My uncle took me and my cousins to see this movie when I was around 10 or 11 (1970's) and it's always stuck with me, although I couldn't remember the title. What I thought I remembered was a group of people in outer space (seems they're actually in an underground bomb shelter) and, oh yes, BATS. LOTS of vampire bats, to be specific! I almost was beginning to believe I had fabricated the entire thing in my mind, but I can so vividly remember the movie theater in Asbury Park, NJ and going with my uncle and cousins (he also took us to see Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Star Wars...). Loved going to the movies with him, needless to say, but this particular movie especially haunted my nightmares. So glad to finally discover the correct title and the IMDb reviews. Looks like the BluRay is going to be released THIS WEEK (Oct 4, 2016)! What amazing serendipity. Can't wait to revisit this horror (sci-fi?) flick from my youth. Interesting to read so many posts by others who had seen this as kids and who remembered it vividly.

"Chosen Survivors" poses quite a few ethical questions, while taking extreme liberties with the reputation of vampire bats. The film has an almost fatal failing in that it introduces a dozen characters all at once. This of course means that character development is totally inadequate. We really know nothing about those unfortunate individuals who succumb to the blood sucking winged annoyances. On the positive side, many of the futuristic sets are intriguing, there are some unexpected twists, and the use of actual as well as animated bats lends realism. The movie occasionally grinds to a halt with meaningless small talk, but overall has definite entertainment value. - MERK

This is a movie I've wanted to see for over 30 years now; I first read about it in horror magazines when it first came out, but it soon turned into a lost film that went completely out of circulation. It has now been made available by Fox as part of their Midnite Movies Collection, and I'm a little disappointed to say I wasn't missing all that much. It's not a "bad" genre film and it's got a good premise, but it's still rather ordinary in the way it's executed. A group of people are selected by computer, sedated, and then sent down 1,758 feet into an underground bomb shelter to see if they might sustain life in the event of a nuclear war. It was another of those perfect experiments hatched by the government, except they overlooked the fact that this project was built down within caves, so now swarms of hungry vampire bats manage to find their way into the bunker and chomp on these frantic chosen survivors. There's more talk going on than anything else, but when the bat attacks do occur, they're pretty satisfying, even if sometimes the special optical effects amount to little more than a flurry of dark splotches.I got a kick out of seeing former Our Gang child actor Jackie Cooper as the main loudmouth of the bunch who at one point goes on a bender and becomes your basic arrogant pain in the ass character. Other '70s regulars among this cast are Richard Jaeckel (GRIZZLY) Bradford Dillman (BUG), and Lincoln Kilpatrick (THE OMEGA MAN). I thought I recognized director Sutton Roley's name from somewhere, and later I found out that's because he directed some LOST IN SPACE episodes and was primarily a TV show director. I'm not sorry I saw this, but it sure was some tepid tea. ** out of ****

A group of people are selected to take part in an experiment to see how mankind would fare after a nuclear holocaust and are placed without there consent in a bunker thousands of feet below ground. They disturb a group of bats living in the cave systems around them and they begin to attack the trapped humans. This is a great premise for this film but i found it so slow moving with far to many talking scenes. In the whole first hour only two people die of the bat attack and only one of them do we see die on screen. The remaining film concerns one of the group trying to climb to safety who falls to his death and releases the bats to attack one final time killing all but 5 of the group in one big attack scene. All in all a good premise for a film but not as good as it could have been.