YMMV / It Lives by Night

• Designated Hero: If Johnny is supposed to be the hero, his evident lack of remorse for his murders and general dickishness undercuts our sympathy. If Sergeant Ward is supposed to be the hero, trying to rape Cathy makes it impossible to root for him.
• Narm:
  • John's sudden, violent and extremely goofy-looking seizures.
  • And in general, the fact that what being attacked by a bat turned Johnny into... well, something that looks far more ape than bat, but they were probably going for bat... man.
    Mike: Oh, he was also bitten by an Ecuadorian bald-faced monkey.
    (Later...)
    Servo: (as John) Oook, oook, oook... I mean... squeak! squeak! squeak!
  • Either that, or the classic Wolf Man makeup with a spear nose. Eh, it was Stan Winston's first feature film credit, so we'll cut him some slack.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • The poster you see on the main page. It is kind of freaky.
  • Johnny's assault on the nurse mentioned below, which ends up being thoroughly unpleasant and harrowing to watch thanks to how effectively the actress sells the poor woman's utter terror, sounding like she's genuinely convinced she's about to die. It just figures that the best acting in the movie would come from the one scene where it has the worst effect.
• Special Effect Failure:
  • See Narm above. Side note: The makeup effects were done by the legendary Stan Winston.
  • Similarly, several of the flying bat shots were handled by an also greenhorn Tony Urbano, and it shows. When they attack near the beginning, it looks less like they're flapping their wings and more like they're being waved around like party favors when flying towards the camera; and the shots of them attacking their victims are only marginally more effective by virtue of actually making the wings flap. The ones that attack and kill Sgt. Ward look as dead as he does and barely move, and that's when they don't look like flattened mice with wings crudely glued on them.
  • Not a special effect per se, but the close up of a bat is obviously a bat being held still by its wings. The poor thing is in pain.
• Squick: Bat bombardments. Also a case of Artistic License – Biology, because the bats splat on his windshield like bugs. BATS AREN'T BUGS!!
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: Between asshole John, whiny Cathy and pervy Sheriff Ward, there's no one to identify with.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Johnny, to the nth degree. He starts out as a smarmy Jerkass, and just builds from there. Even though he's not supposed to be in control of himself when he does it, it's pretty much impossible to sympathize the guy when he starts killing people. Just to ratchet up his dickishness even further, he later says that leaving his wife behind will be his only regret about becoming a bat-dude (so, no remorse for all those murders you committed, huh?). The one time he manages to show enough restraint to not take an innocent human life is when he forces a nurse to unlock a blood storage cabinet for him, but his creepy, breathy menace in manhandling the poor woman and her [distressingly well-acted] terrified crying and sobbing while he pins her down give the entire scene the extremely uncomfortable vibe of a sexual assault. Yep, our hero, ladies and gentlemen.
• Wangst: Cathy has two settings — awkwardly flirty and tearful panicking.

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