The Bat (1959)

What a waste of my time!!!

Thanks for the memories!

A Brilliant Conflict

The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

A masked killer called The Bat picks off people in a gloomy old mansion. Does it have something to do with a load of stolen money or does it track back over decades of related murders.Price gets top billing, but his time on screen rapidly dwindles. I get the feeling there might be a backstory to this 1959 production. It's really Agnes Moorehead as the headstrong old dowager who carries the film and not Price. In fact, Moorehead's character is the chief force combating the evil Bat. In that sense, the screenplay breaks with gender convention in an unexpected way. So who's The Bat. Whoever it is, he's one weird killer, what with a sock for a suffocating mask and fingernails in bad need of a manicure. It's rather hard to get a handle on the whodunit since the narrative segments gather in rather awkward fashion. The first part sets up a good crime plot making me think the rest would be a Price showcase. But the rest meanders in unpredictable fashion. In fact, unless I missed something, the masked culprit is given no motive for the series of murders that have occurred over time. I just can't help feeling the screenplay got lost in the wake of last minute revisions.Anyway, it's an interesting cast with Moorehead and Price. I kept hoping they would have a big clash since each can be so boldly formidable. And, oh yes, there's former Little Rascal Darla Hood as a 28-year old teenager and even looking the part. Too bad she passed away, relatively young.All in all, it's an unpredictable movie, but without much logic to tie the sometimes effective segments together.

This was a typical class 'B' picture but at least there was a mystery that kept the audience in the program to the very end. Vincent Price and Agnes Moorehead actually did a nice job with the light script they were given-- but for some reason the screen play writer threw in an aide to Ms Moorehead that ruined the entire process.Lenita Lane played Lizzie Allen the aide to Moorehead's character. It seemed that every time she had a speaking part she was trying to give a comical tone to the story but ended-up being an albatross around the neck of the movie. Her every line was like fingernails running across a chalkboard that made me shiver at each bewildering statement. Her acting ability ruined the entire experience.With that said, the mystery was a clever who-done-it tale that kept the viewer guessing to the very end. And with the weak script, I will give credit to the performances of all the actors, except for one. Too bad that one character was not killed off very early in the show. Where was the bat when you needed him?

Crane Wilbur's 'The Bat' is an unusual comedy ('don't you hear that awful noise out there?'), and I enjoyed its unwillingness to attempt the conventional suspense, and its dry, light style recalls sometimes that of Feuillade, if you wish, and of Hitchcock's TV, but mostly, increasingly, massively that of Ed Wood, unwilling to guide or patronize its public, it attempts something very different, with perhaps one of the most unflattering portrayals of a cereal killer ever, and the sense that all these events don't really matter that much, almost an Ed Wood soap opera …. The impression is that each actor did pretty much what he or she felt like; some of them were having fun, certainly the lead actress. As the movie nears its denouement, with that clueless, absurd cop, it becomes obvious that this is Ed Wood taken to the hilt. Possibly the 1st mystery movie where I guessed whodunit; and the whole subplot about the chauffeur was mere Ed Wood.

In the opening scene, Agnes Moorehead and her staff have moved into a large house, but the servants are muttering about the threat of rabid bats. When I lived in Philadelphia there was a similar warning on television. "Look out for bats behaving oddly." The warning was of course futile because everything a bat does is odd. I suppose they could get REALLY odd by sitting down at the piano and hammering out "C Jam Blues" while grinning at you, but short of that, how could you know something was up? The story is too complicated to go into in detail. Some nonsense about a bank's founder stealing a million dollars from the bank, being murdered by Vincent Price (a doctor), four or five ladies ensconced in Agnes Moorehead's mansion and being threatened by somebody in a black mask and wearing gloves with claws, a snoopy detective, a grandfather clock, cut telephone lines, an uppity maid, a clumsy director, 1959 bouffant skirts (nice), the shadow of a villainous hand cast on the wall by a flash of lightning, that million bucks hidden somewhere under the floorboards or behind a secret panel in the wall or something.The budget was low. Few outdoor shots, no extras. And the tale, suitably tweaked, might have made a good hour-long episode of "Alfred Hitchcock Presents." There are a few unexpected witticisms in the dialog, nothing too challenging. But for the most part we get lines like this: Two young women are spending the night locked in their room. The beds are next to each other. One young lady turns to the other and says, "I can't sleep. I keep thinking of that man with the slashed throat." The other replies soothingly: "Don't think about it." How do you DO that? How do you not think about something? The mind will think what it will. It's its own agent. Unless -- is it possible that there is a mind BEHIND the mind? Somebody make a long-distance call to Descartes. We'll get to the bottom of this.Look, the whole movie seems to have been lying at the bottom of a shoe box labeled "B movie scripts, 1930s.") But I had to stick with it to the end.