The Devil Bat (1940)

Imbecile, Bombastic, Ignoramus. The Devil Bat is directed by Jean Yarbrough and written by George Bricker and John T. Neville. It stars Bela Lugosi, Suzanne Kaaren, Dave O’Brien, Donald Kerr and Gary Usher. The Heathville Horror! Straight out of Poverty Row is this PRC production that’s as bonkers as it is fun. Plot sees Lugosi as a fed up cosmetic chemist who decides that the company he provides his inventions for have not done right by him financially. So in his secret laboratory at home he breeds big killer bats, bats that he rears to kill anyone wearing the scent of aftershave lotion that he has handed out to the targets of his ire. As the bodies begin to mount up and the press whip up a devil bat on the loose storm, journalists Henry Layden (O’Brien) and “One Shot McGuire” close in on the source of the town’s terror. The low budget is often evident, be it props and sets that shouldn’t move etc, but at just over an hour in length this gets in and does its job with a sort of carefree abandon that is to be admired. Lugosi is having fun shifting from borderline mania to crafty dastard with a sense of humour, and of course there are big scary bats that shriek before homing in for the girl. Result! The flaws are obvious throughout, not least that Lugosi ends up playing second fiddle to the journalists’ blend of bravado and buffoonery, but as time fillers go, and as Lugosi’s Poverty Row Horrors go, this is impossible to dislike and not have a good time with. 6/10

OK, so almost all of the peril comes from a man out of shot careering about with a plastic bat on the end of a fishing rod, but somehow this daft sci-fi hokum makes a point. It's all about the rather shrewd scientist "Carruthers" (Bela Lugosi) who feels slighted by his pals who made a load of long-term cash from an invention that he took the quick buck from. By way of exacting his cunning revenge, he has devised a formula that purports to be an after shave but is actually toxically attractive to a giant bat. Suffice to say, nobody survives their encounter for long and so soon both the police and the press are trying to get to the bottom of things as the corpses pile up. The rest of this is all standard drive-in fayre, but I did rather like the swipe it took at the pomposity of scientists who simply make things up when they don't know the facts. Of course, it's basic from start to finish but Lugosi keeps this adequately cast little beastie caper running along smoothy for quite an entertaining hour.