{"id":11298,"date":"2025-03-05T23:31:56","date_gmt":"2025-03-06T04:31:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=11298"},"modified":"2025-03-05T23:31:56","modified_gmt":"2025-03-06T04:31:56","slug":"nightwing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2025\/03\/05\/nightwing\/","title":{"rendered":"Nightwing"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Nightwing<\/strong> (1979)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Columbia\/Horror\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 105 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG (violence, bloody images, language)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Arthur Hiller\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Martin Cruz Smith, Steve Shagan and Bud Shrake\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Henry Mancini\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Charles Rosher Jr.\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Release date: June 22, 1979 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Nick Mancuso, David Warner, Kathryn Harrold, Stephen Macht, Ben Piazza, Strother Martin, George Clutesi, Donald Hotton, Charles Hallahan, Alice Hirson, Judith Novgrod, Pat Corley, Peter Prouse.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: N\/A<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ***<\/p>\n

\u00a0Sometimes I like to imagine the conversation between the director and studio executives during the pitch meeting. I\u2019d give anything within reason to be a fly on the wall for some of them. The following is an imagining of what went down when director Arthur Hiller pitched Nightwing<\/strong> to a fictional Columbia exec I\u2019ll name \u201cSam\u201d.<\/p>\n

Sam: \u201cSo, what have you got, Arthur? Is it another comedy? You\u2019ve got a good track record with those. I just know The In-Laws will be boffo at the box office.\u201d<\/p>\n

Arthur: \u201cActually, it\u2019s a horror movie. It\u2019s called Nightwing<\/strong>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sam: \u201cNightwing<\/strong>, eh? Tell me more.\u201d<\/p>\n

Arthur: \u201cIt\u2019s like Jaws, but with bats.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sam: \u201cBut haven\u2019t there been enough Jaws knock-offs these last few years? Don\u2019t you think audiences have had enough?\u201d<\/p>\n

Arthur: \u201cThis one\u2019s different. The terror comes from the sky not the water.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sam: \u201cOkay, fair enough. But what makes you think it\u2019ll hit?\u201d<\/p>\n

Arthur: \u201cBecause it\u2019s going to be great. Bats are scary. Plus, we\u2019ve got an edge over the others.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sam: \u201cOh, what\u2019s that?\u201d<\/p>\n

Arthur: \u201cRemember how the author of Jaws Peter Benchley helped adapt his own novel for the big screen?\u201d<\/p>\n

Sam: \u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Arthur: \u201cWe\u2019re doing the same with Martin Cruz Smith. He wrote the novel Nightwing<\/strong>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sam: \u201cDid people read it?\u201d<\/p>\n

Arthur: \u201cOh, I\u2019m sure they did.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sam: \u201cSo based on that, you think we\u2019ll have a blockbuster on our hands?\u201d<\/p>\n

Arthur: \u201cAbsolutely! I guarantee it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sam: \u201cBut you\u2019ve never done horror before.\u201d<\/p>\n

Arthur: \u201cHow hard could it be?\u201d<\/p>\n

Sam: \u201cOkay, we\u2019re in.\u201d<\/p>\n

This, of course, is pure speculation, but I wouldn\u2019t be surprised if it really did go down this way. In any event, why don\u2019t we get down to business?<\/p>\n

\u00a0Nightwing<\/strong> is more than a mere Jaws rip-off. Hiller throws a lot of Native American spiritual mumbo-jumbo into the mix with the idea of Indians being the official protectors of Mother Nature and advocates for a simpler way of life. These ideas are represented by Abner Tasupi (Clutesi, Prophecy), the medicine man who raised the hero of the story after his parents died. He\u2019s a crazy old man, this Abner. He prays to a malevolent god named \u201cYehwah\u201d. When we first meet him, he\u2019s casting a spell to bring about the end of the world. Why an apocalypse, you ask? Old Abner wants to save his people from the evils of the white man\u2019s world, that\u2019s why. I\u2019m going to circle back to this.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The aforementioned hero of Nightwing<\/strong> is Deputy Youngman Duran (Mancuso, Under Siege 1 & 2), the keeper of law and order on the Masaki Indian reservation in the New Mexico desert. You say you never heard of the Masaki? There\u2019s a reason for that. They DON\u2019T exist. Cruz and his co-writers swapped it out with the Hopis for the purposes of the film. He\u2019s investigating a series of mysterious animal mutilations that couldn\u2019t possibly be the result of coyotes.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Whatever the cause, it\u2019s got neighboring Pahana tribe council chairman Walker Chee (Macht, Galaxina) worried. It could negatively affect the deal he has going with oil tycoon Roger Piggott (Piazza, The Blues Brothers). It seems that oil shales have been discovered in Masaki Canyon, the tribe\u2019s most sacred ground. Walker stands to make a lot of money from selling the mining rights. He doesn\u2019t want anything getting in his way. BTW, these are the evils that had Abner praying for a cataclysmic event.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The violent attacks, which include a group of missionaries camping in the desert, turn out to be the work of vampire bats. A huge colony has taken up residence in a cave in…. you guessed it, Masaki Canyon. Walker brings in bat exterminator Phillip Payne (Warner, The Omen) to deal with the problem. This Phillip is a bit of a whack job himself. When Duran asks why he does what he does, he replies, \u201cI kill them because they’re the quintessence of evil.\u201d This conversation takes place when the two men team up to locate Duran\u2019s girlfriend and reservation doctor Anne Dillon (Harrold, The Sender) somewhere in the desert. She\u2019s the one who took the missionaries on the ill-fated camping trip. Now they\u2019re all dead and she\u2019s all alone in the blistering heat.<\/p>\n

\u00a0It all comes down to Duran and Phillip (along with Anne) taking on the vicious little sharp-toothed mammals. Thanks to the magic of datura root, a hallucinogenic used by Native Americans, comes to believe Abner\u2019s spell worked. He has visions of Abner taunting him and warning him there\u2019s no stopping what\u2019s meant to happen. That may be true, but what about the ticket buyers who paid good money for a satisfactory conclusion? Team Duran has to at least try.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I didn\u2019t see Nightwing<\/strong> when it first came out in summer \u201979. It opened a week after the season\u2019s other PG eco-horror movie Prophecy (didn\u2019t see that one at the cinema either). I read Smith\u2019s novel a couple of years later and liked it, but it didn\u2019t take much to please 13YO Movie Guy who triumphantly found a way around the parental horror movie block. I read Prophecy, The Shining and the Omen books around the same time. I finally saw the movie on cable in \u201985 and wasn\u2019t impressed. I did something I rarely did; I stopped watching. I didn\u2019t see the full movie until the late 90s. I still wasn\u2019t impressed. I decided to give it a rewatch this past weekend as part of my Jaws knock-off project. I liked it this time. It\u2019s hardly fine cinema, but it\u2019s fun in a \u201cno high expectations\u201d way.<\/p>\n

\u00a0It turns out horror isn\u2019t Arthur Hiller\u2019s forte. Nightwing<\/strong> isn\u2019t scary; it\u2019s ridiculous. More accurately, it gets ridiculous after a slow start. It takes a little while for it to take flight. The greedy oil company subplot is standard-issue stuff. Everybody knows they\u2019re only out to make money by decimating the environment. Honestly, Piazza doesn\u2019t make enough of an impression to be an effective villain. He\u2019s simply the token Greedy White Guy. Macht fares a little better as the Native American claiming to be acting in the best financial interests of his people. But is he really? It doesn\u2019t really matter though because this plot thread is dropped once the good guys go to war with the flying pests. That\u2019s when Hiller turns the spiritual BS up to 11.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The only performance of note in Nightwing<\/strong> comes from Warner who clearly looked to Donald Pleasence in Halloween for inspiration. He overacts nice as the batty bat expert who looks at vampire bats the same way Mr. Loomis looks at Michael Myers. It\u2019s Clutesi, however, who gets off the battiest line when he says, \u201cThe winged animals are Yehwah’s messengers.\u201d You have to love dialogue like that. That and the repeated explanation that bats drink a lot of blood and piss ammonia.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The special effects are about what you\u2019d expect. The rubber bats don\u2019t look too bad. Oh, they\u2019re fake alright, but the FX does try to make them look real. The attack scene at the desert campsite looks cool with the victims trying to fight off the flying baddies. The climax in the cave is just kooky with Duran taking his time (A LOT of time!) completing an Indian ritual before getting his comrades to safety outside the cave.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Nightwing<\/strong> is extremely silly. It bombed with critics and audiences alike. Me, I kind of like it. It\u2019s the kind of stupid summer horror movie I wish I had been able to see with an audience. It\u2019s enjoyable as long as you set your expectations on the lowest temperature.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nightwing (1979)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Columbia\/Horror\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 105 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG (violence, bloody images, language)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Arthur Hiller\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Martin Cruz Smith, Steve Shagan and Bud Shrake\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Henry Mancini\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Charles Rosher Jr.\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Release date: June 22, 1979 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Nick Mancuso, David Warner, Kathryn Harrold, Stephen Macht, Ben Piazza, Strother Martin, George Clutesi, Donald Hotton, Charles […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11326,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11298","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-horror"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/Nightwing-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11298","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11298"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11298\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11328,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11298\/revisions\/11328"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11326"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}