In this 1986 Polish film, Katarzyna Walter stars as Iza, a young woman who lives in a small village and who appears to be happy with her quiet life.  Despite the efforts of her aunt (Małgorzata Lorentowicz) to set her up with a local bureaucrat (Edwin Petrykat), Iza says that she is happy being single.  Even though there’s a “sex murderer” on the loose, Iza still prefers to walk alone at night.  She is happy taking care of her bats and making pottery.

Iza, however, has a secret life that not even her aunt knows about.  Sometimes, she puts on dark glasses and a brunette wig and she goes to a nearby town.  She presents herself as being as prostitute but, once she’s alone with a man, she grabs him, bites his neck, and drinks his blood.  Iza is a vampire!

Iza seems quite happy with being a vampire or, at least, she does until she meets Dr. Rudolf Jung (Marek Barbasiewicz), a psychiatrist who visits her aunt’s shop and buys a tea set.  Jung is handsome and single and Iza’s aunt thinks that he would be a perfect match for her.  For once, Iza agrees.  When Iza sees Dr. Jung being interviewed on television about an experimental asylum that he operates out of an ancient castle, Iza goes to the castle and asks to be admitted as a patient.  The bemused Jung replies that there are no vacancies.  Iza replies that she’s a vampire and she wants Dr. Jung to cure her.  Jung, assuming that Iza is merely delusional, take her on as a patient.

Iza proves to be a difficult patient.  For one things, she’s immune to hypnotism, which is apparently Dr. Jung’s main technique.  Secondly, she doesn’t really seem to want to stop being a vampire.  Instead, she just seem to be attracted to Dr. Jung.  Why she’s so attracted to Dr. Jung is another question all together.  Dr. Jung is a condescending jerk who doesn’t really seem to care about any of his patients.  Just as Iza drinks the blood of her victims, Dr. Jung seems to thrive off of the delusions of his patients.  The main thing that Jung and Iza have in common is a belief that they were both destined to be forever alone.  Dr. Jung explains that he never had room for a wife or a family because he was too busy going to school and making a name for himself.  Iza, meanwhile, has always assumed she’ll be alone because she’s a vampire.

(Interestingly, even though the film clearly establishes that Iza is a vampire, none of her victim come back as vampires and she has no problem going out during the day.)

I Like Bats is an intriguing vampire film, one that mixes a creepy atmosphere with a liberal dose of dark humor.  The story itself meanders a bit and is not always easy to follow.  The motivations of Iza and Jung are often rather unclear.  Like a lot of films that were made in Eastern Europe during the period of communist domination, the most interesting thing about the film is the contrast between the beauty of old Europe, with its castles and its green countryside, and the brutal ugliness of the dominant Marxist-Leninist culture.  Though I Like Bats is not explicitly political, there’s still a healthy dose of paranoia running through the film, the type of paranoia that goes along with living in or near an authoritarian state.

I Like Bats is not always easy to follow but the dark ending carried a punch and it’s a film that will stick with you.