'Devil Bat's Daughter': An ode to forgetfulness

Devil Bat's Daughter (1946)
Starring: Rosemary La Planche, Michael Hale, Nolan Leary, Monica Mars, Molly Lamont, and John James
Director: Frank Wisbar
Rating: Four of Five Stars

Nina (La Planche) driven to a mental breakdown when she learns her dead father was not only a murderer but may have also been a vampire, is placed in the care of manipulative psychiatrist Dr. Morris (Hale). When his wife (Lamont) is murdered, everyone--including Nina herself--believes she did it in a fit of madness... everyone except handsome Ted Masters, the dead woman's son who has fallen in love with Nina. He sets out to prove Nina's innocence and that his step-father is the killer.

Taken on its own, "Devil Bat's Daughter" is an okay little horror flick that suffers from stiff acting, clunky dialogue, and strange story continuity lapses (such as a continuing back-and-forth about whether the "Devil Bat" of the title--a local mad scientist who either came to a bad end at the fangs of his own monstrous creations but only after they killed half a dozen others, or who was put on trial for murder and presumably executed). The majority of the story elements are familiar elements of horror movies and thrillers of this vintage--a woman shocked into amnesia, a corrupt psychiatrist who may or may not be abusing his patients, and a bland hero whose only defining quality is that he is in love-at-first-sight with the imperiled heroine--there are a number of other factors that make this an unusual film and worth checking out.

The primary of these is the sympathetic portrayal of the "other woman" with whom the slimy psychiatrist is two-timing the wife he obviously only married for money. Rather than being a coldhearted and scheming bitch who is every bit the villain that he is, she is another victim of his manipulations, and she ultimately comes across as remorseful. Almost as important is the titular character, who, although little more than a conduit for melodrama, is also the pivot-point for enough plot substance that there are genuine questions in the minds of viewers that she might indeed be an unhinged, murdering somnambulist. This is all too rare in pictures of this production level and period, where plot misdirection and obfuscation usually feel halfhearted and are often painfully transparent. Screenwriter Griffin Jay and director Frank Wisbar truly rose above the standard for this kind of movie in this case.


Unfortunately, the film is less successful as a sequel to the original "Devil Bat" picture. While I admittedly might be a bit more of a stickler for continuity than many movie viewers, I still think anyone who saw "The Devil Bat" would wonder how/why the small town that was home to Paul Carruthers moved from the American Midwest to the East Coast, or why everyone from the town gossipers to the courts seem to have forgotten that Carruthers confessed to committing several premeditated murders using a trained bat before being killed by said bat in front of witnesses, or how Carruthers somehow transformed in everyone's mind from a well-respected local chemist and pillar of the community who secretly dabbling in bizarre experiments with growth acceleration through electrical glandular manipulation to a researcher who relocated to the town to work in peace and quiet on his mad science projects. The only details about Carruthers and his "devil bat" that remains consistent from the original film to this one is that he was the final victim of his own monster.

Why the creators of "Devil Bat's Daughter" chose to virtually ignore the story of the original film in favor of making Paul Carruthers the center of vampire legends and recasting him as a misunderstood genius instead of a raving madman is a mystery to me. Perhaps they were trying to convey that the entire town was shocked into a state of amnesia and dissasociation like Nina was over the revelations surrounding Paul Carruthers: Everyone in the small town of Heathville forgot who they were, where their town was located, and everything that really happened, and they filled in the blanks with details that seemed more logical to them than what had actually happened.

The film would have been much stronger if they'd remained consistent with the original, as Nina's madness and apparent homicidal mania could have been inherited from her crazy father; the writers could even have kept their goofy "ah-yup, dem townies shurly do believe that ole Doc Carruthers wuz a vampire, yup dey sure do" stuff as the trigger for her mental breakdown. Instead, they created a film that is undermined every time it invokes the original movie with distortions and revisions of that films most basic plot points and background elements.

And that's a shame, because their sloppy and arbitrary story telling manages to ruin what might otherwise have been a decent little thriller.

'The Flying Serpent' was better as 'The Devil Bat'

The Flying Serpent (1946)
Starring: George Zucco, Hope Kramer, Ralph Lewis, and James Metcalf
Director: Sam Newfield
Rating: Five of Ten Stars

A demented archeologist (Zucco) uses a strange flying serpent that may or may not be the god Quetzalcoatl to protect an Aztec treasure and kill anyone who annoys him.

"The Flying Serpent" is, essentially, a remake of one of PRC's greatest horror flicks, "The Devil Bat", only with even less story logic. Once again, a mad scientist (here Zucco's archeologist instead of Lugosi's chemist) uses a flying monster to take out anyone who crosses him, up to and including the dashing romantic hero of the film. Instead of Lugosi's giant bat which is trained to attack anyone who is wearing a certain type of cologne, the creature in this film attacks anyone who is carrying one of its feathers.

Unfortunately, the one thing that doesn't have a parallel between the two pictures is the interesting performances, amusing script, and moody atmosphere from "The Devil Bat". The only non-bland aspect to this film is George Zucco's overblown performance as a melodramatic madman. It's almost a shame he didn't have a mustache, because he should have been twirling it. Even the creature--aside from the slightly silly, pseudo-supernatural ability it has to find its plucked feathers--is bland and uninteresting. Worse, the film has a slap-dash feel to it, as if only a minimum of effort was put into the script and the filming process... and nowhere is this more clearly demonstrated than in the film's climax (which I won't detail due to my policy of trying to avoid spoiling a film).

If you want to a PRC film featuring a horror movie icon sending a flying monster to rip the throats out of anyone he doesn't like, go with "The Devil Bat". You'll be glad you did. (Although if you're a fan of this film, I'd love to hear your take on it, especially the ending.)

Japanese occupiers menace the 'Lady From Chungking'

Today, it's exactly 65 years since the United States of America dropped an atom bomb on Japan, setting into motion the events that finally ended World War II, as well as Japan's vicious empire in the Pacific. This post is one of several I've made that mark occasion.

Lady From Chungking (1942)
Starring: Anna May Wong, Harold Huber, Ted Hecht, Ludwig Donath, Mae Clarke, Rick Vallin, and Paul Bryer
Director: William Nigh
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

A Chinese aristocrat, Kwan Mei (Wong), who has been reduced to working in the rice fields along side the peasants by the Japanese invaders of China during World War 2. She continues to lead her people by convertly organizing her fellow laborers into a guerrilla fighting force, but when she is picked by a slimey Japanese officer (Hecht) to serve as mistress to General Kaimura (Huber) she must convince the peasants she hasn't betrayed them, or they won't be in a position to stop the arrival of massive Japanese reinforcements that will assure Japanese dominance over the whole of China.


"Lady From Chungking" is a fairly standard WW2 resistance fighter tale, although the fact it deals with the Chinese resistance against the Japanese occupation of their land sets it apart from the typical partisan films. (They still manage to work in a bit of Nazi flotsam in the form of the German owner of a hotel that serves as the headquarters for the Japanese forces, home to the general leading them, and prison for a captured American fighter pilot (Vallin).)

Something else that sets this film apart from many others of its kind (especially if they were released by PRC like this one) is the well-crafted story and superior acting.

Aside from the plotline with a pair of downed American Flying Tigers that have to released and returned to their base so they can give the guerillas air support when they attack the arriving troop transport trains, which feels a little like filler, despite the tie-in with the film's climax, the script is a tightly written one, with nary of moment of wasted screen-time and a set of characters that makes the nameless German-run hotel feel a little like Rick's American Cafe from Casablanca (only without the money for sets and extras). The ending is also very strong and somewhat unexpected.

The superior acting of all players--from a child playing a Chinese boy cowed by the Japanese oppressors, through star Anna May Wong--brings a collection of stock characters to full life as the story unfolds. Although Caucasian actor Harold Huber looks more like a Mexican gardner that's stolen some Japanese general's uniform, he nonetheless gives a fine performance as the vicious, wholly self-absorbed Kaimura. Star Wong also shines very brightly as Kaimura's opposite in all things, the noble and utterly selfless Kwan Mei.

I suppose one can't complain too much about White actors like Huber and Ted Hecht (who plays Kaimura's unfortunate aide-de-camp, Shimoto) being made up as Japanese with limited success. This is a William Nigh film, and he seems to have been the guy to call when you were casting a Caucasian as an Asian in the lead. At least here, he had an honest-to-God Asian as his star, which, as far as I know, is the one and only time this was the case.

While "Lady From Chungking" is a superior WW2-era low-budget quickie, it is one of the few of its kind that time hasn't passed by completely. It's a well-made film, with good acting and an uplifting message that speaks to audiences even today. It's not quite what I'd call a classic, but it's timeless (despite being a clear product of its time) and still very much worth watching.

An airplane drama that's too earthbound

Robot Pilot (aka "Emergency Landing") (1941)
Starring: Forrest Tucker, Emmett Vogan, Carol Hughes, Evelyn Brent, and William Halligan
Director: William Beaudine
Rating: Four of Ten Stars

A test pilot (Tucker) and a weather man/bush-pilot-turned-inventor (Vogan) have developed a prototype for a new kind of autopilot they believe will permit flawless remote-controlling of aircraft, thus allowing for bombing raids against the Nazis and Japanese without endanggering pilots. However, interference from enemy spies and an aircraft manufacturing mogul's ditzy, self-important daugther (Hughes) may well spell doom for their project before it ever gets off the ground.


"Robot Pilot" is an avation/sci-fi film with of heavy doses of coy, cute romancing and goofy comedy. Unfortunately, much of the comedy falls completely flat, partly because of changes in society in the 65 years since the film was made, and party because it just isn't very funny. (There's a "simple-minded Mexican" comic relief character whose scenes drag on and on and on. His stchick is actually somewhat more amusing when Evelyn Brant mimics him in a later scene. If fact, the funniest scenes in the film usually involve Brent, who is definately the most talented actress in the film.)

The simple story moves fast enough for the viewer to not get bored, nor to have time contemplate the implausibility of some of the plot developments. This may be damning with faint praise, but "Robot Pilot" is one of the best films William Beaudine films I've seen. If there had been less ethnic humor and more intrigue and drama, it might have ennded up with a Five or Six rating.


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'Dead Men Walk' is so-so chiller

Dead Men Walk (1943)
Starring: George Zucco, Mary Carlisle, and Nedrick Young
Director: Sam Newfield
Rating: Five of Ten Stars

Elwyn Clayton (Zucco) is a devoted Satanist who is murdered by his twin brother Lloyd (also Zucco), who wants to rid the world of this evil wearing his face. Although Lloyd successfully covers up the murder, he soon finds himself stalked by his dead brother who has been resurrected by the Dark Powers as a vampire. Worse, Elwyn intends to drain the life from Lloyd's beautiful ward, Gayle (Carlisle) before visiting his undead revenge upon his brother.


"Dead Men Walk" is a just about as typical a vampire movie as you'll ever see. Everything in it is pretty much as you would expect. So long as you're not hoping for anything original, it's a fairly entertaining B-movie.

The best part of the film is the climax where Lloyd battles Elwyn and his hunchbacked minion as a house burns down around them. Again, it's not anything you haven't seen before, but it's nicely staged.

The fairer sex plays the dirtiest game

I continue to mark the well-deserved ass-kicking Nazi Germany received 65 years ago.

Miss V From Moscow (1942)

Starring: Lola Lane, John Vosper, Howard Banks, William Vaughn, Kathryn Sheldon, Paul Weigel and Noel Madison

Director: Albert Herman
Rating: Five of Ten Stars

When a top female Nazi spy is killed by the Allies, a Russian agent that bears a striking resemblance to her (Lane) is sent to Paris to infiltrate the Nazi intelligence apparatus. But when she draws the attentions of a love-struck Wehrmacht colonel (Vosper), an over-sexed downed American bomber pilot (Banks) and the suspicions of Gestapo operatives (Sheldon and Madison), her mission and very life are placed in jeopardy.

"Miss V From Moscow" is a fun little spy movie where many chuckles will be had at the interchanges between the beautiful Russian spy who is passing herself off as one of Hitler's favorite agents, and the German Army Colonel who is smitten with her, partly because of her beauty but mostly because of her connection with his beloved Fuhrer.

One scene is both hilarious and chilling, when Miss V and Colonel Heinrick attend a speech by Hitler. Heinrick is so enraptured during that scen that one keeps expecting him to throw his underwear at the stage, or perhaps even faint after squeeling like a school girl, but he is also not really listening to what Hitler is saying. The scene would perhaps be even funnier if it wasn't for the fact that it is probably an accurate portrayal of how much of the German people reacted to Hitler.

For the most part, though, the humor arises from the Russian agent using double-entrendres to respond to Heinrick whenever he prasies Hitler--giving what to Heinrick sounds like equally adoring and loving comments.

Aside from Lola Lane and John Vosper, no one really stands out. The rest of the cast are decent enough but they are playing as part of the background, not rising above the supporting roles that they play. (Howard Banks is extremely annoying as the "dashing airman", but I blame 1940s cinematic tropes more than I blame the actor for this; he's basically filling the role of "wise-cracking trouble-maker" that would be a reporter or a private detective if this wasn't a movie about a lady spy.)

This is a fun, fluffy flick if you have a taste for old-time low budget movies, but it's not worth going out of your way for. It's not bad, but it's also not especially good.

'Fog Island' isn't worth the trip

Fog Island (1945)
Starring: George Zucco, Lionel Atwill and Sarah Douglas
Director: Terry O. Morse
Rating: Four of Ten Stars

Leo Grainger (Zucco), a ex-convict and failed businessman, lures the people he holds responsible for framing him and for killing his wife to his mansion on on Fog Island. Dangling a promise of hidden wealth in front of them, he triggers a scavenger hunt of doom within the home's secret passages.


"Fog Island" is a confused and murky picture, and not just because almost every scene appears to be severely underlit. Story-wise, there seems to be big chunks of the plot missing, and we never do find out what Grainger's backup plan might have been if the targets of his revenge has chosen to not play the game, or what some of the clues he gave meant. It also remains unclear why he seems bent on drawing his step-daughter (Douglas) into his web of revenge. (The story actually falls apart even before it starts, because you'd have to be an idiot to accept an invitation from someone you framed and set to jail for five years when said letter declares that "justice will be done." The script does have a couple of Leo's guests discuss that going may not be too smart... but they go anyway!)

Acting-wise, the cast does a pretty good job, but the unintentional comedy is what makes this movie watchable moreso than the attempts at building suspense. The way virtually every single line that Zucco utters is dripping with ominous double-meanings, and the way the villainous supporting cast are creeping around after each other in the darkened hallways are the source of many giggles. (The intentional humor in the film is also pretty good, such as when one character suggests to another that "Crime and Punishment" would make for good bedtime reading, or when Grainger tells a guest his house was built by pirates so the guest "should have no problem finding your way around.")

As a suspense film, "Fog Island" is a failure. It's fun to watch for Zucco's over-the-top performance, though.

'Beast of Berlin' offers negative 1930s view of Hitler's Germany

Someone call Oliver Stone and/or forward him a link to this post.

As he sets about showing us how Hitler has been unfairly slandered by history and how we can't judge him to be "good" or "bad," he might want to take a look at "The Beast of Berlin." (For background on what I'm referring to, click here.

It's a film made while Hitler was laying the foundation for the death camps and the purges. It's a film that shows that, while many Americans and Britons were turning a blind eye to the evil of Hitler and his National Socialist Party, a few filmmakers were trying to call attention to the truth of Germany and to the evil growing in strength there.

It's too bad that Oliver Stone is apparently committed to be on the side of history's idiots. He could actually do some good with his movies instead of white-washing evil movements and men of the past and lending support to their equals today.



The Beast of Berlin (aka "Hitler: Beast of Berlin" and "Hell's Devils") (1939)
Starring: Ronald Drew, Steffi Duna, Alan Ladd, Hans von Twardowski, Walter Stahl and Henry von Zynda
Director: Sam Newfield
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

A German veteran of WWI and civil engineer (Drew) works quietly with other intellectuals resisting the oppression of Nazis and trying to spread the truth to the people about Hitler and his evil regime. When his wife (Duna) becomes pregnant, he struggles with the choice of continuing his resistance efforts or flee Germany to raise the child in freedom.


"The Beast of Berlin" was one of the very first American movies to present the full truth about Hitler's Germany to the public. It showed the Nazis as a mixture of mindless brutes and embittered soldiers who were still smarting from the humiliation that was dealt Germany by the world following WWI. It also showed that Hitler and his goons were successful to a large degree because the European nations and America were ignoring Hitler's evil or trying to appease him.

Like with Charlie Chaplin's "The Great Dictator" from 1940, Nazi sympathizers and appeasers on film boards in New York and elsewhere tried to prevent this film from being seen. The excuse used in both cases was that the films were inflammetory and would be insulting to Germans in general and Hitler in paticular, but the truth is that the only people who would be insulted by this movie or Chaplin's film would be admirers of the Nazis who wouldn't want the truth spoken about them and the world they were attempting to usher in.

It's a rather a shame that no one seems to have learned the lessons that Hitler and WWII in general tought us.

Today, we have people bending over backwards to appease Muslim fanatics and to avoid insulting them and their admirers by calling them what they are: Brutal subhumans who are bent on imposing a murderous dictatorship on all but themselves. Just like Hitler's Nazis. Hell, they even want to kill the Jews and Catholics, just like Hitler's Nazis. Unfortunately, we're even worse off today than we were in the 1930s, because it isn't censorship boards chaired by Islamo-fascist appeasers and admirers, but the creative community itself who is too stupid and ignorant to see the truth that is taking shape before their very eyes, playing out on cable TV, twenty-four hours a day.

"Beast of Berlin" is a film that actually casts a good light upon the German people; it shows the majority of them as being held captive by Hitler's jackbooted psychos. It shows their brutality and evil for what it was... it even soft-pedals it, as I don't think anyone in America truly believed the depths of evil and depravity that Germany was reaching by 1939.

This is a film that's a bit too preachy at some points and almost laughably melodramatic at others, but, like Chaplin's "The Great Dictator", it's a heartfelt work of art about a subject too few people were willing to discuss at the time it was created. That passion shines through, and it makes the film worth seeing even today.

(Trivia: Ben Judell, the producer of this movie, was forced out of the film company he founded due to the distribution problems the film suffered because of censorship boards nervous about offending Nazis. He went onto independently produce other films geared toward showing the true face of Hitler's Germany, such as the comedy anti-Nazi films, such as the comedy "Hiter, Dead or Alive.")





"Beast of Berlin" is avaliable from Amazon.com for less than $9. It's interesting to see what the contemporary thought was among those who recognized the evil of the Nazis early on. And it might even be interesting for Oliver Stone to see. Maybe someone can buy him a copy of the film as a present?

'The Black Raven' is an inn to avoid

The Black Raven (1943)
Starring: George Zucco, Glenn Strange, Noel Madison, Byron Foulger, Wanda McKay, Robert Livingston and Robert Middlemass
Director: Sam Newfield
Rating: Four of Ten Stars

The Black Raven Inn has a reputation only slightly more shady than its owner (Zucco), but on one dark and very stormy night, it plays host to more than the usual share of crooks and creeps when someone starts murdering the men and women who have been trapped there because the bridges have been washed out.

"The Black Raven" starts strong, playing like a straight-forward cross between a "dark old house" film and an Agatha Christie-style murder mystery. However, by the time the first murder occurs, the movie has already descended into a meandering morass of filler... and when it starts getting good again--right around the time where George Zucco's character begins to show he's more than just a villainous innkeeper who makes his real living by smuggling criminals across the border to Canada--viewers are so bored they hardly notice or care.

Everything about this film is substandard, and it seems pretty clear that most everyone invovled was just there to collect a paycheck... or they're terribly miscast. Zucco, who usually seems to give a movie his all, seems to be sleepwalking through most his scenes, and I don't think Glenn Strange has a comedic bone in his body; he never should have been cast in the role as the comic relief character. Even as a murder mystery the film is fairly lazy (although it does have one minor twist to it, a twist that makes it harder than usual to guess who the killer is because it's someone that is so obvious that the character is dismissed as a suspect in the minds of experienced mystery watchers/readers).This film might be of interest if you're the world's biggest fan of George Zucco, but even then I think you might feel as if you've wasted your time when your done watching it, even at its brief 61-minutes.

The overall blandness is spiced up by the exteme sadism of the bad guy

The Monster Maker (1944)
Starring: J. Carroll Naish, Tala Birell, Wanda McKay, Ralph Morgan and Terry Frost
Director: Sam Newfield
Rating: Five of Ten Stars

A mad scientist (Naish) goes to extreme measures to force the daughter (McKay) of a celebrated concert pianist (Morgan) to marry him.


"The Monster Maker" is a sadistic little horror film about a maniac with a talent for epidemiology, the young lady he wants to possess no matter what, and her father that he infects with a horrible disease to make it happen.

The movie is a little on the slow side, the acting is uniformly bland and the camera work is even more so. However, the absolute and pure insane evil that is represented by J. Caroll Naish's character of Dr. Markoff will make you stick with the film. His plan to force the lovely Patricia to marry him can't possibly work, but he proceeds with the unwavering certainty that only a complete lunatic would display... and the film gets increasingly sadistic toward its various characters as it unfolds.

Dr. Markoff may well be one of the most evil mad scientists of the first decade of horror cinema, not to mention one of the craziest. (I can't comment on the full reason why I say he's the evilest and craziest as it ruins one of the film's shocking revelations, but take my word for it: You haven't seen the final word in an evil mad scientist until you've seen "The Monster Maker".

The film is also noteworthy if you're interested in following the trail of the obviously fake gorillas that were so common(and possibly even proscribed by some sort of cinematic code) among low-budget film studios in the 1940s. Perhaps it was the same fake gorilla? It shows up again here and it's just as unintentionally hilarious as every other time it shows up.

(Has anyone tried to catalogue the number of times these fake gorillas showed up during the 1940s? If not, there might be an article in that idea....)

"The Monster Maker" is worth checking out if you're into mad scientists and/or fake gorilla suits. I highly recommend the version available from Alpha Video as the DVD transfer was made from a virtually prestine print of the film. Click here to read more about, or to order a copy, it at Amazon.com. (There are some minor scratches, but it's in far better shape than what is typical for films from long-bankrupt minor studios like PRC.)

'The Mad Monster' isn't mad enough to bother with

The Mad Monster (1942)
Starring: George Zucco, Johnny Downs, Glenn Strange, and Anne Nagel
Director: Sam Newfield
Rating: Three of Ten Stars

After being mocked by his collegues and pilloried in the press for his outlandish theories, Dr. Lorenzo Cameron (Zucco) retreats to an isolated estate to continue his experiments. Unfortunately, Cameron's theories--that if he injects a serum created from wolf's blood into a human, that human will turn into a violent wolfman--were workable, and he he uses them to turn his simple-minded gardener (Strange) into a tool of revenge against those who destroyed his career.


"The Mad Monster" has one of the strongest openings of the many old-time mad scientist movies that I've seen. The complete and utter madness of Cameron is established effectively as he discusses his scientific discoveries in an increasingly heated fashion with four men who appear and dissapear from chairs around the table he is at. It's a scene that's well-written, well-staged, and well-acted.

Unfortunately, everything that follows is badly written, poorly staged (with the exception of where the wolfman kidnaps and kills a little girl (!)), and over-acted--even George Zucco who often hammed it up in films like, this is so far over the top that one can't help but groan at the performance. (Only Anne Nagel, who plays Cameron's daughter, doesn't embarrass herself... but that might be due to the fact that she her role really doesn't require much in the way of acting from her.)

The final blow to this movie is the wolfman make-up, as the creature looks more like a beatnik or a hippie than a menacing monster. Rediculous is too mild a term to describe what it looks like.

While "The Mad Monster" is worth seeing by fans of the "mad scientist on a rampage" horror subgenre for its opening scene, there really isn't enough here to make it worth seeking out on its own. However, it's included in a number of those low-cost DVD multi-packs, and if there are other movies in a set that interest you, then this makes for a nice bonus.

'Baby Face Morgan' makes crime funny

Baby Face Morgan (1942)
Starring: Richard Cromwell, Robert Armstrong, Mary Carlisle, and Chick Chandler
Director: Arthur Dreifuss
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

When Edward Morgan (Cromwell) is installed as president of his dead father's insurance company, he decides to offer "racketeer insurance" to the city's truckers. Little does he know that he's been installed as the head of a crime syndicate's legitimate front... and the money he's paying out to truck company's being extorted by the gangsters is the very money that is being extorted from them.

"Baby Face Morgan" is a dippy, far-fetched mob comedy. The humor is mostly derived from the way the mobsters and Edward continue to work at cross-purposes, and it's made all the more funny by the fact that the mastermind of the scheme (Armstrong) would have known Edward was handing the extortion money (and much more!) straight back to the truckers.

I kept expecting the film to go in a direction it didn't--I found myself wondering if Edward could get large policies at the drop of a hat, why didn't the mobsters just go into insurance--but the film never did go there.

It also never quite went as far in the screwball direction as I would have liked it to go. The film is full of great ideas that are not quite used to their fullest potential, due to a weak script and a cast of so-so actors.

Still, the film is short, fast-moving and never boring.

'The Devil Bat' is one of Lugosi's best

The Devil Bat (aka "Killer Bats") (1942)
Starring: Bela Lugosi, Dave O'Brien, Suzanne Kaaren, and Donald Kerr
Director: Jean Yarborough
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

Everyone loves the ever-smiling chemist Dr. Paul Carruthers (Lugosi), especially the investors in the cosmetics company he's been creating best-selling colognes and perfumes for. When the company owners make what they feel is a nice gesture to reward Carruthers' many years of service, he feels like he's been insulted and he decides to kill his bosses and their entire family. Revealing that he's as talented a mad scientist as he is a chemist, Carruthers transforms otherwise harmless bats into giant hunter-killers that hone in on a special cologne that he's given to his victims for "testing." Will Carruthers get away with his bloody schemes, or will a lazy tabloid reporter (O'Brien) and his photographer (Kerr) manage to stumble their way to the truth?


That's a long summary, but "The Devil Bat" is pretty convoluted. In fact, it's so convoluted that it's one of those films that you need to just watch without thinking too hard, particularly when it comes to Paul Carruthers, his killer bats, and his rambler house with its secret Mad Scientiest Lab and tower for convenient bat launches.

The film's got a decent cast (with Lugosi being particularly fun to watch) a story with plenty of humor (both intentional and unintentional), and a pace that is just fast enough to keep the viewers interested. It's by no means a masterpiece, and its low, low budget is painfully visible in some of the sets (although the bat effects are better than I expected), but it's a fun bit of viewing if you enjoy Bela Lugosi and the nonsense breed of plup fiction-style sci-fi/horror flicks that filled the B-feature slots at movie houses in the 30s and 40s.

By the way, I highly recommend getting the DVD version of the film that I've linked to below. Not because I recommend watching colorized classics, but because I think it's fascinating to compare a colorized version with the black-and-white version. Invariably, you will discover that colorizing saps a film of life rather than enhances it. (I used to think that it was only dramas that were ruined by colorization. Then I picked up the disc containing both the colorized version and original version of "My Man Godfrey." Actually, watching both versions close together changed my mind completely.)