Weirdhouse Cinema Rewind: The Devil Bat

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hello, Welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind. My name is
Joe McCormick. Today we're bringing you an older episode of
Weird House Cinema. This one originally published on July twelfth,
twenty twenty four, and it is our feature on The
Devil Bat from nineteen forty, starring Bella Lagosi. So let's
jump right in.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 3 (00:38):
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.

Speaker 1 (00:41):
And I am Joe McCormick. And today on Weird House
Cinema we are going to be talking about the nineteen
forty horror thriller The Devil Bat starring Bella Lagosi and
Suzanne Karen, a movie where the one sentence plot Summarie
not only includes the phrase giant mutant bat, but also
the word lotion.

Speaker 3 (01:02):
Yeah that's right. Yeah. In this episode, we're returning once
more to the nineteen forties. This is only our third
forties picture on Weird House with and the first in
a long time, following nineteen forties Doctor Cyclops and nineteen
forty six is The Beast with Five Fingers. So I
am excited to return to one of our least explored

(01:22):
decades on the show, like this, the thirties and the twenties,
we just haven't hit as much.

Speaker 1 (01:26):
Yes, though, you know, some of our the sci fi
movies we've done from like the thirties and the forties
have been some of my favorites. Actually. Oh, I actually
in fact came to the idea of doing Devil Bat
this week by looking specifically for movies that are similar
to the Beast with Five Fingers starring Peter Lourie, which

(01:47):
I loved, and I was thinking, ooh, I want something
in that zone, and this is what I turned up,
And I think it's close. Beast with Five Fingers I
think was a little more, you know, higher budget, a
little more elaborate, had a little bit more class, but
ultimately on I think the same frequency.

Speaker 3 (02:06):
Yeah, it had more of a gothic flare. This one
is more Middle America meets mutant bats.

Speaker 1 (02:12):
Yeah. And while I would say that the plot of
this movie is quite formulaic, like there is a pattern
that's established with how each of the Bat murders takes
place that just sort of repeats and is the same
way each time. It's almost like the setup to a joke,
you know where it's just like there's a very formulaic
repetition until the inversion. It's like that, and yet at

(02:33):
the same time, the script isn't actually half bad. I
think there is more kind of character and flare in
it than you would get for a lot of similar
movies from this time period. I'll also say for a
horror movie from nineteen forty, I found Devil Bat to
have a surprisingly lively pace after the first ten minutes
or so, that is the opening scene. I don't know

(02:56):
if you felt the same way. Rob opening scene is
almost comically dull. It's like they thought, you know what
people want to see, Bela Lugosi looking through a pane
of glass for like three minutes straight while he microwaves
a bat.

Speaker 3 (03:09):
Yeah. Yeah, there are a lot of scenes of Bello
Lugosi microwaving bats in this film, and you just need
to be on board for that. But but then again,
it's Bela Lgosi, And if you have to ask, you
have to watch any actor do these scenes, it might
as well be Bella because at least, uh you know,
he had you know, even at this point point in
his career, uh you know, he still had a lot

(03:30):
of energy, a lot of charisma, and you see that
in a film like this, where he's working alongside a
lot of very solid professional actors of the time period.
This is not this is a low budget picture, but
it's not like a zero talent picture. This is not
the ed Woods end of the spectrum for Bello's career.
But even with all these other, like very perfectly perfectly
good and sometimes kind of great performances around him, he

(03:53):
still shines and you still see that in him.

Speaker 1 (03:55):
I totally agree, Yeah, Bella Bella is the star. There's
no question about that. Which is it's always a good
move to make the villain the real star of the movie.
I like that choice here, and I think it works out.
But also, as I was saying, I think even with
the more mundane characters and the more mundane scenes, I
think it's pretty lively, Like the pace really picks up

(04:16):
once we meet the journalist character, and there's a good
bit of snap and personality to the dialogue.

Speaker 3 (04:23):
Absolutely, it doesn't have the at times dull plotting pace
that you encounter in genre pictures from these decades. So
of course I had to look up this one in
the Psychotronic Encyclopedia film and Michael Weldon, the reviewer, the
author there. Look him up if you're not familiar with him.
If you love weird films, you'd love the work of
Michael Weldon. He points out that this was a Producer's

(04:46):
Releasing Corporation or PRC film, and PRC was the quote
cheapest studio in the business, bottom of the ranking of
the eleven Hollywood film companies active in the nineteen forties.
They only lasted from like nineteen thirty nine to nineteen
forties seven, and The Devil Bat was their very first
horror film. It was also a success, so they followed
it up in forty six with what Welden refers to

(05:09):
as a cheat sequel, which does certainly sound like a
cheat because it concerns the daughter of Bela Lugosi's character,
while also, yeah, it's his daughter.

Speaker 1 (05:19):
Can't recall him having one in this movie.

Speaker 3 (05:21):
I know, so he has one now, so introducing the
unknown daughter and then completely exonerating his character for all
of his actions in the first film and blaming them
on a new villain. This is a picture no spoilers.
This is a picture where there's never any doubt that
Belo Lagosa is murder is plotting to murder people with

(05:42):
mutant bats and doing it, and there's scenes with internal
dialogue about it.

Speaker 1 (05:46):
Yeah. In fact, I would almost say, if there were
any criticism I would make of the plot in this movie,
the first one I would probably make is that the
good characters are trying to solve a mystery, but you
know the answer to the mystery the whole time. You
know the answer before they even start investigating. So there's
no tension for the audience in resolving the mystery, except

(06:08):
like wanting to see what happens when Belly gets caught.
But there's no ambiguity. Yes, he's sending the bats. We
know he's sending the bats. We watched him make the bats.

Speaker 3 (06:16):
Yeah. Yeah, you completely derail everything about the first movie.
So so yeah, it's not supposed to be that great.
It's supposed to be more of a psychological thriller and
less of a horror film. And I'm not even sure
there are any bats in it.

Speaker 1 (06:28):
But what we're not talking about that don't have bats?

Speaker 3 (06:32):
I know, I know, but anyway, we're not talking about
Devil Bat two or the bat daughter of Bat Devil.
I forget what it's called now. But Weldon certainly liked
this one. He thought this one was pretty lively, And
I have to say, given the low budget nature of
the picture, I have to say, uh yeah, the pace
is great and the bad action looks I thought surprisingly good.
I know we're going to maybe disagree a little bit

(06:53):
on the special effects in this film, but I went
into it with very little expectations from us flapping bats.
I love any bad effects in a film, from bad
puppets to great puppets, from bad CGI to just you know,
mind bending CGI. I'll take any of it. And so
I was expecting everything to be a lot more flippity

(07:14):
and floppity, and I was pleasantly surprised that it was
more believable than that.

Speaker 1 (07:19):
It is better than the batpuppet in Suspiria. But that's
not a high bar.

Speaker 3 (07:24):
The bar is love for this sort of thing. I wouldn't.

Speaker 1 (07:27):
But yeah, what will I say. I don't think it
looks great. I don't think it looks realistic, but it
it's fun. You know they staged the scenes.

Speaker 3 (07:38):
Well, yeah, all right, I have an elevator pitch for
this one. I think it'll make sense once we get
into the plot, but it's breaking bad except with bats
in aftershave.

Speaker 1 (07:48):
Yeah, that's right. Yeah, it's if Walter White, instead of
making methamphetamine was making bats.

Speaker 3 (07:54):
Yeah, because you have a so you do have a
similar plot with him, like like he was this brilliant
innovation who kind of got jerked around by the moneymen
and has a lot of personal pride and his scientific powers.
But again, no meth just bats and after shaft.

Speaker 1 (08:12):
Yeah, I think a great villain they always need one,
like characteristic sin of your seven deadlys, and in both cases,
the sin here is pride.

Speaker 3 (08:20):
Yes, all right, let's go ahead and listen to at
least some of the trailer audio here. I think this
one gives you some of the snappy dialogue as well.

Speaker 4 (08:42):
When an animal attacks a human, there's bound to be
a lot of noise.

Speaker 1 (08:44):
I die of the scientist. They many things into consideration.
A layman my overlook.

Speaker 4 (08:50):
Ever smelled anything like this before. Found it in Don
Martin's bathroom. Yes, that's the same stuff that's been on
every one of the Devil bats victims. All four of
the murdered people had this lotion on them when the
Devil Bat struck Late And I'm afraid all these murders
have affected you my Now, my plan is to sit
in the garden and when the killer makes one of
those power dives, I'm blasting.

Speaker 3 (09:25):
All right now. At this point, you may be wondering,
where can I see the devil bat? This one apparently
entered into the public domain a while ago, which may
sound good at first, but this isn't necessarily a good thing, because, well,
it means you can easily find a film like this
in various streaming and physical formats. Not all of them
are going to be worth your time. The best source

(09:46):
that I'm aware of for the film is the twenty
thirteen Kinoclassics disc. You can get it on DVD or
Blu Ray mastered in HD from archival film Elements, and
that one also features audio commentary by film historian Richard
Harlan Smith. They had every intention of viewing it in
this format. They have this disc at Atlanta's own video Drome,
but then my week got super busy. I wasn't able

(10:08):
to make it over there and rent it, so I
had had to find a stream instead. I found a
pretty solid stream of it, but I am going to
rent the disc at some point. From the drone and
maybe dive in a little deeper, you know, little forward
facing research for forthcoming Bell Legosi Pictures.

Speaker 1 (10:23):
I do want to see a higher resolution version than
I saw of the flat bats, the flat bats on
the coat hangers.

Speaker 3 (10:30):
Yes, all right, let's get into the people who made
this film. Starting in the director's chair as usual, it's
gene Yarborough, who lived nineteen hundred through nineteen seventy five,
American producer and director who worked his way out. This
is one of those crazy Hollywood stories, a guy who
worked his way up from being a chauffeur for like
a producer his too, all the way up to being

(10:52):
a director. His directorial duties began in RCO's short subjects division,
so doing a lot of shorts for RKO beginning back
in nineteen thirty six, and then he went on to
direct his first full feature for the Poverty Row Studio
this is the term for like the lower budget Hollywood
studios Progressive Pictures in nineteen thirty eight, Who's called Rebellious Daughters.

Speaker 1 (11:14):
Oh boy.

Speaker 3 (11:15):
The head of that studio would then go on to
found PRC, the studio behind this picture. So he did
this film in nineteen forty followed by I believe a
few different PRC films, Caught in the Act and South
of Panama in forty one, and The Brute Man in
forty six. That one starred Rondo Hatton. You know the
If you've ever seen a picture of him, you know

(11:36):
a very very famous character actor with an extremely unique look.
And even if you haven't seen a Rondo picture, you
may have seen The Rocketeer, which features a henchman character
who is modeled via special makeup effects to look like
a Rondeau character. Okay, yeah so. Yarborough also directed for

(11:59):
other studios during the time, and moved on to work
for Monogram Pictures, which became Allied Artists in fifty three,
and ultimately Universal Pictures, where he directed the nineteen forty
six Rondo film House of Horrors and some of the
lesser known but still quite successful Abbit and Costello movies,
as well as multiple episodes of TVs. The Abbot and
Costello Show, which ran fifty two through fifty four. I

(12:21):
don't know about you, Joe, but I often forget that
there are all these abb and Costello movies. There's something
like thirty seven of them, though I'm mostly familiar with it.
Imagine a lot of you are only familiar with the
ones that have monsters in the title, like you know,
Abit and Costello meet Frankenstein or whatever. He did not
direct any of those. He directed these various other ones
that don't even necessarily mention Abbot and Costello in the title.

Speaker 1 (12:42):
I've actually never seen any of those, but I know
some of the core ones where they meet I don't know,
Dracula or Frankenstein. Whatever the main universal crossover ones are
are supposed to be pretty funny.

Speaker 3 (12:52):
Yeah, I don't know. I don't think I've ever watched
one myself. So Yarborough cut his teeth on quick and
low budget film projects. He developed a great reputation and
skill set for quick turnaround and this made it been
natural for television. So he just ended up doing more
and more of that, serving as a director for TV
until around nineteen seventy one. His last feature film was

(13:12):
nineteen sixty seven's Hillbilly's in a Haunted House. I believe
I've seen a riff tracks version of this. It features
John Carrodine, Lon Cheney Jr. Basil Rathbone, and Merle Haggard.

Speaker 1 (13:24):
Merle Haggard, well.

Speaker 3 (13:25):
Yeah, it is Hillbilly's in a Haunted House. I think,
if memory serves, it's like a Nashville country act, you know,
contemporary to the time, encountering creepy characters in a haunted house.
I don't recall it being very good, but I remember
there being some laughs.

Speaker 1 (13:40):
Mama tried to make me not a hillbillyon a haunted.

Speaker 3 (13:43):
House, but it failed. Now the screenplay here is by
John T. Neville, who lived eighteen eighty six through nineteen
seventy American screenwriter with credits going back to nineteen twenty seven.
He worked on a lot of westerns and adventure films,
with some crime and sports thrown in there. There's like
a boxing film called The Heart Punch, I think. But however,

(14:04):
this in nineteen forty six is The Flying Serpent. Seems
to be. They seem to be the only horror films
that he worked on, and The Flying Serpent is said
to be very similar in plot to The Devil Bat,
but with some sort of giant Meso American flying serpent
instead of a devil Bat. And I can only assume
this might have been at least some small influence on
the much later film Cue The Winged Serpent.

Speaker 1 (14:26):
Ah, okay, you remember. Actually there is a similar plot
device to make a connection to another director who made
a name for himself by working fast and cheap, Roger
Corman's movie Not of This Earth, the one where the
guy from another planet is trying to send people back,
trying to steal people's Earth blood because his home planet
has been contaminated. But he's also got a suitcase that

(14:49):
sends out this flying bat monster. It's like an alien
that I guess steals people's blood.

Speaker 3 (14:54):
I like that one. There's a really cheap kind of
variation on this theme too, and the phantom creeps the
at times exciting, at times exceedingly dull, Bella Lagosi cereal
for more or less this same time period, they're like
robot spiders or something of that effect.

Speaker 1 (15:09):
A couple times recently that's come up. Did you say
there's a version of that that's like condensed that maybe
we could watch for the show.

Speaker 3 (15:15):
There is At some point it was cut down from
like what did I would I say before some way
too much from an extremely long serial format into a
condensed film format that probably makes less sense but is
probably less boring. Okay, all right, so that was the
screenwriter The original story credit goes to George Bricker eighteen
ninety eight through nineteen fifty five. Worked from the mid

(15:36):
thirties to the mid fifties, with his most notable works
being a pair that pair of nineteen forty six Rondo
Hattan Films, nineteen forty six is She Wolf of London,
which was also directed by Yarborough, and nineteen fifty two's
macau All right, but getting into the cast, Yes, of
course this is a Bella Lagosi film, and we've talked
about Bella Lgosi at least briefly before, because we covered

(15:58):
Plan nine from outer Space, and I think out when
we said this cannot be the first episode where we
really talk about Bella, will have to come back to him.
So I guess this is the episode where we go
into more detail about Bella Lagosi.

Speaker 1 (16:09):
Okay, because in fact, I think we recently re ran
Plan nine for matter Swedes, which of course made for
a really fun weird house episode. But yes, Bella is
barely in planine and he's only a couple of scenes,
so I can understand why we said that. So let's
talk about him now.

Speaker 3 (16:24):
Yeah, that was his last picture and certainly not his
best picture. This is not his best picture either, but
I think it's more fitting to talk about him here.

Speaker 1 (16:32):
Yeah, Yeah, this is a good one.

Speaker 3 (16:34):
Yeah, Bell Goosie Here plays doctor Paul Carruthers. Lagosi lived
eighteen eighty two through nineteen fifty six. Legendary Hungarian American
actor and classic horror icon who's of course, best known
for his portrayal of Dracula in the nineteen thirty one
Universal horror film of the same name. I mean, it's
pretty impressive. I think that all these years after that

(16:58):
film came out, he is still like one of the
stars you think of when you think of Dracula, Like, yeah,
you think of Christopher Lee. You probably think of Gary Oldman.
Maybe there's one or two others in the mix, but
probably not like I feel like, I feel like Bela
Lagosi is still like somewhere in that top three for
most film fans, oh yeah, or horror fans in general.
So Lgosi started out in Hungarian theater in silent films,

(17:21):
before making his way to Germany and doing some silent
films there, and finally making his way to America. His
May he made his way up to New York became
very active in the theater scene there, mostly as an actor,
but I think he did a little directing as well.
I don't have any details on that, but he also
did some silent films there, and it's here that he
landed the lead in the Broadway play Dracula in nineteen

(17:42):
twenty seven, and then moved to la in nineteen twenty eight.
I believe it's part of a tour of Dracula, and
this is where he kicked off his proper Hollywood career.
The next year, he appeared in Todd Browning's The Thirteenth Chair.
Browning would of course go on to direct Bella in
that nineteen thirty one adaptation of the Dracula stage play,
and this of course led to his you know, many

(18:04):
of his best known films, especially the horror films that
remained such a central part of his legacy. Though we
have to point out that he was he was type
cast by all of this, and I think accounts indicate
that he was rather he felt limited by this, like
he saw himself as a more versatile actor, but he

(18:24):
was mostly relegated too horror roles and the you know,
the scary Bella Legosi type characters that we think of
today and wasn't really able to break out of that.
And we have to remember too and all of this that, yeah,
as big of a film as Dracula was, as things
like Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein were horror and science fiction,
these other genres were very much considered further down the

(18:47):
studio pecking order, but anyway had a number of notable films,
followed thirty two's Murders in the Room Morgue, White Zombie,
and Island of Lost Souls thirty four as the Black Cat,
That's when we might come back to Mark the Vampire
thirty nine, Son of Frankenstein, and the serial The Phantom
Creeps Nineteen forty gave us The Devil Bat, followed by

(19:08):
the likes of forty two's The Ghost of Frankenstein and
The Corpse Vanishes, forty three's Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman forty
eighth Abadan Costello Meet Frankenstein. This being his last A
List movie and also his final portrayal of Count Dracula.

Speaker 1 (19:23):
So I feel like The Devil Bat in the arc
of Legosi's film career is kind of positioned in the
middle between his early apex with Dracula, in the early
universal movies, and then what would happen later in the
fifties when he would end up working with ed Wood.

Speaker 3 (19:39):
Yeah, the fifties were rougher, you know, including fifty two's
Bella Lugosi Meets of Brooklyn Gorilla that's at least one
of the titles, and of course that trio of Edwood films.
Fifty three is Glenn or Glinda, fifty five's Bride of
the Monster, and fifty seven's Plan nine from Outer Space.
And during this period in particular, understand he battled physical
anim drug addiction, for which he saw treatment and financial problems.

(20:05):
And it is fitting though that he was apparently buried
in that Dracula cape. You know, he ultimately, you know,
he wanted to escape the legacy of that character to
a certain extent, but he also fully embraced, like the
star power, the lasting legacy of what that role meant.

Speaker 1 (20:22):
I believe Devil bat is not Bela Lugosi's best performance
of all time. It's not in his top top tier.
But I would find Bella entertaining if he were sleepwalking,
And so I love all of his scenes, even the
ones where he's just like infinitely sniffing chemicals or looking
through the glass. You know, he's great and all that,

(20:43):
but the really good scenes are the dialogue scenes where
he's like trying to get somebody to try on the
lotion that makes the bats kill them. He has so
many hilariously overt like I am about to murder you
with the bat lines.

Speaker 3 (20:56):
Yeah, yeah, so yeah. The charisma and the Dallon shines.
And one of the reasons again that Plan nine from
Outer Space is not generally considered her a good film
is that Bela Agosi's barely in it. Like if he
had been in it more, had he not died, you know,
it would have been a better picture. Would it have
been good, No, but it would have been a better picture.

(21:26):
All right, Let's get into the supporting cast here, because
we have some interesting characters here as well. We have
Suzanne Karen playing Mary Heath. She's one of the daughters
of the the main family is involved in this pivotal
fragrance company in the film.

Speaker 1 (21:41):
Yeah, the plot is sort of so like Bela Lagosi
is trying to wipe out these two families who run
this cosmetics and perfume company, and there's this long list
of brothers he's working down before he gets to marry
And I guess the whole point is the audience is
supposed to be like, no, you know, you can get
all the brothers, but don't hurt Mary.

Speaker 3 (21:59):
Yeah. You know, classic classic structure here. You know, you
have your your vengeful killer who either begins by killing
characters you want to see die or at least you're
neutral about, before working their way to the characters that
you're more invested in. Yeah, and this is the one
we're invested in.

Speaker 1 (22:18):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (22:19):
So Karen Was She lived nineteen twelve through two thousand
and four American actress and dancer who also worked in
the New York theater and on Broadway. In Hollywood. She
worked in I believe some Three Stooges shorts, as well
as some various uncredited roles and occasional lead roles such
as this. She was active on the screen from around
thirty three to forty four, but also made an uncredited

(22:39):
cameo in nineteen eighty four as the Cotton Club. I
think she's good in this. She has very captivating eyes
in a solid performance. Like I said, this is a
film that may be low budget but is filled with
very competent actors. Yeah, all right. The next one of
note ooh, this one's a real treat is the character
Johnny Layton. He's your hot reporter looking into all these

(23:01):
what turned out to be mutant bat murders, and for
a time they think prehistoric bat murders. Played by Dave O'Brien,
who lived nineteen twelve through nineteen sixty nine, American film actor,
I think at least one time director, also a screenwriter.
He wrote a number of screenplays as well. He's pretty prolific,

(23:24):
and I think he was credited has co credit on
an Emmy for work on The Red Skeleton show writing comedy.
So this guy was very talented. He worked a lot
in these categories, but he's best remembered today, perhaps secondarily
for his role in this film, but mostly for his

(23:46):
role as a deranged dope theend in the nineteen thirty
six film Tell Your Children, better known, I think to everyone,
as its re released title ref for Madness.

Speaker 1 (24:01):
We just a powerhouse performance. He's the one who is
aggressively puffing the marijuana cigarette over and over as the
lady is playing the piano and he's screaming at her
to play faster. Play faster. Yes, and the narrator tells
us that this is what happens to the refer addict
that he ends up with, is they call him like

(24:22):
inescapable madness or something.

Speaker 3 (24:25):
A notorious film, a piece of anti marijuana propaganda that
would later on to become like a cult classic because
it is so ridiculously over the top and an ultimately
very telling of this time period and its sensibilities and
objectives in his messaging. But it's a delirious performance, and

(24:45):
it's interesting that it ultimately outshines a lot of his
very successful and popular contemporary work, Like he was a
successful contemporary actor. But you know, we often end up
remembering folks for the weird stuff.

Speaker 1 (24:58):
Yeah, yeah, so yeah, as you said in Devil Bat
he plays our sort of Jack Rabbit wise newspaperman. He's cool,
he's quick witted, he's a touch devious, like he's got
a little bit of a flim flam artist in him,
but just enough that he's he's a bad boy, but
still the good guy.

Speaker 3 (25:16):
Yeah. It's weird that there's a whole subplot that goes
on with him and his photographer attempting to fake a
bad attack or fake a bat so they can get
a photograph of it, so they don't have a They're
a little low on journalistic integrity. But there's still our heroes.
We're still totally rooting for them. You know.

Speaker 1 (25:35):
We've talked on the show before about how so many
sci fi and horror films from before roughly the sixties
have very boring male leads. I mean, some after the
sixties do too, but especially like in the fifties, that's
just the dead zone for protagonists in this Male protagonists
in these genres the kind of low deaf rectangles who

(25:56):
are there to just kind of look vaguely handsome and
punch the villain, rescue the female lead, but don't really
have any interesting dialogue or sharp angles to their personality.
I found this guy refreshingly different. He's got a good
bit of personality. There are weird quirks about him, and
some of his dialogue is kind of witty. You know
who he actually reminded me of was the male lead

(26:18):
in Doctor X from nineteen thirty two, that the pre
code horror film with synthetic flesh. That character was also
a wise cracking newspaper reporter.

Speaker 3 (26:29):
That's good, I mean, I guess that ultimately, like the
news paper reporter, just in the long term, as a
fictional archetype, you know, kind of removed from the reality
of actual journalism. It is often a space where we
play with more rogue individuals.

Speaker 1 (26:45):
You know.

Speaker 3 (26:45):
They are in this gray space between like pure authority
figures and of course the criminal elemental forces of chaos
and so forth. And so there is often a lot
of room there for it to be wacky, weird or
even just completely chaotic, you know. And it's like, yeah,
fear and loathing in Las Vegas, you know, getting into
gonzo journalism and all. So even in this time period

(27:06):
where there's a lot that's you know, getting more and
more straight laced and buckled down, this is so much
better than just your square jawed, you know, steak eating
policeman type character you would get in various other pictures.

Speaker 1 (27:18):
Yeah, and though I don't want to oversell the weirdness
of this character. He's not super I mean, he's not
Hunter Thompson, but he is kind of a fox. He's
kind of like he's kind of wily and funny and
not just there to be your you know, lawful, good
slab of meat.

Speaker 3 (27:33):
Yeah, and Ultimately, I thought it held his own in
his big one on one scene with Bella at the
end of the picture.

Speaker 1 (27:39):
Yeah, I agreed, all right.

Speaker 3 (27:41):
Supporting character in this is Yolanda Donlin, who plays the
character Maxine, who is a French maid. She lived in
nineteen twenty through twenty fourteen American born British based actress
who mostly worked in the UK. This is not the
only film where she plays a french Maid, but her
career on the British stage seems to have been far
more substantial. So she worked with the likes of Laurence

(28:01):
Olivier and her last film was nineteen seventy six is
Seven Nights in Japan.

Speaker 1 (28:06):
She was a ray of sunshine here. I loved Maxine
all right.

Speaker 3 (28:10):
The main perfume boss is this guy, Henry Morton, and
he is played by Guy Usher, who lived eighteen eighty
three through nineteen forty four. Prolific character actor of the
thirties and forties. His films include The Case of the
Black Cat from thirty six, Buck Rogers from thirty nine,
and The Spanish Kate Mystery from nineteen thirty five. I
thought he's pretty solid in this.

Speaker 1 (28:31):
Yeah, he is business man.

Speaker 3 (28:34):
Yeah, he has a kind of there's a very funny
but at times a very awkwardly written scene with him
in Bell Lagosi's character where bell We'll get to it,
but what is.

Speaker 1 (28:45):
It one of the many scenes where Bella is trying
to convince somebody to put lotion on.

Speaker 3 (28:49):
Yes, and also like Bell Lagosi like eventually just out
of pride, like all but admitting to the previous murders
in the film, and Henry Morton's just kind of like,
what is this guy talking about? And then finally Don's
on him. Oh he killed all these people? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (29:04):
Yeah? Oh wait next, are we going to get to
the newspaper editor.

Speaker 3 (29:08):
Yes, the character is Joe McGuinty. The actor is Arthur Q.
Brian who of eighteen ninety nine through nineteen fifty nine
American actor and radio personality who he had many other credits,
but he served as the voice of the Looney Tunes
character Elmer Fudd from nineteen forty through nineteen fifty nine. Yeah,
he was not the originator, and there were others who

(29:31):
did that voice during this time, but he was an
official Elmer Fudd voice actor.

Speaker 1 (29:37):
That totally fits. I did not make that connection.

Speaker 3 (29:40):
I mean, it's it's not. It feels like the least
shocking thing in the world when you see him in
the film, because he looks like Elmer Fudd. It's like
he has a very Elmer Fudd look. He's just not
wearing the hunting cap.

Speaker 1 (29:52):
But he's also so I mean, it's early in the
existence of this cliche. So I guess he's one of
the examples that is being copied in later films and
TV shows. But he is the classic like police chief
or newspaper editor who's barking at our rogue main character
about how you're a loose cannon. He's mcgarnigle's boss on

(30:13):
the Simpsons. He's like, well, mccarnicle, you know, Billy is dead.

Speaker 3 (30:18):
Yeah, there are a lot of fun scenes with this character.
All right, And I'm gonna mention the musical director here.
This is you know, films of this nature from this
time period, they're often using like stock music, and ultimately,
I don't know, I couldn't tell. I didn't do deep
enough research to find out exactly how much this guy
worked on the music, how much of it his stock
and so forth, But he was very prolific. So I'm

(30:41):
just gonna mention him briefly anyway, It's David Chudnow, who
lived nineteen oh nine through two thousand and two, Russian
born composer and musical director who worked as music supervisor
or musical director on one hundred and sixty four credits
between thirty eight and fifty six. His composer credits include
nineteen forty two Is the Mad Monster and then later

(31:01):
Russ Meyer's nineteen sixty one film Erotica, and he went
on to produce a number of projects in the sixties
and seventies, mostly the films that were directed by his
son byronshud Now born nineteen twenty six, including a trilogy
of G rated intelligent Doberman pictures. I've mentioned these on
the show before. They are The Doberman Gang seventy two,

(31:22):
The Daring Doberman's from seventy three, and The Amazing Doberman's
from seventy six. William Goldstein of Doctor Fib's fame was
one of the writers on that last picture.

Speaker 1 (31:32):
These are Doberman. You're not talking about people named Doberman.
These are Doberman's the dogs.

Speaker 3 (31:37):
These are straight up dogs. I think solving crimes and stuff. Again,
not a horror movie or anything. It's like apparently g
rated fun, but it was like a whole franchise that
I feel like this largely forgot beautiful.

Speaker 1 (31:50):
Well, I don't want to be mean, but I do
not Nothing about the music in this movie really struck me.
It was kind of forgettable.

Speaker 3 (31:57):
It does everything expect a film from this time period do,
and nothing more. All right, well, shall we unleash the
plot in an unsuspecting audience.

Speaker 1 (32:05):
Yeah, let's open the window and let the bats out. Okay,
So we begin with a text legend over like superimposed
over a shot of just a town that by the way,
did you have an idea of where this was supposed
to take place? Because the opening shots made me think
this is supposed to be in the American Southwest. Looks

(32:26):
like the Southwest, But then the reporter that goes to
investigate is from the Chicago Register.

Speaker 3 (32:33):
Yeah, oh, you know, they might just have a satellite
office here. So I don't know. Everything feels very solid
Middle America, you know.

Speaker 1 (32:41):
Okay, Anyway, the text says, all Heathville loved Paul Carruthers.
They're kindly village doctor. No one suspected that in his
home laboratory on a hillside overlooking the magnificent estate of
Martin Heath. The doctor found time to conduct certain private experiments,

(33:01):
weird terrifying experiments. Period. Okay, so then we open on
Bela Lugosi hunched over a table covered in chemistry equipment.
You got beakers, flasks, gas flames, in a room with
fake stonework walls, and he's doing chemistry, mixing solutions, decanting

(33:22):
things into bottles, occasionally just having him a little free sample,
like like sniffing, you know, getting a sniff.

Speaker 3 (33:28):
Yep, yep, doing some mad science. Basically, you know what
he's up to. You didn't even need the crawl. Of course,
Bello Lugosi is up to weird, terrifying experiments and you know,
I don't know, we don't know. It's illegal, you know,
God bless him. Go ahead do your weird terrifying stuff.

Speaker 1 (33:42):
Why would he be sniffing the chemicals if there was
anything wrong with them? So he goes into a secret passageway.
This is accessed by way of a hidden switch in
a bookcase, and this leads down into a dungeon. And
the dungeon is full of bats. It's hard to tell
exactly what's going on. So Rob, I'm going to lay

(34:03):
it out what I thought was going on, and you
tell me if it matches your impression. I think there
are lots of bats, but for substantial portions of the movie,
only one bat seems to be active at a time.
So I believe these other bats are backup bats that
are in storage waiting to be activated by the microwave,

(34:27):
as you put it, the thing that he's going to
put this bat into in a minute.

Speaker 3 (34:31):
That's right. You can only cook up one mutant bat
at a time, but you've got to have a lot
of normal bats on hand to cook up if something
happens to that prime bat.

Speaker 1 (34:40):
Okay, So the bats are dangling upside down from what
looked like coat hangers. There is one main bat at
the center of the room. It's bigger than all the others,
and Legosi approaches it to say the first line of
the film, what do you think the opening line of
dialogue in this movie will be? He says, ah, my friend,
our theory of glandular stimulation through electrical impulses was correct.

(35:06):
That's a hell of an opener. And then he goes
on to say, a few days ago, you were as
small as your companion, and now look at you, and
I think he's got to be a good thirty percent
bigger than the other bats. Now Here we cut to
a close up shot of a real bat's face. We
will see this exact same bat close up footage so

(35:27):
many times in the movie. I don't know if it
was something shot for the film or if they were
just getting you know, nature stock footage, but it's like
right up in the bat's face and it's some kind
of bat like looking around, looking like it's struggling against restraints.

Speaker 3 (35:41):
Yeah, I thought they did a pretty good job integrating
their live animal shots and their prop shots here. Of course,
as you might expect, this is often the case. The
bat we see enclose up is clearly a fruit bat
of some sort, yes, which is of course in real life,
absolutely not interested in human flesh or anything like that.
It wants to eat mangoes or something. But they to

(36:02):
the untrained eye, they look more ferocious. They look kind
of like wolves, so that's what we get. But yeah,
I thought the integration between the shots was pretty good, though.
The hanger bat kind of looks like some sort of
like cured bat jerky, right.

Speaker 1 (36:14):
Yes, it looks like a bat got caught into a
hydraulic press and so it's just a furry pancake with
wings and then they left it out to dry in
the sun.

Speaker 3 (36:23):
Exactly.

Speaker 1 (36:23):
Yeah, So Lugosi dismounts the bat hangar and transports it
to another room. This is a high voltage bombardment chamber
behind a steel door with thick glass viewing windows. He leaves,
He like hangs the bat up in the room, leaves
the room, puts on welding goggles, flips a switch. The
electricity starts going nuts inside the room. It's like arcing

(36:45):
from all these tesla coils and stuff, and the bat
is just hanging there while Lugosi watches through the glass.
And I think the director must have thought that people
would just really get a kick out of the glandular
stimulation scene because it goes on for some time. It's
like zap zap zaps app for a while. Then Legosi
goes inside the room to make some adjustments, then goes

(37:07):
back outside and starts zapping it again, and we just
get to watch.

Speaker 3 (37:11):
Yeah. I mean, I guess it's worth pointing out that, like,
what the full run time of this picture is sixty
eight minutes. Yeah, so maybe we do have a certain
amount of padding going on here.

Speaker 1 (37:21):
Yeah, But as the electrical stimulation continues, the bat begins
to flex its wings. So it's I guess it's coming
to life, coming out of cold storage now. Once the
stimulation is over, Legosi checks the bat for a heartbeat.
He goes in with like a stethoscope, and he's checking
it out, and he seems very very pleased with himself.

(37:42):
But he is interrupted by a phone call. It's a
call from his bosses that they are the business partners
Henry Morton and Martin Heath Heath of this heath Ville Heath,
the Heath Company, and Henry Morton is his partner, and
they are inviting doctor Caruthers to a family get together
at the Heath residence that night. And then Carrothers says
he appreciates the invitation quote, but I am very busy

(38:06):
working on a formula for a new shaving lotion. And
then Heath replies, oh, you know, but Doc, this is
my daughter's idea. And this is referring to Heath's adult
daughter Mary. They say, you know, Henry Morton's son Don
is going to propose to her tonight, and apparently she
will be very upset if Bella Lagosi isn't there for that.

(38:27):
So they hang up the phone, and then Henry Morton
says he's going to be surprised when he finds the
special occasion is to present him with this bonus check.
He says this while holding the check in his hand,
and then Heath takes the check and stares at it
and says, almost wistfully, five thousand dollars. I don't know,

(38:48):
maybe it's not coming across in the way I'm describing,
but there are so many, like out loud references to
this five thousand dollars check. It got very funny to me.

Speaker 3 (38:56):
Yeah, five thousand snaggers. Yeah, this is a lot of money.

Speaker 1 (39:00):
Well, whatever the amount is, it's just all these people
gathered around being like, wow, this is the dollar amount
of the check. Anyway, Before Carothers goes to the party,
we see him explaining his giant bat scheme to the
giant bat. He dips a cotton ball in the new
shaving lotion he's making and he holds it up to
the glandular stimulated bat, the glandularly stimulated bat, and the

(39:24):
bat starts screaming, and Legosi is like, good, yes, I
taught you to hate this fragrance while you slept. Now
if you smell it while you are awake, you will
strike to kill.

Speaker 3 (39:35):
All right, all right, murderous conditioning. Okay.

Speaker 1 (39:38):
Then we go to a scene of the party at
Morton and Heath's house. So Mary is Heath's daughter, but
they are also just a bunch of loose suns running around.
I don't remember whose son is whose. There's a bunch
of them. And Morton is like, remember, Roy, Tommy, you're
not supposed to say anything about this five thousand dollars
check that I hold in my hand until you get

(39:58):
the signal from Heath. And then Mary, Heath and a
Morton son named don A. They're sort of cuddling and
flirting on the other couch and Morton starts to give
them the same talk, and they have all these ideas
about how they should unveil the five thousand dollars check.
But then they find out car Others is not going
to come to the party because he is busy with
his lotion. So Roy, one of the heath sons, offers

(40:22):
to take the check up to the laboratory and here
we get our first like put on the lotion Roy scene.
So Roy goes up to the lab and Carrothers reacts
with this strange, kind of hard to read cascade of
emotions when he receives the five thousand dollars check. He'll
explain why in a minute. But then he's like, okay,
Roy Heath, I want you to try my new aftershave.

(40:44):
And so Roy takes some of it and he smells that.
He says, ooh, pretty strong, isn't it. This establishes a pattern.
All the victims are going to say this like wow,
smells really strong. But Legosi reassures him. He says, no, no,
the scent evaporates a short time after you use it.
So Roy takes a few drops in his hand, and
then the Legosi gleefully explains. He says, now, rub it

(41:06):
on the tender part of your neck. Here. I love
these scenes. So he keeps like touching his throat and
being like, here's where you rub it. It's so soft
on the skin.

Speaker 3 (41:16):
Yes, he says, you want to apply lots of it to
the esophagus and the jugular.

Speaker 1 (41:19):
Yeah, that's right. So Roy rubs the lotion on his throat,
then he departs. When he leaves, he says good night, doctor,
and Legosi replies, goodbye Roy. He will also do this
in every one of the murders. Yes. Then we get
a weird voiceover of Legosi's thoughts. Is this the only
time in the entire movie when we hear a character's

(41:41):
thoughts out loud?

Speaker 3 (41:42):
I think so it is. Yeah, this really feels like
one of those classic moments of the director or someone
in the production saying, I don't think we got this across.
Let's have some voice over here, and that's what they do.

Speaker 1 (41:54):
Absolutely feels tacked on. But what So He's standing there
staring at the check and we hear Legosi's voiceover say,
lovely check, isn't it? Doctor? They are wealthy because of you.
You made them rich. Doctor. It was your formula tonight.
They gave you five thousand dollars and wanted you to
come down to their house and thank them for it.

(42:14):
That was your money they gave you, like a bone
tossed to a faithful dog. And we get some very
good facial expressions from Bella here. First he looks sad,
and then it turns into a grimace, and then it
turns into maniacal laughter and then straight into a furious glower.
He is ready now to send the bats, so he

(42:34):
goes down into the secret passageway. He goes to his
mutant bat and he says, tonight, you have work to do,
and the bat flies out.

Speaker 3 (42:42):
Yep, yep. And I think the bat flying looks pretty good,
though there's going to be a plot element that kind
of tarnishes the effect a bit later on.

Speaker 1 (42:50):
Yeah. Yeah, So first we see Don and Mary out
in the garden on a bench. Remember they were the
ones who were going to get engaged. This part I
found incredibly perplexing. Don says, you know, while our families

(43:11):
are here, tonight is a good time to announce our engagement,
and Mary says to him, looked on, I love you,
I've loved you since we were kids, but not in
that way. You're more like a brother to me. And
I was like, what, how did you get to the
point of thinking they were gonna be engaged?

Speaker 3 (43:28):
Yeah? Yeah, he seemed exceedingly sure of this. Yeah, so
this was yeah, this is a real head scratcher, But
he takes it well.

Speaker 1 (43:36):
He doesn't get mad or anything. He's just like, oh, okay,
fair enough.

Speaker 3 (43:39):
Yeah, it's like we needed more information. Why was this
miscommunication in place? Were they betrothed? Ye? What was going
on hereh idea?

Speaker 1 (43:48):
Okay? But yeah, Don takes it well. He's like, okay.
Then meanwhile, nearby Mary's brother, Roy, the guy who put
the lotion on his throat, he arrives home, gets out
of his car and is immediately dive bombed by at.
And we don't see a lot of it. I mean,
we see the bat flying, and we see sort of
a dark dive bomb thing, but it's not like we
get like a clear close up.

Speaker 3 (44:10):
Eventually, we'll probably watch Life Force for Weird House Cinema
and we'll have to compare the dive bombing bat sequences.
I think they have some of these in Fright Night
as well, right in there, dive bombing bat scene in that.

Speaker 1 (44:21):
That sounds right. Yeah. Oh, and so you know, they
hear him scream and Mary and Don come running and
they find Roy in the driveway there and they're like,
call doctor Carruther is no good. So you know, Carro
others comes to check on him, and they have both
families gathered around him as he's lying there in the
driveway and there's a dialogue exchange that goes like this,
Carrother says there's nothing I can do, and Heath says,

(44:44):
you mean he's dead. Her other says, yes, I'd better
call the coroner. Heath says, you think it's murder? Carro
Other says, I don't know. I never saw anything like
it before. The jugular vein is severed. They all look down.

Speaker 3 (44:58):
It cuts to black, and this is where the news
media comes into play.

Speaker 1 (45:02):
Yeah, but because everybody trusts Carruthers, I mean, of course
we should have.

Speaker 3 (45:06):
Yeah. They tell us this a lot. They're always like,
everybody trusts corrects, everyone loves Corrutthers, The community loves him.
We're given very little in addition to that to make
us believe this is the case, because come on, it's
bell Legosi. Uh, Like he brings that ara here. We
don't really see him doing like nice things for the community.
He just wants to do terrifying experiments in his laboratory.

Speaker 1 (45:27):
Yeah, he's acting incredibly suspicious from the first scene.

Speaker 3 (45:31):
Yeah, but all right, fair enough, nobody suspects him.

Speaker 1 (45:34):
All right, So it's time to meet some new characters
at the offices of a newspaper, The Chicago register, and
so it shows a busy, bustling newsroom. We're two guys
on the floor of the newsroom throwing punches. It looked
like it, but then it cuts away quick.

Speaker 3 (45:48):
Yeah it's you know, it's a scrappy environment. They're they're
having fun, they're working hard, they're playing hard.

Speaker 1 (45:53):
And so we're going to meet a couple of characters
here the assignment editor McGinty, who again, he's your classic
large cigar chewing police chief slash newspaper editor. He's telling
the cop or reporter, you're a loose cannon. You're off
the force. Here's your new partner. And in fact, we
get all three of those in this movie.

Speaker 3 (46:12):
Yes, yes, I do like the elements too, though with
our newspaper editor here, who is like, we got to
remember the Heath Company. It's a big account, you know,
big advertising accounts for the paper. So they do interject
a little bit of like realistic news room politics.

Speaker 1 (46:28):
Here, well kind of, but I didn't understand the dynamics,
So yeah, I thought that was interesting. They're like, Heath
is a big advertising account, so you've got to go
to Heathville. You've got to get a photo photographer to
go with you go to Heathville and do a big
sensational news story about his son's unsolved mutant bat murder.

Speaker 3 (46:49):
Yeah yeah, I mean that part makes less sense. It
would be it would be more realistic. It's like, okay,
you're going you're going up there, but make sure you
play it really respectful. We've got to cover this. But
they're huge advertiser, so again, some things are maybe lost
in the message here.

Speaker 1 (47:04):
I mean normally, if there's like a big industry mogul
who has a child with their adult child is killed
in an unsolved murder, you want the National Inquirer up
there getting into it.

Speaker 3 (47:15):
Yeah, well they send the A team, as we'll see.

Speaker 1 (47:18):
That's right. So our hero here is Johnny Layden. He's
a scrappy reporter who's always causing trouble. Somebody's always calling
the editor to get him fired. But you know what,
he gets results. And McGinty explains, there's this mystery killing
in Heathville. It's old Martin Heath's son. He wants Layden
looking into it. Leydon is unfamiliar. He's like, who's Martin Heath?

(47:39):
And McGinty this was also weird McGinty's like, who's Martin
Heath say? Have you ever had a date with a girl?
And Leyden says, you know, he might have had one
at some point, And McGinty says, well, did she smell sweet?
If so, that's because of Martin Heath Cosmetics Limited. They
make all that goo that women put on their faces.

(48:00):
The premise here that Heath is the only perfume and
cosmetics company in the world and invented and has exclusive
rights to the concept of makeup and perfume.

Speaker 3 (48:09):
I don't know. I guess they're just a major player anyway.

Speaker 1 (48:11):
So Layton goes to Heath Phil he takes along with
him a photographer. As he was told to. This character
has a great name, it's one Shot McGuire. One Shot
McGuire is a bow tie guy who keeps his suit
jacket buttoned. But he has a kind of he's a
little bit more nerdy than Layton, but also has he's
kind of got a nerdy but rascally temperament to match Layton's.

Speaker 3 (48:34):
Yeah, and I don't know from the title, I'm not
sure is he if he's supposed to be a really
good photographer or just a really sloppy photographer like, oh,
did you get pictures of the sporting event? I got
one shot? Does that mean you only needed one like
perfect shot, first take? Or you just really don't care?
He just like good enough.

Speaker 1 (48:52):
I didn't know. Yeah. So if it's a writer and
they call you like first draft McGuire, what does that
mean that good?

Speaker 3 (48:58):
Yeah, nailed it first draft? Well, I guess sometimes it
works like that. But one has right to be suspicious.

Speaker 1 (49:06):
So our two reporters go to Heathville. They meet the
police chief there and they begin the inquest, and the
police chief admits that they have not gotten very far
with the investigation, but that Roy Heath suffered the strangest wounds.
He had shallow slashes in his throat, too deep for fingernails,
not deep enough to be a knife. And then the

(49:27):
coroner says that they could have been the talons of
a bird, a bird, but the sheriff says they know
that it wasn't a bird because they found several hairs
on the shoulder of Heath's coat, so it couldn't have
been a bird.

Speaker 3 (49:40):
Soide note that there's going to be a lot of
dialogue in this film related to the idea that people
think bats are birds and need to be corrected on
the matter.

Speaker 1 (49:47):
Multiple characters have to correct I think doctor Carruthers and
Leyton are frequently correcting people on calling bats birds.

Speaker 3 (49:55):
Ye, nobody knows exactly what a bat is, but.

Speaker 1 (49:57):
They say that the hairs on the coat they're not human.
Lab tests showed that they came from a mouse, and
Layton says, say, a bat has hair like a mouse.
What if it was a bat and I don't know,
I call bs. I think that is too extreme of
a bull's eye connection there, unless Layton has like undisclosed
psychic powers or something. Another clue though. They say there

(50:20):
was a peculiar odor about the wounds, but the police
were unable to identify it, and now it has been
destroyed by evaporation. So we're going to go on to
the meeting with Mary that the reporters are continuing the
investigation the share were the police chief is just like,
oh yeah, sure, look into it. You know, you'll get
no objection from me, which is kind of unusual for

(50:42):
these films. I feel like it's always a territorial squabble
about who gets to investigate. So the newspaperman go to
the Heath residence. Of course, it's immediately clear that Leydon
and Mary are going to fall in love, and then
there's a secondary romance as well, because Mary's got the
french maid, the gorgeous French maid named Maxine, who's running
around saying, we medemoiselle and apparently she is just wild

(51:05):
for photojournal East And from their very first introduction one shot,
Maguire is saying, yes, I will marry this french maid.
And now they've got competing theories about the murder. They ask,
you know, did this guy have any enemies? Not really?
Was it an animal attack? Carruthers says, yes, it was

(51:25):
a wild animal who attacked him, but Leyden says, I
don't think so. And this sort of leads into this
middle section of the movie that's more just sort of
investigating the murders and more murders taking place. So there
is a murder of another one of the sons, this
time it's a guy named Tommy. Legosi gives him the
lotion to try, and Tommy puts it on and he's like, ooh,

(51:47):
that feels great, very very soothing, and Legosi says, I
don't think you will ever use anything else so he's,
you know, walking around with the lotion on, and he
gets attacked by a bat in the garden patio. Now
at this bad attack, the journalists witness it, they see
it happen, and so they try to report on it.
They call it McGinty. They're like, yeah, he was attacked

(52:08):
by a devil bat. McGuinty doesn't believe them at first,
but then he does run with their story and the
headline is mysterious devil bat kills Thomas Heath. I do
like this movie shows us lots of newspaper headlines.

Speaker 3 (52:21):
Yeah. My one disappointment was I could make any of
the lower headlines out. You know, that's always there's always
a lot of fun there, especially in like parodies on
the Simpson like, what are the stories that didn't make
the very top because of whatever supernatural shenanigans are going on.

Speaker 1 (52:38):
I feel like multiple times we see a newspaper and
there's another article with the headline praise from cheerleaders, m okay,
otherwise a slow news day. Oh, and then they show
a second paper that says who will be the devil
Bat's next victim? Villagers cringe and terror of murderer.

Speaker 3 (52:57):
Oh.

Speaker 1 (52:57):
In another one of the articles. It has the headline
para please the great.

Speaker 3 (53:01):
What yeah local theater.

Speaker 1 (53:03):
Maybe I don't know Laura mipsum. So anyway, there's this
whole middle section where they've seen the Devil Bat. But
McGinty's like, hey, I need a photo. We got to
run a photo, So they stage a hoax photo using
a stuffed bat from a taxidermy shop. Yes.

Speaker 3 (53:20):
I loved and hated this because it's just such a weird,
wacky element that suddenly like journalistic integrities out the window
and they're going to fake this shot. But then it
does feel from a filmmaking standpoint like kind of an
error because, let's face it, these bat effects, I think
they're pretty great considering the budget and the time period.
But when you also introduce a fake, fake bat into

(53:43):
the scenario, that fake bat looks too much like the
actual bat. Yes, and it makes me second guess the
effects on some level. So I didn't didn't like that.

Speaker 1 (53:52):
Same thought the hoax bat looks the same as the
real devil bat.

Speaker 3 (53:55):
Yeah, It's like if somebody wears a monster mask in
a movie that also features a monster, that monster mask
can't look too good and your actual monster effects better
be like a cut above.

Speaker 1 (54:06):
Yes, yeah, yeah so this Oh but also this movie
has a debunking scene. So the hoax photo is debunked
by a skeptical scientist on a national radio program, and
it shows just like everybody in the country sitting around
listening to this radio program. They introduce a scientist named
Professor Percival Garland Rains, whom the announcer calls the world's

(54:28):
greatest authority on animals, and Rains says that devil bats
may have existed in the dark ages when people lived
in caves, but not anymore, and he has proof that
the photo is a fake. He analyzed it under a
magnifying glass, and he says the bat has a tag
on it which says made in Japan. But I was thinking,

(54:49):
wait a minute, what if the real devil bat is
simply a manufactured object, you know, created by magic?

Speaker 3 (54:55):
How did they get a fake bat? You're shactured? Yeah,
either across the ocean or like, are they selling these
at the local store? Did just so many questions arise
from this.

Speaker 1 (55:07):
I would have thought the taxidermy bats would be a
more locally produced article.

Speaker 3 (55:11):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (55:21):
Oh hey, folks were back. We had to just take
a break in the middle of our recording session. But
now we are in real time a few hours later,
continuing our discussion of the devil bat So where did
we leave off? It was where, Oh, they just pulled
off the hoax and they got caught. They got caught
by the radio guy.

Speaker 3 (55:39):
Yeah, yeah, they attempted to do the fake photo. And
is it. Now we're in just a little bit where like,
basically it's like, I've got to fire you guys. This
is awful, and they're like, you can't fire us because
we're onto this great case. We're going to keep working.

Speaker 1 (55:51):
It, that's right. So McGinty, they're on the phone with McGuinty,
the chief the editor, and he fires Leyton and one
shot McGuire though I guess they did so fair enough. Yeah,
and obviously this is not the first time he has
fired them. They even say so. They're like, you'll hire
us back, you always do. But the real downside they
don't seem all that upset about getting fired. The real

(56:12):
downside is there now on the outs with their their
new lady friends, Mary and Maxine are not happy with
them for doing a hoax, especially since this hoax involves
the creature that allegedly killed their brothers and family friends
and so forth, and almost fiance.

Speaker 3 (56:29):
Yeah, it seems like a massiveness step, especially on that angle.

Speaker 1 (56:33):
But Layton's a real go getter. He doesn't let this
put him to bed. He keeps investigating, and he finds
out about the history of Carruthers and the Heath Company.
He finds out the Caruthers missed out on getting part
of the Heath Company fortune by just being being paid
in cash instead. And there's some notes somewhere in here
about like a chemist examines the Legosi lotion and finds

(56:56):
out that it has a previously unknown element in it
that could not be identified. I love this detail. It
seems a bit much, but Bella explains that the otherwise
unknown element was something he found in Tibet, which the
Lamas use in their ceremonies.

Speaker 3 (57:15):
Okay, all right, I don't know what those ceremonies could be.
It gets bats riled up in the scenario, but okay, fair.

Speaker 1 (57:23):
Enough anyway, So Leyton goes to confront Legosi with questions
about all this stuff that they take him some of
the after shape to analyze, I believe, and Legosi is like, oh,
you know, to the chief of police and to Leyton,
why didn't you both each take a bottle of this
stuff home with you and use it. Now the chief
of police he's having none of it. He says, if
my wife ever smelled perfume on me, she'd suspect me. Sure,

(57:47):
so he won't take it. But Leyton he's like, yeah, sure,
I'll take some. And of course he gets attacked later
that night while he is sitting out in the garden
with one shot. But this actually works out to their
benefit because Leyden pulled a revolver out of his coat pocket,
shoots the devil bat, kills the devil bat. So the
devil Bat wasn't I don't know all that threatening. In

(58:08):
the end, it was destroyed by rather mundane means. And
then it's the biggest story on all the newspapers. The
headline is reporter kills devil bat, subhead shoots monster.

Speaker 3 (58:21):
Well, I wondered, did he write this story for the paper?
That seems like it would be a massive misstep as well,
But I don't think he would. He would probably fight
for it. He's like, look, I killed the devil bat,
I should get to write the article. Yes, I can
maintain my journalistic integrity. Yes, I did just try and
fake a bat photo.

Speaker 1 (58:40):
Do you see the article underneath shoots monster is called Americanism.

Speaker 3 (58:46):
I was trying to figure or if the Americanism is
part of the monster shooting or is this a separate
like article. There's a sub section somebody's like Weekly Callum
on Americanism.

Speaker 1 (58:55):
In a classic display of Americanism, the reporter has shot
the devil bat. But you know now that they've actually
got a real dead devil bat corpse in hand, and
not just a taxidermid object. They can prove they were
right all along. So everybody has to eat crow. There's
another radio program with the remember the skeptic professor rains.

(59:16):
He comes back. He's like, look, I was wrong. The
devil bat does exist, and it is the last of
its kind, a giant bat from the Neolithic Age, which
he explains is another word for the Stone Age. Thank you, professor.

Speaker 3 (59:30):
Of course, we know this is not true. We know
that this bat is not an ancient creature. It is
newly cooked up in Lagosi's microwave.

Speaker 1 (59:39):
How but he's the foremost authority on animals.

Speaker 3 (59:42):
Well yeah, I mean, maybe he recognizes the process that's
going on, but he doesn't understand the technology involved.

Speaker 1 (59:49):
Shows how much you know, professor, get out of your
ivory tower. You don't even know about Bella Legosi's bat microwave.
So Bella has to cook up another bat from the freezer,
which he does. He he like, gets it out and
he cooks it with the electricity, and then he goes
and checks the bat with the stethoscope and he's smiling.
He says, splendid, you will be even greater than your

(01:00:09):
unfortunate predecessor, and then the bat screams in stock footage
and he's like, enraged, aren't you fine? I'm enraged also
tonight I shall call on Henry Morton and you shall
strike him down. So we get another scene, another one
of these classic scenes of Bella convincing somebody to put
the lotion on their skin. He goes to the offices

(01:00:31):
of Heath Cosmetics where he's showing everything to Morton, the
big boss, and he's like, you know, my lotion's so good,
try it out, and Morton says, no, I'll try it
tomorrow after I shave, you know, because it's after shave.
He says, quote, then my skin will be more tender
and receptive to the lotion, and Legosi is like, eh,
why not try it now? See you can put it

(01:00:53):
right over the jugular vein, where the skin is always
tender and receptive to a lotion. Once again, comments about
is it too strong? He's like, no, no, no, it'll
evaporate quickly. So he sort of bullies Morton into putting
the lotion on his throat. Then Morton starts gloating about
how all of the doctor's formulas have been highly successful
and it was quite foolish of him to take cash

(01:01:14):
for his work instead of a cut of the profits.
Otherwise he would be he would be a rich man now,
So you're not feeling that bad for Morton's just being
a jerk here.

Speaker 3 (01:01:23):
Yeah, yeah, he is. He absolutely is, though he does
seem a bit oblivious too, like so he's not I
don't know, it's a weird mix of him being kind
of like accidentally jerky and still a bit maliciously jerky.

Speaker 1 (01:01:36):
Yeah, yeah, you're right. He's like, huh, isn't it funny?
You're the one that did the work, but I got
rich and that that's funny, isn't it.

Speaker 3 (01:01:43):
Yeah? And then and he continues here as Legosi keeps
making even more like cutting and suggestive comments that imply
that he has been murdering people with bats.

Speaker 1 (01:01:53):
Yeah, that's right. So he's like, you know, you've had
a lot of fun in your laboratory with your experiments,
dreaming up something new. You're a dreamer, Doc, Money's bad
for dreamers. And Legosi is just dissecting Morton's brain with
his eyes, and Legosi tells more tells Morton that his
feeble intellect cannot begin to comprehend the magnitude of his

(01:02:13):
scientific discoveries. Morton's like, what discovery are you talking about?
And he says when you find out, Henry, it will
be too late for you anyway, good night. Oh and
also before he leaves, he mentioned something about having already
proved his discovery three times. There have been three murders.

Speaker 3 (01:02:33):
Yeah, and this still doesn't instantly sink in for Morton.

Speaker 1 (01:02:37):
It takes a minute.

Speaker 3 (01:02:38):
It takes a minute.

Speaker 1 (01:02:39):
Morton starts thinking about that, and he's like, huh. So
he puts in a phone call to Martin Heath and
he's like, I think I've got a clue to solve
the murders. He says, if half of what I suspect
is true. It's the most diabolical plot then a madman
ever concocted. So they're both out driving on a dark
road and Legosi leaves first, and he's also going to

(01:02:59):
moreton Hates house. But Lugosi gets there before Morton and
he parks. He opens the trunk of his car and
a bat just screams and flies out of the trunk.
And so, of course, right right after this, Morton arrives.
But the bat it gets him. It devil bats him.
Now in this case, a bunch of the guys in
the house like they don't I think they don't see

(01:03:20):
the bat, but they see Morton like he's banging on
the door screaming for help, and they go and open
the door and he just like collapses into the foyer dead. Uh,
And you know they're like, oh, whoop's another one. So
we see a newspaper headline again call and it's Devil
Bat's mate kills Henry Morton. Yeah, I don't know, how
do they know it's his mate?

Speaker 3 (01:03:41):
Yeah? I feel like that that headline. The editor was
playing it up a little bit, like let's get a
love angle in here between the bats.

Speaker 1 (01:03:46):
Bride of Devil Bat.

Speaker 3 (01:03:48):
Yeah, that was probably one of the candidates.

Speaker 1 (01:03:51):
Oh and while it's showing us all the headlines this
time this has happened before. It's like superimposing the shots
of the newspaper with that footage of like close up
footage of a bat face. So who's the next victim
going to be? Well, we see a silhouette of Bella
Lagosi wearing a hat in the dark room with the
bottle of his formula and he's surreptitiously adding it to something.

(01:04:13):
What could it be? Well, after the scene, we get
a scene where Leyden Leyton is addressing Martin Heath, Mary
Legosi and one shot Maguire and he explains, you know,
he's very glad that mister Heath invited him to come
live in their home until Devil Bat two is defeated,
because he's worried about Mary, right, you know, he thinks

(01:04:34):
she may be targeted next. It's logical, but Heath hasn't
quite caught on yet. He's like, why would you think that?
And Leydon explains, well, the other victims were members of
the Morton and Heath families. Therefore, he concludes that someone
is using the bat to wipe out these two families. Legosi,
of course, claims this is preposterous. He says the thought

(01:04:56):
of a human controlling a bat is fantastical, and as
a counterexample, he points out that even one shot McGuire
was attacked by a bat, and he's not a heather
A Morton, so that's a good point. But one shot
McGuire argues, Now, wait a second, I'm basically a member
of this family because I am definitely going to get
married to the French maid.

Speaker 3 (01:05:16):
Oh well, yeah, that works out.

Speaker 1 (01:05:18):
So they all say they're good nights, and then Lugosi
once again does it instance you know, Mary says good
night to him and he says goodbye Mary. So later
we see Mary getting ready for bed. She wonders if
Maxine has filled her perfume bottles with something new, because
there is a strong, smelling new fragrance in them. Maxine
denies it, and Mary concludes that it must have been

(01:05:40):
her father, who apparently secretly switcheroose her perfume every time
his factory produces a new one. That's a bold move. Also,
she's putting on perfume to go to bed.

Speaker 3 (01:05:52):
I mean, I don't maybe she skipped a shower, don't.
I don't really know what the rules here.

Speaker 1 (01:05:57):
And maybe that was the thing in the fortieth or
maybe people do that. I don't know what people do
with perfume. Do people put on perfume to go to bed?
Maybe they do?

Speaker 3 (01:06:04):
After this moody though, you'll never put on perfume before
you go to bed again.

Speaker 1 (01:06:08):
Yeah. So anyway, so Mary goes to bed and we
see the bat fly out and what's gonna happen. Of
course you know it's gonna come to her room, but
it actually doesn't get in. It like zooms through the night,
screeching until it reaches Mary's window and then it's just
there banging against the window and she wakes up alarmed.
She screams. All the dudes come running and Mary survives
the night. But the next morning there's an investigation what

(01:06:31):
could have happened, and they discover the perfume switch. So Leyden,
he's finally putting all the pieces together here. He thinks
he's figured out the case, and he comes up with
a plan. He's like, Okay, we're gonna lie to Carrothers
and make him think that Mary was injured or perhaps
driven insane by the bat, and then we're going to
trick him into coming over to the house and then

(01:06:53):
stall him here for time. Meanwhile, Leyden's gonna run around
and do what he calls a little private bat hunting.
What this really means is he's going up to Carruther's
lab to snoop around. He does that, and he finds
the secret passageway and goes into the bat dungeon.

Speaker 3 (01:07:10):
All right, so now all is becoming revealed.

Speaker 1 (01:07:13):
But the others don't do a great job at their
part of this plan. So like they're trying to stall
corre others at the house and he's trying to leave
if he needs to get back to his lab, and
one shot Maguire is like, I don't feel so good.
You ought to see my tongue. It looks like a
squirrel's tail. But Carrothers just advises him to take a
mercury compound. And so Carrothers goes back to the lab.

(01:07:35):
There's some cat and mouse there with Leyden sneaking around
while Carrothers is, you know, doing things, and Leyden witnesses
corro Others talking to his bats. So there's no going
back now. He knows what's up. I think he's going
to let them out for the night, because if you
interpreted this the same way, Rob, I think he thinks
the jig is up and he doesn't want the bats around.

(01:07:57):
If somebody comes snooping.

Speaker 3 (01:08:00):
Let him go, like flush the bats down the toe.

Speaker 1 (01:08:02):
Yeah, exactly. And so Leyden sneaks around around the house,
knocks on the front door, and he asks for some
of the shaving lotion. He says he thinks that if
he douses himself in it, it might attract the killer
Legosi plays dumb, but you know, gives him the bottle anyway,
and Leyden dabs some around his throat and he really

(01:08:23):
gets it up in there, and he explains his plan
is to go sit in the garden and quote, when
the killer bat does one of its power dives, I'll
blast it, which is what he did last time. So
I guess he's planning to do this again. Maybe he's
hoping there are only two bats total. And so Carruthers
agrees to come along and watch this experiment. So they

(01:08:43):
have a little tense conversation in the garden at night.
They're a little apprehensive, or at least corrothers is. They
trade some comments with heavy implication that maybe they understand
one another's motives. And then suddenly, at one point in
the conversation, Leyden just like tosses a bunch of the
shaving low on her others and then reveals that he
knows the whole plot. And so at first Carruthers seems

(01:09:05):
weirdly kind of gloomy. He just kind of accepts his fate,
but then tries to make a break for it, Like
he tries to grab and wrestle the gun from Leyden,
but the devil Bat appears and everybody scatters.

Speaker 3 (01:09:16):
Right right, And you know what's going to happen next?
What is the come uppance of any mad scientist that
creates monsters? Oh?

Speaker 1 (01:09:22):
Of course foiled by his own monster. Yeah, not foiled,
so Corruthers, Well, first he tries to trick Mary into
coming back to his lab, but he doesn't make it.
He gets he gets devil Bat dive bombed in the
garden on the way there, and so then Leyden comes
and has to explain to Mary. I laughed out loud
at this part where he's like the devil Bat belonged

(01:09:44):
to him, Mary, He committed those murders, and then Mary
just lays her head on Leyden's shoulder and then it's
the end. Title the end.

Speaker 3 (01:09:52):
Yeah, they're like, check on the doctor, and they're like,
I don't think the doc made. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:09:56):
I love the abruptness with which these older movies end
is just the bad guy dies, the leading lady like
kisses or layser head on the shoulder of the leading man,
and then you get title card, the end, all within
twenty seconds.

Speaker 3 (01:10:11):
Yeah, I mean, it's been over an hour. People need
to get home from the theater and or they need
to watch the next movie that's playing immediately after this one.
But I think All Things Considered is a pretty good
final showdown, like with the back and forth between the
hero and the villain in sometimes they're even more by
the books than this just We definitely watched some of

(01:10:33):
those and talked about them on Weird House Cinema, where
it's like bad guy gets makes a break for it
and is shot by the police, Monster is shot by
the police, Monster is killed.

Speaker 1 (01:10:43):
By the military.

Speaker 3 (01:10:46):
Arrives Clint Eastwood is in a jet plane.

Speaker 1 (01:10:48):
Yeah, exactly. Tarantula.

Speaker 3 (01:10:49):
Yeah, so this one is a little more thought out
than that a little less by the numbers, but then
it does have that classic abrupt thirties and forties ending,
which yeah, I mean it cleans it up nicely. It's
just like bam, that's it.

Speaker 1 (01:11:04):
Nothing could destroy the monster except the power of explosives.

Speaker 3 (01:11:09):
And it's just so ridiculous that, granted years later, someone
would say, I got an idea for a sequel to
this picture. What if he didn't do those murders. The
whole movie was about him doing the murders. It's not
in question.

Speaker 1 (01:11:22):
I've almost got to watch that now.

Speaker 3 (01:11:24):
Oh, I don't know. It might maybe it's fun. I
don't know. I haven't seen it. But it doesn't have legosy.

Speaker 1 (01:11:28):
Oh it's called Devil Bat's Daughter, that's what it.

Speaker 3 (01:11:31):
Is, which is weird because she's she's not the daughter
of the Devil Bat, she's Corrother's daughter.

Speaker 1 (01:11:36):
But you know, yeah, the poster makes it look like
a Western.

Speaker 3 (01:11:40):
Yeah, I don't know. It's supposedly, yeah, less of a
horror film. And it has Miss America from nineteen forty
one in it, so oh it's got that going for it. Okay,
all right, so there you have it. Devil Bat, The
Devil Bat sorry, except no substitutes. Yeah, this is a
it's it's a surprisingly fun watch. Flick moved right along,

(01:12:02):
had some fun performances in it.

Speaker 1 (01:12:04):
I feel like we really shouldn't stop here. We should
just keep going with killer bat movies and find them,
rank them, discuss what they have in common, the themes they address.
To what extent was Devil Bat really about the bats?
And to what extent was it really about pride and lotion?

Speaker 3 (01:12:21):
Yeah? I think it essentially is about pride and lotion,
much like Breaking Bad. His Breaking Bad is not really
about the meth, it's about other things. But undeniably a
giant bat movie. So yeah, I'd be interesting to look
and see what all we have to consider in terms
of other giant bad films, aside from the ones we
already mentioned, like Life Force and possibly Friday Night.

Speaker 1 (01:12:43):
Oh what do you know? The British Film Institute website
has a list of ten great bat films.

Speaker 3 (01:12:49):
Oh excellent, just straight up bat films, not like bad
human hybrids, because that's a kind of another subgenre which
I can think of at least one really good example there.

Speaker 1 (01:12:57):
But oh, one of the examples is Abominable Doctor Fibes
because remember one of the guys gets attacked by bats.

Speaker 3 (01:13:04):
Oh that's right. Yeah. I mean, if you have vampires
in your film, there's a very good chance you can
have bats. There's a good chance is going to turn
into a bat or bats, and uh yeah, I'm here
for it.

Speaker 1 (01:13:17):
All right. I think that does it for this one.

Speaker 3 (01:13:19):
All right, we'll go ahead and close it out. But
just a reminder that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is
primarily a science and culture podcast. Core episodes on Tuesdays
and Thursdays, but on Fridays we set aside most serious
concerns to just talk about a weird film on Weird
House Cinema. If you want to see a list of
all the episodes we've done over the years, look us
up on the letterbox dot com. That's l E T
T E R bo x D dot com. Our profile
is weird House and we got a list right there.

(01:13:41):
You can look at it, look at all the fun
you know, box arts and poster arts. You can arrange
things by decade and see what we've gotten into, what
we haven't gotten into. Right in with your suggestions, because
we always want to hear what kind of films you'd
like us to talk about. And we also want your
feedback on the films that we've discussed. If you have
a hit true with the Devil bat If, so let

(01:14:02):
us know about it.

Speaker 1 (01:14:03):
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com.

Speaker 2 (01:14:24):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Weirdhouse Cinema Rewind: The Devil Bat