Space 1979 Apocalypse How 3: The one where the apocalypse is fake but vampire bats are real

 

Title: Chosen Survivors

What Year?: 1974

Classification: Mashup/ Irreproducible Oddity

Rating: What The Hell??? (3/5)

 

As I round out this lineup, I’m once again within sight of what I have considered an end point for this feature. For this particular entry, I had to make a further choice between several movies I have considered at various times, but either set aside or left in the “maybe” column. As I wavered over the choice, I considered several undisputed “classics”, but these weren’t what I wanted. Then I came back to one I had given a viewing quite a while ago that I considered at the time, but set aside because I already had as much material as I could handle. It wasn’t as good as other movies under consideration, and certainly not as well-known, but once I thought of it, it only took a very little time to decide that it was the one that fit with the lineup and the feature as a whole. With that equivocal introduction, I present Chosen Survivors, a movie where the end of the world is fake, but only the beginning of the problem.

Our story begins with helicopters flying out to the middle of the desert. When they land, we see an assortment of seemingly ordinary people quickly hustled into an underground military compound. As we meet the cast of characters, included a wealthy jerk, a kind-of hippie, an athlete and two lady scientists, a military officer gives them the literal bombshell: A nuclear war has broken out on the surface, and they have been evacuated as a nucleus to rebuild whatever remains of civilization. The compound proves to be an automated base intended to meet their needs. Soon enough, they are pairing off, happily or otherwise, but their tempers are already flaring, especially as the rich jerk questions whether the doomsday scenario is the real deal. Then they discover that the compound is also home to a colony of vampire bats that are getting hungry. When one of the crew gets lunched, the truth of their situation is revealed- but it’s still up to them to find a way to get out alive!

Chosen Survivors was a horror/ sci fi film directed by TV/ film switch hitter Sutton Roley from a story and script by veteran Harry Spalding. The film was a coproduction of Metromedia and the Mexican studio Estudios Churrubusco Azteca, with distribution by Coumbia. A moderately high profile cast included Jackie Cooper as the businessman Couzins and Richard Jaeckel (again?) as the military man, with future Star Trek stand-in Diana Muldaur as the biologist Alana, Barbara Babcock as Lenore and Kelly Lange as the recorded voice of the compound. The film received mention in Philip Strick’s Science Fiction Movies, but failed to attract further fame or notoriety. The movie has since received several disc releases, including a two-pack with The Earth Dies Screaming and a 2018 Blu Ray release by Kino Lorber. It is not and from available evidence never has been available as an authorized release on any streaming platform.

For my experiences, this is first and foremost a movie even I have come close to doubting ever existed. Sometime ages ago, I first put it in my Netflix queue at random, and only just remembered it, mainly for its very odd premise. For a while, I believed that it had been a TV movie, which does indeed come eerily close to what it “feels” like to an eerie degree. Around 2016, I figured out what it was and looked it up again, and then returned to it in late 2020. When I decided to do a review for the current lineup, I had to settle for an iffy online video, which somehow fit it perfectly. In the course of those few viewings, I have been all over the map in my impressions of the movie. I remembered it as a tense, thoughtful little 1970s oddity, but was more disappointed on each return. After watching it for this review, I finally came out with a better opinion of it, but it’s still taking me time to get my thoughts in order.

Moving forward, the obvious “problem” in the age of the internet is that it’s almost impossible to discuss the movie without giving away its supposed biggest twist. In fact, its own trailers did little to hide the revelation that the posited nuclear war is fake. What’s striking in hindsight is that the cop-out makes the movie far more intriguing than plenty of “straight” post-apocalyptic fare. Inevitably, there is a point where the cross-examination either breaks the suspension of disbelief or becomes more interesting than anything on screen. What I find myself coming back to is the opening, which under scrutiny would attract far too much attention. If anything, it would be better to let the program be known in a general way, and bring the subjects in as consultants, contractors and whatnot. By that scenario, everyone involved could be put under “non-disclosure” before the experiment. As a bonus, the friends, family and colleagues of the guinea might even get “used” to being summoned on short notice and not suspicious if they did not promptly return.

Meanwhile, what sustains the movie is its economical portrayal of the underground habitat and life within. The sets are appropriately spartan, with screens, control panels and machinery here and there. The size and shape of the place are a little vague, but most of the action takes place in a main corridor and the adjoining quarters, with the cast sometimes congregating in a control room or a lab/ hospital that seem to be at either end. It’s quite enough to flesh out the world without distracting from the characters, which might or might not be considered a good thing. On that front, we have the usual disaster-movie problem of unlikable characters who get far too much screen time and interesting ones who get far too little, though for once, there aren’t that many who are picked off outright in the early phases of the movie. The standouts are unquestionably Muldaur, whose rich voice will be easily recognizable from her stint as Dr. Pulaski on “Next Gen”, and Cooper, who wavers between ordinary jerkiness and flat criminality. There’s some further amusement in the shown or implied hijinks, conspicuously when Alana freely comes in and out of the hippie writer’s room without comment. Unfortunately, any good will takes a photon torpedo hit from an incomprehensibly cringey liaison between Couzins and Lenore, which made things all the more awkward for me as I already turned to this movie in part because of issues with the content of a far better one.

Now I’m going to be longer than usual just because I haven’t covered the bats. My honest assessment is that these simply “belong” in a different movie, which might well be why I doubted my memory. The problem here is that any number of things could have worked equally well: rats, ants, roaches, or for that matter ordinary bats with rabies. There’s a further problem of “too much and not enough”; these are done well enough to look and act at least like “real” animals, but with far too many liberties to be convincing.  Real vampire bats are fascinating and ultimately every bit as horrid as people usually imagine, but they are not flying clouds of death. On top of that, the crew never manages to portray more than a few bats at a time convincingly. By the time we reach their onslaught in the finale, the wonky optical effects only add to the problems of gimmicky lighting and choppy editing, in a whole that I simply cannot make any sense of.

Now for the “one scene”, I’m going with one I came back to when I meant to look at something a little further in. It’s just past the opening credits, as the cast emerge from the elevator that has ferried them in, after being jolted by an apparent explosion on the way down. (What I meant to dissect was that a “real” detonation close enough for such an effect would fry any surface communications or sensors with EMP alone, but I can let that be.) They emerge, already disoriented and disheveled, and the first seems entirely uncomprehending when he runs into a glass barrier. After a moment, it slides open, and they emerge into what I have called the control room, I will admit specifically for lack of a better name or description. It’s really a cavernous, brightly lit space that epitomizes the aesthetic of the compound, with almost every surface either metallic, reflective or pure white. The group spread out, and several fall or collapse, either from the effects of the rock-the-boat incident, emotional exhaustion or sheer sensory overload. That’s when one of the screens that dominates the space comes on, revealing the narrator who seems like the personality of the compound, far more ominous than the supposed broadcasts from the surface that will follow (compare that further to Defcon 4 for an idea why I went easy on that one). Before any of them have spoken, the rich jerk points to another door, and they all look to see the military man approach. It’s a perfect buildup that didn’t need a follow-up, but good enough to illustrate what the movie does right.

In closing, I’m breaking from pattern to say a little more about why I included this movie here. It’s not “really” apocalyptic or post-apocalyptic, but on another level, it’s almost a reductio ad absurdum of the genre and theme. In the often-overlooked role reversals of apocalyptic literature, man is locked in with himself as much as the colony of monsters trapped with him, and nobody comes out looking good. In the longer view of history, the demise of human civilization is postponed on film as it ultimately was in real life, but the dress rehearsal remains far too unsettling to discount. That’s what makes “good” sci fi, even if it’s not particularly good, and that’s enough for me to give this one a pass.