Devil Bat

The Devil Bat
Reviewed by Edward Larsen Terkelsen

USA, NR, 68 m, 1950
Directed by Jean Yarbrough. Stars Bela Lugosi, Suzanne Kaaren, Dave O’Brien, et al.

The folks at the poverty row studio PRC (which some critics used to joke stood for “Pretty Rotten Crap”) distributed a lot of nutty product in their day, but The Devil Bat takes the figurative fruitcake. The plot: beloved Heathville scientist Dr. Paul Carruthers (Bela Lugosi, of course) has had his fill of his fat cat employers, Henry Morton (Guy Usher) and town father Martin Heath (Edmund Mortimer), getting even fatter off the sale of his aftershave lotions while he’s left to make do on the occasional crumb. (“Too much money is bad for dreamers,” Henry reminds him.) Well, he could’ve engaged a legal beagle to renegotiate a better contract for him, but the demented doc has other plans, namely offing the bosses and their families. So he creates some special cologne that when worn will arouse the bloodlust of a bat that he has electrically enlarged to the size of a pterodactyl. When Martin’s son, Roy (John Ellis), drops by Paul’s lab to present him with a bonus check for five-thousand smackers, he’s given a bottle of Paul’s newest concoction to sample. “Rub it on the tender part of your neck,” Paul suggests. Now smelling like he spent the night in a cathouse, Roy extends his hand and says, “Goodnight, doctor.” Grinning, Paul takes his hand and responds with a penetrating “Goooood…bye.” So, after Roy has left, Paul unleashes his ghastly pet into the night air. I’m not sure what ingredient in the oil attracts the beast, but it hunts down Roy and sucks the life out of the tender part of his neck. Word of this “devil bat” soon has the town in a panic, which is dramatized by that worn-out montage of swirling newspaper headlines and screaming horns. Eventually some Chicago rag dispatches a reporter, Johnny Layton (Dave O’Brien), along with his annoying Jimmy Olsen-like shutterbug, “One-Shot” McGuire (Donald Kerr), to the area to find out what the hell is going on. Basically they just sit around and wait for the bat to show up again. It does, of course, and dines on Heath’s other boy, Tommy (Adam Baldwin), as well as Morton’s pride and joy, Don (Gene O’Donnell). As the bloodless bodies pile up, Johnny puts the moves on Heath’s daughter, Mary (Suzanne Kaaren of Tarantula), while “One-Shot” takes a liking to Martin’s sizzling French maid, Maxine (Yolande Mallott).

The bat is a clunky, low-cost affair, though close-ups of a real bat’s face are inserted to help us suspend our disbelief. It doesn’t work; there’s a glaring inconsistency between the bat’s teeny features and his massive frame, which only makes the thing look even more preposterous. (I was reminded of another Lugosi vehicle, Murders in the Rue Morgue, in which the filmmakers cut shots of an actual monkey’s mug into the footage of some poor schnook stumbling around in a bulky gorilla suit.) Every time the bat is sent off to embalm someone, the same shot of it taking off from Carruther’s window (along with a flock of smaller bats) is repeated. (And every time that shot is inexplicably proceeded by more than a few frames of total blackness, which at first I thought was just another boo-boo in the rather junky print I was screening, but has since turned up in all the copies I’ve looked at since then.) Worse, as the critter sails across the sky, we’re made all too aware of the cruddy nuit américaine photography. Mind, I’ve never cared much for this technique, whether it’s used in B-grade quickies like Attack of the Giant Leeches or A-list productions like American Graffiti. It’s just never looked right to me, and I miss seeing the stars twinkling in the heavens.

December 3, 2007

C-D

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