The Bat (1959)
Directed by Crane Wilbur

Film Review

Avery Hopwood and Mary Roberts Rinehart's popular stage play The Bat had already been adapted twice for cinema - as The Bat (1926) and The Bat Whispers (1930) - before Crane Wilbur came along and gave it a new lease of life with his 1959 film version, which coincided with a revival in the popularity of the 'old dark house' horror formula.  In a similar vein to William Castle's House on Haunted Hill (1959), Wilbur's The Bat never takes itself too seriously and serves both as an effective murder mystery-cum-horror film and a sly parody of a B-movie genre whose main raison d'être is to be parodied.  Occasionally, the film does get a little tangled up in its plot convolutions, with juicy red herrings being thrown left, right and centre, but overall it's as entertaining as those O.D.H. classics of the 1930s, although probably not as bloodcurdlingly creepy.

No low budget American horror film of this period would be complete without Vincent Price and the film's main delight is Price revelling in one of his more ambiguous character portrayals, effusively warm one minute, and spine-tinglingly sinister the next.  The other treat on the cast front is an oddly likeable Agnes Moorehead doing her audition piece for Murder She Wrote (if it came to a head-to-head contest, she'd probably slay Angela Lansbury in a trice).  Like Price, Moorehead clearly looks as if she is in a comedy but still delivers a resoundingly straight performance, with the inevitable result that she is totally hilarious.  Lenita Lane is more overtly comical as Moorehead's panicky maid, but even her performance is suitably downplayed so as not to detract from the horror that is bubbling up in every crevice of this film.

And for a film that feels like an intentional send-up it's quite surprising how grim it is in parts. Joseph F. Biroc's shadowy photography has that suffocating spookiness that no old dark house film can do without, and without which the main villain of the piece, a masked killer with metal claws and a nice line in sarcasm, would look pretty feeble.  Skulking in the shadows, awaiting the next opportunity to rips someone's throat out, the so-called Bat is as fearsome as any other movie horror fiend, although just how he earned his moniker is anyone's guess.  In silhouette, he looks uncannily like our friend Freddy Krueger from A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984).  Coincidence?

Film Synopsis

Cornelia van Gorder is a successful crime writer who has just moved into an old mansion named the Oaks on the outskirts of a small American town with her faithful maid Lizzie.  The house belongs to bank president John Fleming and has a bad reputation, on account of the fact that several people have been savagely murdered there by a serial killer who has come to be known as the Bat.  Fleming has stolen a million dollars in negotiable securities from his bank and plans to abscond with his ill-gotten gains, after faking his death.  His attempt to involve his best friend Dr Wells in his scheme backfires: Wells shoots him dead, hoping to help himself to the stolen money that the banker has hidden somewhere in the Oaks.  Cornelia and Lizzie have barely settled into their new home when they receive an unwelcome visit from the Bat...