, instead leaving the entirety of her estate to her cats. Electrified with a nasty wit, this segment entrances viewers, thus positioning The Uncanny from the start as a veritable buffet of horror and suspense.

Unfortunately, it’s all downhill from there. In 1970s Quebec, the middle story about a tween girl (Chloe Franks, Whoever Slew Auntie Roo?) being mean to her little sister (Katrina Holden, Death Wish 4: The Crackdown) is a patience-trier further hampered by the goofiest of effects. Slightly better is the trio’s closer, set in Hollywood’s Golden Age, with cats causing chaos on the set of a motion picture starring Valentine De’ath (Donald Pleasence, The Monster Club) and his lover (a slinky Samantha Eggar, Curtains). It ends with a joke that also appears to be its raison d’etre, as if screenwriter Michel Parry (Xtro) started there and worked backward. —Rod Lott

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