A few months back, CBS ran a telefilm called Locusts that starred a "so it has already come to this" Lucy Lawless.
Despite being marketed as a nature gone amok movie about man-eating locusts, it was really more of a tepid melodrama about genetically engineered locusts threatening the nation's food supply. To call it one of the lamer nature
gone amok/disaster movies I've seen in recent years would be a massive understatement. I've yet to even complete a review because I was just so underwelmed by its lameness and the network’s shameful mis-marketing. Nonetheless,
Locusts was a ratings bonanza for CBS, and that means sequel.
Now in pre-production at the "Eye-Fi Network" is the tentatively titled Vampire Bats. Can you guess what they’re using instead of locusts this time around? Lucy Lawless returns as the heroic voracious-insect specialist
that saved America from mutant locusts by turning the national power grid into one giant bug zapper. Having retired from civil service to become a college professor, the former Warrior Princess gets caught up in the
investigation of a student that was found dead with his body completely drained of blood. She soon realizes that the killers are actually vampire bats that have mutated due to a tainted water supply. Oh, what improbable means of
saving us all will the screenwriters have her come up with this time around? More importantly, will they actually dare this time to schedule the movie to air on a Sunday night when "Desperate Housewives" isn’t a rerun?
Is it just an amazing coincidence that word of this TV movie comes out within 24 hours of news that a sequel to
Bats is also in the works? Well, yeah.
The irony about the Bats sequel and Vampire Bats is that both are all but guaranteed to be better than the original movies that spawned them. They couldn't possibly be worse. Or could they?
- The Foywonder