Nightwing (film)
Encyclopedia
Nightwing is a 1979
American
horror film
directed by Arthur Hiller
. The screenplay by Martin Cruz Smith
, Steve Shagan, and Bud Shrake is based on the 1977 novel of the same title
by Smith. Its tagline is "Day belongs to man, but night is theirs!" It was one of many so-called Jaws
rip-off
s that were popular in the late '70s and early '80s, including Orca: The Killer Whale (1977), Tentacles
(1977), The Pack
(1977), Piranha (1978), Alligator
(1980) and Great White
(1980).
reservation
in New Mexico
, begins to investigate a series of mysterious cattle
mutilations. Abner Tasupi, an ancient and embittered medicine man
who raised Youngman after his parents died, tells him he has cast a spell to end the world that very night, but Youngman assumes he simply is babbling while under the influence of datura
root. The following morning, Youngman finds Abner's bloodless body on the floor of his shack, and nearby he discovers a dead shepherd and most of his flock.
Tribal Council
chairman Walker Chee has discovered a stratum of oil shale
s in Maskai Canyon, the most sacred ground in the tribe's domain. Walker is dynamiting
the caves in an effort to unleash oil, and is planning to sell the rights to process them to the tycoon Roger Piggott of Peabody Oil. Walker is desperate to keep word of the attacks from leaking to the media before he completes the deal.
Although common sense tells him otherwise, Youngman's faith in tribal beliefs and superstitions leads him to suspect the unexplained deaths may be connected to the spell Abner claimed he cast. British scientist Philip Payne is certain they are the work of vampire bat
s infected with bubonic plague
. As they spread throughout the area, swarming through a missionary
group's campsite and infecting everyone in their path, Philip and Youngman join forces with Anne Dillon, a young white medical student who runs a ramshackle clinic on the reservation and is in love with Youngman, to track the bats to their lair and destroy them.
s artist Carlo Rambaldi
, who previously had worked on King Kong
and Close Encounters of the Third Kind
.
The film was shot on location in Albuquerque
, Santa Fe
, and [Cubero] in New Mexico
.
The soundtrack
includes "Lucille" by Kenny Rogers
and "Don't It Make Your Brown Eyes Blue" by Crystal Gayle
.
of the New York Times called the film "not very horrifying" and thought "it looks as if it had been put together from a child's instruction book." He added, "The screenplay . . . is terrible and the special effects third-rate."
Time Out New York said the film "never really takes off" and added, "Hiller's direction simply plods to a corny and unsatisfactory ending after getting bogged down in subplots concerning whale-oil prospectors, Indian religious mumbo-jumbo, and inter-tribal rivalries."
Channel 4
observed, "Quite why Hiller was selected to direct this suspense shocker is the most interesting thing about the project. A film-maker who has made a speciality of showing reverence for platitudes has no jurisdiction over a piece of schlock
nonsense about bat-killers in the Arizona desert."
1979 in film
The year 1979 in film involved some significant events.- Major events :* March 5 - Production begins on Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back.* May 25 - Alien, a landmark of the science fiction genre, is released....
American
Cinema of the United States
The cinema of the United States, also known as Hollywood, has had a profound effect on cinema across the world since the early 20th century. Its history is sometimes separated into four main periods: the silent film era, classical Hollywood cinema, New Hollywood, and the contemporary period...
horror film
Horror film
Horror films seek to elicit a negative emotional reaction from viewers by playing on the audience's most primal fears. They often feature scenes that startle the viewer through the means of macabre and the supernatural, thus frequently overlapping with the fantasy and science fiction genres...
directed by Arthur Hiller
Arthur Hiller
Arthur Hiller, OC is a Canadian film director. His filmography includes 33 major studio releases, including the 1970 film Love Story...
. The screenplay by Martin Cruz Smith
Martin Cruz Smith
Martin Cruz Smith is an American mystery novelist.-Early life and education:Born Martin William Smith in Reading, Pennsylvania, he was educated at the University of Pennsylvania, located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and received a Bachelor of Arts degree in creative writing in 1964...
, Steve Shagan, and Bud Shrake is based on the 1977 novel of the same title
Nightwing (novel)
Nightwing is a 1977 thriller novel by Martin Cruz Smith, who adapted it for a 1979 film with the same title directed by Arthur Hiller.-Plot summary:...
by Smith. Its tagline is "Day belongs to man, but night is theirs!" It was one of many so-called Jaws
Jaws (film)
Jaws is a 1975 American horror-thriller film directed by Steven Spielberg and based on Peter Benchley's novel of the same name. In the story, the police chief of Amity Island, a fictional summer resort town, tries to protect beachgoers from a giant man-eating great white shark by closing the beach,...
rip-off
Rip-Off
Rip-Off is a top-down vector shoot 'em up arcade game released by Cinematronics in 1980. It is the first shoot 'em up arcade game to feature cooperative gameplay and to exhibit flocking behavior.-Gameplay:...
s that were popular in the late '70s and early '80s, including Orca: The Killer Whale (1977), Tentacles
Tentacles (film)
Tentacles is a 1977 Italian-American horror film directed by Ovidio G. Assonitis and starring John Huston and Shelley Winters.- Plot :The tourist spot Ocean Beach has come under attack by a giant octopus, which captures human swimmers and picks clean the skeletons of flesh and bone marrow...
(1977), The Pack
The Pack (1977 film)
The Pack is a 1977 horror film about a pack of abandoned dogs who turn against humans in Seal Island.-Plot:A pack of feral dogs are attacking the people on Seal Island. One of the islanders, Jerry , must stop them....
(1977), Piranha (1978), Alligator
Alligator (film)
Alligator is a 1980 monster movie, directed by Lewis Teague with a screenplay by John Sayles. It stars Robert Forster, Robin Riker, and Michael V. Gazzo...
(1980) and Great White
Great White (film)
Great White is a 1980 Italian horror film directed by Enzo G. Castellari and starring James Franciscus and Vic Morrow. The film is extremely similar to Steven Spielberg's Jaws.-Plot:...
(1980).
Plot
Youngman Duran, a deputy on a Hopi IndianHopi
The Hopi are a federally recognized tribe of indigenous Native American people, who primarily live on the Hopi Reservation in northeastern Arizona. The Hopi area according to the 2000 census has a population of 6,946 people. Their Hopi language is one of the 30 of the Uto-Aztecan language...
reservation
Indian reservation
An American Indian reservation is an area of land managed by a Native American tribe under the United States Department of the Interior's Bureau of Indian Affairs...
in New Mexico
New Mexico
New Mexico is a state located in the southwest and western regions of the United States. New Mexico is also usually considered one of the Mountain States. With a population density of 16 per square mile, New Mexico is the sixth-most sparsely inhabited U.S...
, begins to investigate a series of mysterious cattle
Cattle
Cattle are the most common type of large domesticated ungulates. They are a prominent modern member of the subfamily Bovinae, are the most widespread species of the genus Bos, and are most commonly classified collectively as Bos primigenius...
mutilations. Abner Tasupi, an ancient and embittered medicine man
Medicine man
"Medicine man" or "Medicine woman" are English terms used to describe traditional healers and spiritual leaders among Native American and other indigenous or aboriginal peoples...
who raised Youngman after his parents died, tells him he has cast a spell to end the world that very night, but Youngman assumes he simply is babbling while under the influence of datura
Datura
Datura is a genus of nine species of vespertine flowering plants belonging to the family Solanaceae. Its precise and natural distribution is uncertain, owing to its extensive cultivation and naturalization throughout the temperate and tropical regions of the globe...
root. The following morning, Youngman finds Abner's bloodless body on the floor of his shack, and nearby he discovers a dead shepherd and most of his flock.
Tribal Council
Tribal Council
A Tribal Council is either: an association of Native American bands in the United States or First Nations governments in Canada, or the governing body for certain tribes within the United States or elsewhere...
chairman Walker Chee has discovered a stratum of oil shale
Oil shale
Oil shale, an organic-rich fine-grained sedimentary rock, contains significant amounts of kerogen from which liquid hydrocarbons called shale oil can be produced...
s in Maskai Canyon, the most sacred ground in the tribe's domain. Walker is dynamiting
Dynamite
Dynamite is an explosive material based on nitroglycerin, initially using diatomaceous earth , or another absorbent substance such as powdered shells, clay, sawdust, or wood pulp. Dynamites using organic materials such as sawdust are less stable and such use has been generally discontinued...
the caves in an effort to unleash oil, and is planning to sell the rights to process them to the tycoon Roger Piggott of Peabody Oil. Walker is desperate to keep word of the attacks from leaking to the media before he completes the deal.
Although common sense tells him otherwise, Youngman's faith in tribal beliefs and superstitions leads him to suspect the unexplained deaths may be connected to the spell Abner claimed he cast. British scientist Philip Payne is certain they are the work of vampire bat
Vampire bat
Vampire bats are bats whose food source is blood, a dietary trait called hematophagy. There are three bat species that feed solely on blood: the Common Vampire Bat , the Hairy-legged Vampire Bat , and the White-winged Vampire Bat .All three species are native to the Americas, ranging from Mexico to...
s infected with bubonic plague
Bubonic plague
Plague is a deadly infectious disease that is caused by the enterobacteria Yersinia pestis, named after the French-Swiss bacteriologist Alexandre Yersin. Primarily carried by rodents and spread to humans via fleas, the disease is notorious throughout history, due to the unrivaled scale of death...
. As they spread throughout the area, swarming through a missionary
Missionary
A missionary is a member of a religious group sent into an area to do evangelism or ministries of service, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care and economic development. The word "mission" originates from 1598 when the Jesuits sent members abroad, derived from the Latin...
group's campsite and infecting everyone in their path, Philip and Youngman join forces with Anne Dillon, a young white medical student who runs a ramshackle clinic on the reservation and is in love with Youngman, to track the bats to their lair and destroy them.
Cast
- Nick MancusoNick MancusoNicodemo Antonio Massimo "Nick" Mancuso is a Canadian cinema and stage actor.-Career:Mancuso was born in Mammola, Calabria, Italy and immigrated to Canada in 1956...
as Youngman Duran - David WarnerDavid Warner (actor)David Warner is an English actor who is known for playing both romantic leads and sinister or villainous characters, both in film and animation...
as Phillip Payne - Kathryn HarroldKathryn Harrold-Background:Harrold was born in Tazewell, Virginia. She attended Mills College in Oakland, California, majoring in Drama.-Television:She has appeared in a number of TV series, including The Rockford Files, MacGruder and Loud, The Bronx Zoo, I'll Fly Away, The Larry Sanders Show, and Mister...
as Anne Dillon - Stephen MachtStephen MachtStephen Robert Macht is an American television and film actor.-Early life:Macht was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He was raised in Brooklyn Heights, NY, until his father's death. At age nine, he moved with his mother and older brother to live with his maternal grandfather, a haberdasher, in...
as Walker Chee - Ben Piazza as Roger Piggott
- Strother MartinStrother MartinStrother Martin was an American actor in numerous films and television programs. Martin is perhaps best known as the prison "captain" in the 1967 film Cool Hand Luke, where he uttered the line, "What we've got here is...failure to communicate."-Early life:Strother Martin Jr. was born in Kokomo,...
as Selwyn - Charles HallahanCharles HallahanCharles John Hallahan was an American film, television and stage actor best known for his performances in Going in Style, The Thing, and Dante's Peak.-Life and career:...
as Henry - George ClutesiGeorge ClutesiGeorge Clutesi, CM , was a Tseshaht artist, actor and writer, as well as an expert on and spokesman for Native Canadian culture.-Biography:...
as Abner Tasupi
Production
The bats were the creation of special effectSpecial effect
The illusions used in the film, television, theatre, or entertainment industries to simulate the imagined events in a story are traditionally called special effects ....
s artist Carlo Rambaldi
Carlo Rambaldi
Carlo Rambaldi is an Italian special effects artist who is most famous for designing the title character of the 1982 film E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and the mechanical head-effects for the creature in Alien...
, who previously had worked on King Kong
King Kong (1976 film)
King Kong is a 1976 American monster movie produced by Dino De Laurentiis and directed by John Guillermin. It is a remake of the 1933 classic film of the same name, about a giant ape that is captured and imported to New York City for exhibition....
and Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Close Encounters of the Third Kind is a 1977 science fiction film written and directed by Steven Spielberg. The film stars Richard Dreyfuss, François Truffaut, Melinda Dillon, Teri Garr, Bob Balaban, and Cary Guffey...
.
The film was shot on location in Albuquerque
Albuquerque, New Mexico
Albuquerque is the largest city in the state of New Mexico, United States. It is the county seat of Bernalillo County and is situated in the central part of the state, straddling the Rio Grande. The city population was 545,852 as of the 2010 Census and ranks as the 32nd-largest city in the U.S. As...
, Santa Fe
Santa Fe, New Mexico
Santa Fe is the capital of the U.S. state of New Mexico. It is the fourth-largest city in the state and is the seat of . Santa Fe had a population of 67,947 in the 2010 census...
, and [Cubero] in New Mexico
New Mexico
New Mexico is a state located in the southwest and western regions of the United States. New Mexico is also usually considered one of the Mountain States. With a population density of 16 per square mile, New Mexico is the sixth-most sparsely inhabited U.S...
.
The soundtrack
Soundtrack
A soundtrack can be recorded music accompanying and synchronized to the images of a motion picture, book, television program or video game; a commercially released soundtrack album of music as featured in the soundtrack of a film or TV show; or the physical area of a film that contains the...
includes "Lucille" by Kenny Rogers
Kenny Rogers
Kenneth Donald "Kenny" Rogers is an American singer-songwriter, photographer, record producer, actor, and entrepreneur...
and "Don't It Make Your Brown Eyes Blue" by Crystal Gayle
Crystal Gayle
Crystal Gayle is an American country music singer best known for her 1977 country-pop hit, "Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue". An award-winning singer, she accumulated 18 number one country hits during the 1970s and 1980s...
.
Critical reception
The movie failed critically and financially. Vincent CanbyVincent Canby
Vincent Canby was an American film critic who became the chief film critic for The New York Times in 1969 and reviewed more than 1000 films during his tenure there.-Life and career:...
of the New York Times called the film "not very horrifying" and thought "it looks as if it had been put together from a child's instruction book." He added, "The screenplay . . . is terrible and the special effects third-rate."
Time Out New York said the film "never really takes off" and added, "Hiller's direction simply plods to a corny and unsatisfactory ending after getting bogged down in subplots concerning whale-oil prospectors, Indian religious mumbo-jumbo, and inter-tribal rivalries."
Channel 4
Channel 4
Channel 4 is a British public-service television broadcaster which began working on 2 November 1982. Although largely commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority , the station is now owned and operated by the Channel...
observed, "Quite why Hiller was selected to direct this suspense shocker is the most interesting thing about the project. A film-maker who has made a speciality of showing reverence for platitudes has no jurisdiction over a piece of schlock
Schlock
Schlock is an English word of Yiddish origin meaning "something cheap, shoddy, or inferior "In the field of science, "schlock" refers to shoddy or unreliable results....
nonsense about bat-killers in the Arizona desert."