Speaker 1: Hello, Welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind. My name is
Speaker 1: Joe McCormick. Today we're bringing you an older episode of
Speaker 1: Weird House Cinema. This one originally published on July twelfth,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four, and it is our feature on The
Speaker 1: Devil Bat from nineteen forty, starring Bella Lagosi. So let's
Speaker 1: jump right in.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.
Speaker 1: And I am Joe McCormick. And today on Weird House
Speaker 1: Cinema we are going to be talking about the nineteen
Speaker 1: forty horror thriller The Devil Bat starring Bella Lagosi and
Speaker 1: Suzanne Karen, a movie where the one sentence plot Summarie
Speaker 1: not only includes the phrase giant mutant bat, but also
Speaker 1: the word lotion.
Speaker 3: Yeah that's right. Yeah. In this episode, we're returning once
Speaker 3: more to the nineteen forties. This is only our third
Speaker 3: forties picture on Weird House with and the first in
Speaker 3: a long time, following nineteen forties Doctor Cyclops and nineteen
Speaker 3: forty six is The Beast with Five Fingers. So I
Speaker 3: am excited to return to one of our least explored
Speaker 3: decades on the show, like this, the thirties and the twenties,
Speaker 3: we just haven't hit as much.
Speaker 1: Yes, though, you know, some of our the sci fi
Speaker 1: movies we've done from like the thirties and the forties
Speaker 1: have been some of my favorites. Actually. Oh, I actually
Speaker 1: in fact came to the idea of doing Devil Bat
Speaker 1: this week by looking specifically for movies that are similar
Speaker 1: to the Beast with Five Fingers starring Peter Lourie, which
Speaker 1: I loved, and I was thinking, ooh, I want something
Speaker 1: in that zone, and this is what I turned up,
Speaker 1: And I think it's close. Beast with Five Fingers I
Speaker 1: think was a little more, you know, higher budget, a
Speaker 1: little more elaborate, had a little bit more class, but
Speaker 1: ultimately on I think the same frequency.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it had more of a gothic flare. This one
Speaker 3: is more Middle America meets mutant bats.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And while I would say that the plot of
Speaker 1: this movie is quite formulaic, like there is a pattern
Speaker 1: that's established with how each of the Bat murders takes
Speaker 1: place that just sort of repeats and is the same
Speaker 1: way each time. It's almost like the setup to a joke,
Speaker 1: you know where it's just like there's a very formulaic
Speaker 1: repetition until the inversion. It's like that, and yet at
Speaker 1: the same time, the script isn't actually half bad. I
Speaker 1: think there is more kind of character and flare in
Speaker 1: it than you would get for a lot of similar
Speaker 1: movies from this time period. I'll also say for a
Speaker 1: horror movie from nineteen forty, I found Devil Bat to
Speaker 1: have a surprisingly lively pace after the first ten minutes
Speaker 1: or so, that is the opening scene. I don't know
Speaker 1: if you felt the same way. Rob opening scene is
Speaker 1: almost comically dull. It's like they thought, you know what
Speaker 1: people want to see, Bela Lugosi looking through a pane
Speaker 1: of glass for like three minutes straight while he microwaves
Speaker 1: a bat.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, there are a lot of scenes of Bello
Speaker 3: Lugosi microwaving bats in this film, and you just need
Speaker 3: to be on board for that. But but then again,
Speaker 3: it's Bela Lgosi, And if you have to ask, you
Speaker 3: have to watch any actor do these scenes, it might
Speaker 3: as well be Bella because at least, uh you know,
Speaker 3: he had you know, even at this point point in
Speaker 3: his career, uh you know, he still had a lot
Speaker 3: of energy, a lot of charisma, and you see that
Speaker 3: in a film like this, where he's working alongside a
Speaker 3: lot of very solid professional actors of the time period.
Speaker 3: This is not this is a low budget picture, but
Speaker 3: it's not like a zero talent picture. This is not
Speaker 3: the ed Woods end of the spectrum for Bello's career.
Speaker 3: But even with all these other, like very perfectly perfectly
Speaker 3: good and sometimes kind of great performances around him, he
Speaker 3: still shines and you still see that in him.
Speaker 1: I totally agree, Yeah, Bella Bella is the star. There's
Speaker 1: no question about that. Which is it's always a good
Speaker 1: move to make the villain the real star of the movie.
Speaker 1: I like that choice here, and I think it works out.
Speaker 1: But also, as I was saying, I think even with
Speaker 1: the more mundane characters and the more mundane scenes, I
Speaker 1: think it's pretty lively, Like the pace really picks up
Speaker 1: once we meet the journalist character, and there's a good
Speaker 1: bit of snap and personality to the dialogue.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, it doesn't have the at times dull plotting pace
Speaker 3: that you encounter in genre pictures from these decades. So
Speaker 3: of course I had to look up this one in
Speaker 3: the Psychotronic Encyclopedia film and Michael Weldon, the reviewer, the
Speaker 3: author there. Look him up if you're not familiar with him.
Speaker 3: If you love weird films, you'd love the work of
Speaker 3: Michael Weldon. He points out that this was a Producer's
Speaker 3: Releasing Corporation or PRC film, and PRC was the quote
Speaker 3: cheapest studio in the business, bottom of the ranking of
Speaker 3: the eleven Hollywood film companies active in the nineteen forties.
Speaker 3: They only lasted from like nineteen thirty nine to nineteen
Speaker 3: forties seven, and The Devil Bat was their very first
Speaker 3: horror film. It was also a success, so they followed
Speaker 3: it up in forty six with what Welden refers to
Speaker 3: as a cheat sequel, which does certainly sound like a
Speaker 3: cheat because it concerns the daughter of Bela Lugosi's character,
Speaker 3: while also, yeah, it's his daughter.
Speaker 1: Can't recall him having one in this movie.
Speaker 3: I know, so he has one now, so introducing the
Speaker 3: unknown daughter and then completely exonerating his character for all
Speaker 3: of his actions in the first film and blaming them
Speaker 3: on a new villain. This is a picture no spoilers.
Speaker 3: This is a picture where there's never any doubt that
Speaker 3: Belo Lagosa is murder is plotting to murder people with
Speaker 3: mutant bats and doing it, and there's scenes with internal
Speaker 3: dialogue about it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. In fact, I would almost say, if there were
Speaker 1: any criticism I would make of the plot in this movie,
Speaker 1: the first one I would probably make is that the
Speaker 1: good characters are trying to solve a mystery, but you
Speaker 1: know the answer to the mystery the whole time. You
Speaker 1: know the answer before they even start investigating. So there's
Speaker 1: no tension for the audience in resolving the mystery, except
Speaker 1: like wanting to see what happens when Belly gets caught.
Speaker 1: But there's no ambiguity. Yes, he's sending the bats. We
Speaker 1: know he's sending the bats. We watched him make the bats.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, you completely derail everything about the first movie.
Speaker 3: So so yeah, it's not supposed to be that great.
Speaker 3: It's supposed to be more of a psychological thriller and
Speaker 3: less of a horror film. And I'm not even sure
Speaker 3: there are any bats in it.
Speaker 1: But what we're not talking about that don't have bats?
Speaker 3: I know, I know, but anyway, we're not talking about
Speaker 3: Devil Bat two or the bat daughter of Bat Devil.
Speaker 3: I forget what it's called now. But Weldon certainly liked
Speaker 3: this one. He thought this one was pretty lively, And
Speaker 3: I have to say, given the low budget nature of
Speaker 3: the picture, I have to say, uh yeah, the pace
Speaker 3: is great and the bad action looks I thought surprisingly good.
Speaker 3: I know we're going to maybe disagree a little bit
Speaker 3: on the special effects in this film, but I went
Speaker 3: into it with very little expectations from us flapping bats.
Speaker 3: I love any bad effects in a film, from bad
Speaker 3: puppets to great puppets, from bad CGI to just you know,
Speaker 3: mind bending CGI. I'll take any of it. And so
Speaker 3: I was expecting everything to be a lot more flippity
Speaker 3: and floppity, and I was pleasantly surprised that it was
Speaker 3: more believable than that.
Speaker 1: It is better than the batpuppet in Suspiria. But that's
Speaker 1: not a high bar.
Speaker 3: The bar is love for this sort of thing. I wouldn't.
Speaker 1: But yeah, what will I say. I don't think it
Speaker 1: looks great. I don't think it looks realistic, but it
Speaker 1: it's fun. You know they staged the scenes.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, all right, I have an elevator pitch for
Speaker 3: this one. I think it'll make sense once we get
Speaker 3: into the plot, but it's breaking bad except with bats
Speaker 3: in aftershave.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right. Yeah, it's if Walter White, instead of
Speaker 1: making methamphetamine was making bats.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because you have a so you do have a
Speaker 3: similar plot with him, like like he was this brilliant
Speaker 3: innovation who kind of got jerked around by the moneymen
Speaker 3: and has a lot of personal pride and his scientific powers.
Speaker 3: But again, no meth just bats and after shaft.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think a great villain they always need one,
Speaker 1: like characteristic sin of your seven deadlys, and in both cases,
Speaker 1: the sin here is pride.
Speaker 3: Yes, all right, let's go ahead and listen to at
Speaker 3: least some of the trailer audio here. I think this
Speaker 3: one gives you some of the snappy dialogue as well.
Speaker 4: When an animal attacks a human, there's bound to be
Speaker 4: a lot of noise.
Speaker 1: I die of the scientist. They many things into consideration.
Speaker 1: A layman my overlook.
Speaker 4: Ever smelled anything like this before. Found it in Don
Speaker 4: Martin's bathroom. Yes, that's the same stuff that's been on
Speaker 4: every one of the Devil bats victims. All four of
Speaker 4: the murdered people had this lotion on them when the
Speaker 4: Devil Bat struck Late And I'm afraid all these murders
Speaker 4: have affected you my Now, my plan is to sit
Speaker 4: in the garden and when the killer makes one of
Speaker 4: those power dives, I'm blasting.
Speaker 3: All right now. At this point, you may be wondering,
Speaker 3: where can I see the devil bat? This one apparently
Speaker 3: entered into the public domain a while ago, which may
Speaker 3: sound good at first, but this isn't necessarily a good thing, because, well,
Speaker 3: it means you can easily find a film like this
Speaker 3: in various streaming and physical formats. Not all of them
Speaker 3: are going to be worth your time. The best source
Speaker 3: that I'm aware of for the film is the twenty
Speaker 3: thirteen Kinoclassics disc. You can get it on DVD or
Speaker 3: Blu Ray mastered in HD from archival film Elements, and
Speaker 3: that one also features audio commentary by film historian Richard
Speaker 3: Harlan Smith. They had every intention of viewing it in
Speaker 3: this format. They have this disc at Atlanta's own video Drome,
Speaker 3: but then my week got super busy. I wasn't able
Speaker 3: to make it over there and rent it, so I
Speaker 3: had had to find a stream instead. I found a
Speaker 3: pretty solid stream of it, but I am going to
Speaker 3: rent the disc at some point. From the drone and
Speaker 3: maybe dive in a little deeper, you know, little forward
Speaker 3: facing research for forthcoming Bell Legosi Pictures.
Speaker 1: I do want to see a higher resolution version than
Speaker 1: I saw of the flat bats, the flat bats on
Speaker 1: the coat hangers.
Speaker 3: Yes, all right, let's get into the people who made
Speaker 3: this film. Starting in the director's chair as usual, it's
Speaker 3: gene Yarborough, who lived nineteen hundred through nineteen seventy five,
Speaker 3: American producer and director who worked his way out. This
Speaker 3: is one of those crazy Hollywood stories, a guy who
Speaker 3: worked his way up from being a chauffeur for like
Speaker 3: a producer his too, all the way up to being
Speaker 3: a director. His directorial duties began in RCO's short subjects division,
Speaker 3: so doing a lot of shorts for RKO beginning back
Speaker 3: in nineteen thirty six, and then he went on to
Speaker 3: direct his first full feature for the Poverty Row Studio
Speaker 3: this is the term for like the lower budget Hollywood
Speaker 3: studios Progressive Pictures in nineteen thirty eight, Who's called Rebellious Daughters.
Speaker 1: Oh boy.
Speaker 3: The head of that studio would then go on to
Speaker 3: found PRC, the studio behind this picture. So he did
Speaker 3: this film in nineteen forty followed by I believe a
Speaker 3: few different PRC films, Caught in the Act and South
Speaker 3: of Panama in forty one, and The Brute Man in
Speaker 3: forty six. That one starred Rondo Hatton. You know the
Speaker 3: If you've ever seen a picture of him, you know
Speaker 3: a very very famous character actor with an extremely unique look.
Speaker 3: And even if you haven't seen a Rondo picture, you
Speaker 3: may have seen The Rocketeer, which features a henchman character
Speaker 3: who is modeled via special makeup effects to look like
Speaker 3: a Rondeau character. Okay, yeah so. Yarborough also directed for
Speaker 3: other studios during the time, and moved on to work
Speaker 3: for Monogram Pictures, which became Allied Artists in fifty three,
Speaker 3: and ultimately Universal Pictures, where he directed the nineteen forty
Speaker 3: six Rondo film House of Horrors and some of the
Speaker 3: lesser known but still quite successful Abbit and Costello movies,
Speaker 3: as well as multiple episodes of TVs. The Abbot and
Speaker 3: Costello Show, which ran fifty two through fifty four. I
Speaker 3: don't know about you, Joe, but I often forget that
Speaker 3: there are all these abb and Costello movies. There's something
Speaker 3: like thirty seven of them, though I'm mostly familiar with it.
Speaker 3: Imagine a lot of you are only familiar with the
Speaker 3: ones that have monsters in the title, like you know,
Speaker 3: Abit and Costello meet Frankenstein or whatever. He did not
Speaker 3: direct any of those. He directed these various other ones
Speaker 3: that don't even necessarily mention Abbot and Costello in the title.
Speaker 1: I've actually never seen any of those, but I know
Speaker 1: some of the core ones where they meet I don't know,
Speaker 1: Dracula or Frankenstein. Whatever the main universal crossover ones are
Speaker 1: are supposed to be pretty funny.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know. I don't think I've ever watched
Speaker 3: one myself. So Yarborough cut his teeth on quick and
Speaker 3: low budget film projects. He developed a great reputation and
Speaker 3: skill set for quick turnaround and this made it been
Speaker 3: natural for television. So he just ended up doing more
Speaker 3: and more of that, serving as a director for TV
Speaker 3: until around nineteen seventy one. His last feature film was
Speaker 3: nineteen sixty seven's Hillbilly's in a Haunted House. I believe
Speaker 3: I've seen a riff tracks version of this. It features
Speaker 3: John Carrodine, Lon Cheney Jr. Basil Rathbone, and Merle Haggard.
Speaker 1: Merle Haggard, well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it is Hillbilly's in a Haunted House. I think,
Speaker 3: if memory serves, it's like a Nashville country act, you know,
Speaker 3: contemporary to the time, encountering creepy characters in a haunted house.
Speaker 3: I don't recall it being very good, but I remember
Speaker 3: there being some laughs.
Speaker 1: Mama tried to make me not a hillbillyon a haunted.
Speaker 3: House, but it failed. Now the screenplay here is by
Speaker 3: John T. Neville, who lived eighteen eighty six through nineteen
Speaker 3: seventy American screenwriter with credits going back to nineteen twenty seven.
Speaker 3: He worked on a lot of westerns and adventure films,
Speaker 3: with some crime and sports thrown in there. There's like
Speaker 3: a boxing film called The Heart Punch, I think. But however,
Speaker 3: this in nineteen forty six is The Flying Serpent. Seems
Speaker 3: to be. They seem to be the only horror films
Speaker 3: that he worked on, and The Flying Serpent is said
Speaker 3: to be very similar in plot to The Devil Bat,
Speaker 3: but with some sort of giant Meso American flying serpent
Speaker 3: instead of a devil Bat. And I can only assume
Speaker 3: this might have been at least some small influence on
Speaker 3: the much later film Cue The Winged Serpent.
Speaker 1: Ah, okay, you remember. Actually there is a similar plot
Speaker 1: device to make a connection to another director who made
Speaker 1: a name for himself by working fast and cheap, Roger
Speaker 1: Corman's movie Not of This Earth, the one where the
Speaker 1: guy from another planet is trying to send people back,
Speaker 1: trying to steal people's Earth blood because his home planet
Speaker 1: has been contaminated. But he's also got a suitcase that
Speaker 1: sends out this flying bat monster. It's like an alien
Speaker 1: that I guess steals people's blood.
Speaker 3: I like that one. There's a really cheap kind of
Speaker 3: variation on this theme too, and the phantom creeps the
Speaker 3: at times exciting, at times exceedingly dull, Bella Lagosi cereal
Speaker 3: for more or less this same time period, they're like
Speaker 3: robot spiders or something of that effect.
Speaker 1: A couple times recently that's come up. Did you say
Speaker 1: there's a version of that that's like condensed that maybe
Speaker 1: we could watch for the show.
Speaker 3: There is At some point it was cut down from
Speaker 3: like what did I would I say before some way
Speaker 3: too much from an extremely long serial format into a
Speaker 3: condensed film format that probably makes less sense but is
Speaker 3: probably less boring. Okay, all right, so that was the
Speaker 3: screenwriter The original story credit goes to George Bricker eighteen
Speaker 3: ninety eight through nineteen fifty five. Worked from the mid
Speaker 3: thirties to the mid fifties, with his most notable works
Speaker 3: being a pair that pair of nineteen forty six Rondo
Speaker 3: Hattan Films, nineteen forty six is She Wolf of London,
Speaker 3: which was also directed by Yarborough, and nineteen fifty two's
Speaker 3: macau All right, but getting into the cast, Yes, of
Speaker 3: course this is a Bella Lagosi film, and we've talked
Speaker 3: about Bella Lgosi at least briefly before, because we covered
Speaker 3: Plan nine from outer Space, and I think out when
Speaker 3: we said this cannot be the first episode where we
Speaker 3: really talk about Bella, will have to come back to him.
Speaker 3: So I guess this is the episode where we go
Speaker 3: into more detail about Bella Lagosi.
Speaker 1: Okay, because in fact, I think we recently re ran
Speaker 1: Plan nine for matter Swedes, which of course made for
Speaker 1: a really fun weird house episode. But yes, Bella is
Speaker 1: barely in planine and he's only a couple of scenes,
Speaker 1: so I can understand why we said that. So let's
Speaker 1: talk about him now.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that was his last picture and certainly not his
Speaker 3: best picture. This is not his best picture either, but
Speaker 3: I think it's more fitting to talk about him here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, this is a good one.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Bell Goosie Here plays doctor Paul Carruthers. Lagosi lived
Speaker 3: eighteen eighty two through nineteen fifty six. Legendary Hungarian American
Speaker 3: actor and classic horror icon who's of course, best known
Speaker 3: for his portrayal of Dracula in the nineteen thirty one
Speaker 3: Universal horror film of the same name. I mean, it's
Speaker 3: pretty impressive. I think that all these years after that
Speaker 3: film came out, he is still like one of the
Speaker 3: stars you think of when you think of Dracula, Like, yeah,
Speaker 3: you think of Christopher Lee. You probably think of Gary Oldman.
Speaker 3: Maybe there's one or two others in the mix, but
Speaker 3: probably not like I feel like, I feel like Bela
Speaker 3: Lagosi is still like somewhere in that top three for
Speaker 3: most film fans, oh yeah, or horror fans in general.
Speaker 3: So Lgosi started out in Hungarian theater in silent films,
Speaker 3: before making his way to Germany and doing some silent
Speaker 3: films there, and finally making his way to America. His
Speaker 3: May he made his way up to New York became
Speaker 3: very active in the theater scene there, mostly as an actor,
Speaker 3: but I think he did a little directing as well.
Speaker 3: I don't have any details on that, but he also
Speaker 3: did some silent films there, and it's here that he
Speaker 3: landed the lead in the Broadway play Dracula in nineteen
Speaker 3: twenty seven, and then moved to la in nineteen twenty eight.
Speaker 3: I believe it's part of a tour of Dracula, and
Speaker 3: this is where he kicked off his proper Hollywood career.
Speaker 3: The next year, he appeared in Todd Browning's The Thirteenth Chair.
Speaker 3: Browning would of course go on to direct Bella in
Speaker 3: that nineteen thirty one adaptation of the Dracula stage play,
Speaker 3: and this of course led to his you know, many
Speaker 3: of his best known films, especially the horror films that
Speaker 3: remained such a central part of his legacy. Though we
Speaker 3: have to point out that he was he was type
Speaker 3: cast by all of this, and I think accounts indicate
Speaker 3: that he was rather he felt limited by this, like
Speaker 3: he saw himself as a more versatile actor, but he
Speaker 3: was mostly relegated too horror roles and the you know,
Speaker 3: the scary Bella Legosi type characters that we think of
Speaker 3: today and wasn't really able to break out of that.
Speaker 3: And we have to remember too and all of this that, yeah,
Speaker 3: as big of a film as Dracula was, as things
Speaker 3: like Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein were horror and science fiction,
Speaker 3: these other genres were very much considered further down the
Speaker 3: studio pecking order, but anyway had a number of notable films,
Speaker 3: followed thirty two's Murders in the Room Morgue, White Zombie,
Speaker 3: and Island of Lost Souls thirty four as the Black Cat,
Speaker 3: That's when we might come back to Mark the Vampire
Speaker 3: thirty nine, Son of Frankenstein, and the serial The Phantom
Speaker 3: Creeps Nineteen forty gave us The Devil Bat, followed by
Speaker 3: the likes of forty two's The Ghost of Frankenstein and
Speaker 3: The Corpse Vanishes, forty three's Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman forty
Speaker 3: eighth Abadan Costello Meet Frankenstein. This being his last A
Speaker 3: List movie and also his final portrayal of Count Dracula.
Speaker 1: So I feel like The Devil Bat in the arc
Speaker 1: of Legosi's film career is kind of positioned in the
Speaker 1: middle between his early apex with Dracula, in the early
Speaker 1: universal movies, and then what would happen later in the
Speaker 1: fifties when he would end up working with ed Wood.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the fifties were rougher, you know, including fifty two's
Speaker 3: Bella Lugosi Meets of Brooklyn Gorilla that's at least one
Speaker 3: of the titles, and of course that trio of Edwood films.
Speaker 3: Fifty three is Glenn or Glinda, fifty five's Bride of
Speaker 3: the Monster, and fifty seven's Plan nine from Outer Space.
Speaker 3: And during this period in particular, understand he battled physical
Speaker 3: anim drug addiction, for which he saw treatment and financial problems.
Speaker 3: And it is fitting though that he was apparently buried
Speaker 3: in that Dracula cape. You know, he ultimately, you know,
Speaker 3: he wanted to escape the legacy of that character to
Speaker 3: a certain extent, but he also fully embraced, like the
Speaker 3: star power, the lasting legacy of what that role meant.
Speaker 1: I believe Devil bat is not Bela Lugosi's best performance
Speaker 1: of all time. It's not in his top top tier.
Speaker 1: But I would find Bella entertaining if he were sleepwalking,
Speaker 1: And so I love all of his scenes, even the
Speaker 1: ones where he's just like infinitely sniffing chemicals or looking
Speaker 1: through the glass. You know, he's great and all that,
Speaker 1: but the really good scenes are the dialogue scenes where
Speaker 1: he's like trying to get somebody to try on the
Speaker 1: lotion that makes the bats kill them. He has so
Speaker 1: many hilariously overt like I am about to murder you
Speaker 1: with the bat lines.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, so yeah. The charisma and the Dallon shines.
Speaker 3: And one of the reasons again that Plan nine from
Speaker 3: Outer Space is not generally considered her a good film
Speaker 3: is that Bela Agosi's barely in it. Like if he
Speaker 3: had been in it more, had he not died, you know,
Speaker 3: it would have been a better picture. Would it have
Speaker 3: been good, No, but it would have been a better picture.
Speaker 3: All right, Let's get into the supporting cast here, because
Speaker 3: we have some interesting characters here as well. We have
Speaker 3: Suzanne Karen playing Mary Heath. She's one of the daughters
Speaker 3: of the the main family is involved in this pivotal
Speaker 3: fragrance company in the film.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the plot is sort of so like Bela Lagosi
Speaker 1: is trying to wipe out these two families who run
Speaker 1: this cosmetics and perfume company, and there's this long list
Speaker 1: of brothers he's working down before he gets to marry
Speaker 1: And I guess the whole point is the audience is
Speaker 1: supposed to be like, no, you know, you can get
Speaker 1: all the brothers, but don't hurt Mary.
Speaker 3: Yeah. You know, classic classic structure here. You know, you
Speaker 3: have your your vengeful killer who either begins by killing
Speaker 3: characters you want to see die or at least you're
Speaker 3: neutral about, before working their way to the characters that
Speaker 3: you're more invested in. Yeah, and this is the one
Speaker 3: we're invested in.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So Karen Was She lived nineteen twelve through two thousand
Speaker 3: and four American actress and dancer who also worked in
Speaker 3: the New York theater and on Broadway. In Hollywood. She
Speaker 3: worked in I believe some Three Stooges shorts, as well
Speaker 3: as some various uncredited roles and occasional lead roles such
Speaker 3: as this. She was active on the screen from around
Speaker 3: thirty three to forty four, but also made an uncredited
Speaker 3: cameo in nineteen eighty four as the Cotton Club. I
Speaker 3: think she's good in this. She has very captivating eyes
Speaker 3: in a solid performance. Like I said, this is a
Speaker 3: film that may be low budget but is filled with
Speaker 3: very competent actors. Yeah, all right. The next one of
Speaker 3: note ooh, this one's a real treat is the character
Speaker 3: Johnny Layton. He's your hot reporter looking into all these
Speaker 3: what turned out to be mutant bat murders, and for
Speaker 3: a time they think prehistoric bat murders. Played by Dave O'Brien,
Speaker 3: who lived nineteen twelve through nineteen sixty nine, American film actor,
Speaker 3: I think at least one time director, also a screenwriter.
Speaker 3: He wrote a number of screenplays as well. He's pretty prolific,
Speaker 3: and I think he was credited has co credit on
Speaker 3: an Emmy for work on The Red Skeleton show writing comedy.
Speaker 3: So this guy was very talented. He worked a lot
Speaker 3: in these categories, but he's best remembered today, perhaps secondarily
Speaker 3: for his role in this film, but mostly for his
Speaker 3: role as a deranged dope theend in the nineteen thirty
Speaker 3: six film Tell Your Children, better known, I think to everyone,
Speaker 3: as its re released title ref for Madness.
Speaker 1: We just a powerhouse performance. He's the one who is
Speaker 1: aggressively puffing the marijuana cigarette over and over as the
Speaker 1: lady is playing the piano and he's screaming at her
Speaker 1: to play faster. Play faster. Yes, and the narrator tells
Speaker 1: us that this is what happens to the refer addict
Speaker 1: that he ends up with, is they call him like
Speaker 1: inescapable madness or something.
Speaker 3: A notorious film, a piece of anti marijuana propaganda that
Speaker 3: would later on to become like a cult classic because
Speaker 3: it is so ridiculously over the top and an ultimately
Speaker 3: very telling of this time period and its sensibilities and
Speaker 3: objectives in his messaging. But it's a delirious performance, and
Speaker 3: it's interesting that it ultimately outshines a lot of his
Speaker 3: very successful and popular contemporary work, Like he was a
Speaker 3: successful contemporary actor. But you know, we often end up
Speaker 3: remembering folks for the weird stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, so yeah, as you said in Devil Bat
Speaker 1: he plays our sort of Jack Rabbit wise newspaperman. He's cool,
Speaker 1: he's quick witted, he's a touch devious, like he's got
Speaker 1: a little bit of a flim flam artist in him,
Speaker 1: but just enough that he's he's a bad boy, but
Speaker 1: still the good guy.
Speaker 3: Yeah. It's weird that there's a whole subplot that goes
Speaker 3: on with him and his photographer attempting to fake a
Speaker 3: bad attack or fake a bat so they can get
Speaker 3: a photograph of it, so they don't have a They're
Speaker 3: a little low on journalistic integrity. But there's still our heroes.
Speaker 3: We're still totally rooting for them. You know.
Speaker 1: We've talked on the show before about how so many
Speaker 1: sci fi and horror films from before roughly the sixties
Speaker 1: have very boring male leads. I mean, some after the
Speaker 1: sixties do too, but especially like in the fifties, that's
Speaker 1: just the dead zone for protagonists in this Male protagonists
Speaker 1: in these genres the kind of low deaf rectangles who
Speaker 1: are there to just kind of look vaguely handsome and
Speaker 1: punch the villain, rescue the female lead, but don't really
Speaker 1: have any interesting dialogue or sharp angles to their personality.
Speaker 1: I found this guy refreshingly different. He's got a good
Speaker 1: bit of personality. There are weird quirks about him, and
Speaker 1: some of his dialogue is kind of witty. You know
Speaker 1: who he actually reminded me of was the male lead
Speaker 1: in Doctor X from nineteen thirty two, that the pre
Speaker 1: code horror film with synthetic flesh. That character was also
Speaker 1: a wise cracking newspaper reporter.
Speaker 3: That's good, I mean, I guess that ultimately, like the
Speaker 3: news paper reporter, just in the long term, as a
Speaker 3: fictional archetype, you know, kind of removed from the reality
Speaker 3: of actual journalism. It is often a space where we
Speaker 3: play with more rogue individuals.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: They are in this gray space between like pure authority
Speaker 3: figures and of course the criminal elemental forces of chaos
Speaker 3: and so forth. And so there is often a lot
Speaker 3: of room there for it to be wacky, weird or
Speaker 3: even just completely chaotic, you know. And it's like, yeah,
Speaker 3: fear and loathing in Las Vegas, you know, getting into
Speaker 3: gonzo journalism and all. So even in this time period
Speaker 3: where there's a lot that's you know, getting more and
Speaker 3: more straight laced and buckled down, this is so much
Speaker 3: better than just your square jawed, you know, steak eating
Speaker 3: policeman type character you would get in various other pictures.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and though I don't want to oversell the weirdness
Speaker 1: of this character. He's not super I mean, he's not
Speaker 1: Hunter Thompson, but he is kind of a fox. He's
Speaker 1: kind of like he's kind of wily and funny and
Speaker 1: not just there to be your you know, lawful, good
Speaker 1: slab of meat.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and Ultimately, I thought it held his own in
Speaker 3: his big one on one scene with Bella at the
Speaker 3: end of the picture.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I agreed, all right.
Speaker 3: Supporting character in this is Yolanda Donlin, who plays the
Speaker 3: character Maxine, who is a French maid. She lived in
Speaker 3: nineteen twenty through twenty fourteen American born British based actress
Speaker 3: who mostly worked in the UK. This is not the
Speaker 3: only film where she plays a french Maid, but her
Speaker 3: career on the British stage seems to have been far
Speaker 3: more substantial. So she worked with the likes of Laurence
Speaker 3: Olivier and her last film was nineteen seventy six is
Speaker 3: Seven Nights in Japan.
Speaker 1: She was a ray of sunshine here. I loved Maxine
Speaker 1: all right.
Speaker 3: The main perfume boss is this guy, Henry Morton, and
Speaker 3: he is played by Guy Usher, who lived eighteen eighty
Speaker 3: three through nineteen forty four. Prolific character actor of the
Speaker 3: thirties and forties. His films include The Case of the
Speaker 3: Black Cat from thirty six, Buck Rogers from thirty nine,
Speaker 3: and The Spanish Kate Mystery from nineteen thirty five. I
Speaker 3: thought he's pretty solid in this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he is business man.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he has a kind of there's a very funny
Speaker 3: but at times a very awkwardly written scene with him
Speaker 3: in Bell Lagosi's character where bell We'll get to it,
Speaker 3: but what is.
Speaker 1: It one of the many scenes where Bella is trying
Speaker 1: to convince somebody to put lotion on.
Speaker 3: Yes, and also like Bell Lagosi like eventually just out
Speaker 3: of pride, like all but admitting to the previous murders
Speaker 3: in the film, and Henry Morton's just kind of like,
Speaker 3: what is this guy talking about? And then finally Don's
Speaker 3: on him. Oh he killed all these people? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Oh wait next, are we going to get to
Speaker 1: the newspaper editor.
Speaker 3: Yes, the character is Joe McGuinty. The actor is Arthur Q.
Speaker 3: Brian who of eighteen ninety nine through nineteen fifty nine
Speaker 3: American actor and radio personality who he had many other credits,
Speaker 3: but he served as the voice of the Looney Tunes
Speaker 3: character Elmer Fudd from nineteen forty through nineteen fifty nine. Yeah,
Speaker 3: he was not the originator, and there were others who
Speaker 3: did that voice during this time, but he was an
Speaker 3: official Elmer Fudd voice actor.
Speaker 1: That totally fits. I did not make that connection.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's it's not. It feels like the least
Speaker 3: shocking thing in the world when you see him in
Speaker 3: the film, because he looks like Elmer Fudd. It's like
Speaker 3: he has a very Elmer Fudd look. He's just not
Speaker 3: wearing the hunting cap.
Speaker 1: But he's also so I mean, it's early in the
Speaker 1: existence of this cliche. So I guess he's one of
Speaker 1: the examples that is being copied in later films and
Speaker 1: TV shows. But he is the classic like police chief
Speaker 1: or newspaper editor who's barking at our rogue main character
Speaker 1: about how you're a loose cannon. He's mcgarnigle's boss on
Speaker 1: the Simpsons. He's like, well, mccarnicle, you know, Billy is dead.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there are a lot of fun scenes with this character.
Speaker 3: All right, And I'm gonna mention the musical director here.
Speaker 3: This is you know, films of this nature from this
Speaker 3: time period, they're often using like stock music, and ultimately,
Speaker 3: I don't know, I couldn't tell. I didn't do deep
Speaker 3: enough research to find out exactly how much this guy
Speaker 3: worked on the music, how much of it his stock
Speaker 3: and so forth, But he was very prolific. So I'm
Speaker 3: just gonna mention him briefly anyway, It's David Chudnow, who
Speaker 3: lived nineteen oh nine through two thousand and two, Russian
Speaker 3: born composer and musical director who worked as music supervisor
Speaker 3: or musical director on one hundred and sixty four credits
Speaker 3: between thirty eight and fifty six. His composer credits include
Speaker 3: nineteen forty two Is the Mad Monster and then later
Speaker 3: Russ Meyer's nineteen sixty one film Erotica, and he went
Speaker 3: on to produce a number of projects in the sixties
Speaker 3: and seventies, mostly the films that were directed by his
Speaker 3: son byronshud Now born nineteen twenty six, including a trilogy
Speaker 3: of G rated intelligent Doberman pictures. I've mentioned these on
Speaker 3: the show before. They are The Doberman Gang seventy two,
Speaker 3: The Daring Doberman's from seventy three, and The Amazing Doberman's
Speaker 3: from seventy six. William Goldstein of Doctor Fib's fame was
Speaker 3: one of the writers on that last picture.
Speaker 1: These are Doberman. You're not talking about people named Doberman.
Speaker 1: These are Doberman's the dogs.
Speaker 3: These are straight up dogs. I think solving crimes and stuff. Again,
Speaker 3: not a horror movie or anything. It's like apparently g
Speaker 3: rated fun, but it was like a whole franchise that
Speaker 3: I feel like this largely forgot beautiful.
Speaker 1: Well, I don't want to be mean, but I do
Speaker 1: not Nothing about the music in this movie really struck me.
Speaker 1: It was kind of forgettable.
Speaker 3: It does everything expect a film from this time period do,
Speaker 3: and nothing more. All right, well, shall we unleash the
Speaker 3: plot in an unsuspecting audience.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's open the window and let the bats out. Okay,
Speaker 1: So we begin with a text legend over like superimposed
Speaker 1: over a shot of just a town that by the way,
Speaker 1: did you have an idea of where this was supposed
Speaker 1: to take place? Because the opening shots made me think
Speaker 1: this is supposed to be in the American Southwest. Looks
Speaker 1: like the Southwest, But then the reporter that goes to
Speaker 1: investigate is from the Chicago Register.
Speaker 3: Yeah, oh, you know, they might just have a satellite
Speaker 3: office here. So I don't know. Everything feels very solid
Speaker 3: Middle America, you know.
Speaker 1: Okay, Anyway, the text says, all Heathville loved Paul Carruthers.
Speaker 1: They're kindly village doctor. No one suspected that in his
Speaker 1: home laboratory on a hillside overlooking the magnificent estate of
Speaker 1: Martin Heath. The doctor found time to conduct certain private experiments,
Speaker 1: weird terrifying experiments. Period. Okay, so then we open on
Speaker 1: Bela Lugosi hunched over a table covered in chemistry equipment.
Speaker 1: You got beakers, flasks, gas flames, in a room with
Speaker 1: fake stonework walls, and he's doing chemistry, mixing solutions, decanting
Speaker 1: things into bottles, occasionally just having him a little free sample,
Speaker 1: like like sniffing, you know, getting a sniff.
Speaker 3: Yep, yep, doing some mad science. Basically, you know what
Speaker 3: he's up to. You didn't even need the crawl. Of course,
Speaker 3: Bello Lugosi is up to weird, terrifying experiments and you know,
Speaker 3: I don't know, we don't know. It's illegal, you know,
Speaker 3: God bless him. Go ahead do your weird terrifying stuff.
Speaker 1: Why would he be sniffing the chemicals if there was
Speaker 1: anything wrong with them? So he goes into a secret passageway.
Speaker 1: This is accessed by way of a hidden switch in
Speaker 1: a bookcase, and this leads down into a dungeon. And
Speaker 1: the dungeon is full of bats. It's hard to tell
Speaker 1: exactly what's going on. So Rob, I'm going to lay
Speaker 1: it out what I thought was going on, and you
Speaker 1: tell me if it matches your impression. I think there
Speaker 1: are lots of bats, but for substantial portions of the movie,
Speaker 1: only one bat seems to be active at a time.
Speaker 1: So I believe these other bats are backup bats that
Speaker 1: are in storage waiting to be activated by the microwave,
Speaker 1: as you put it, the thing that he's going to
Speaker 1: put this bat into in a minute.
Speaker 3: That's right. You can only cook up one mutant bat
Speaker 3: at a time, but you've got to have a lot
Speaker 3: of normal bats on hand to cook up if something
Speaker 3: happens to that prime bat.
Speaker 1: Okay, So the bats are dangling upside down from what
Speaker 1: looked like coat hangers. There is one main bat at
Speaker 1: the center of the room. It's bigger than all the others,
Speaker 1: and Legosi approaches it to say the first line of
Speaker 1: the film, what do you think the opening line of
Speaker 1: dialogue in this movie will be? He says, ah, my friend,
Speaker 1: our theory of glandular stimulation through electrical impulses was correct.
Speaker 1: That's a hell of an opener. And then he goes
Speaker 1: on to say, a few days ago, you were as
Speaker 1: small as your companion, and now look at you, and
Speaker 1: I think he's got to be a good thirty percent
Speaker 1: bigger than the other bats. Now Here we cut to
Speaker 1: a close up shot of a real bat's face. We
Speaker 1: will see this exact same bat close up footage so
Speaker 1: many times in the movie. I don't know if it
Speaker 1: was something shot for the film or if they were
Speaker 1: just getting you know, nature stock footage, but it's like
Speaker 1: right up in the bat's face and it's some kind
Speaker 1: of bat like looking around, looking like it's struggling against restraints.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I thought they did a pretty good job integrating
Speaker 3: their live animal shots and their prop shots here. Of course,
Speaker 3: as you might expect, this is often the case. The
Speaker 3: bat we see enclose up is clearly a fruit bat
Speaker 3: of some sort, yes, which is of course in real life,
Speaker 3: absolutely not interested in human flesh or anything like that.
Speaker 3: It wants to eat mangoes or something. But they to
Speaker 3: the untrained eye, they look more ferocious. They look kind
Speaker 3: of like wolves, so that's what we get. But yeah,
Speaker 3: I thought the integration between the shots was pretty good, though.
Speaker 3: The hanger bat kind of looks like some sort of
Speaker 3: like cured bat jerky, right.
Speaker 1: Yes, it looks like a bat got caught into a
Speaker 1: hydraulic press and so it's just a furry pancake with
Speaker 1: wings and then they left it out to dry in
Speaker 1: the sun.
Speaker 3: Exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So Lugosi dismounts the bat hangar and transports it
Speaker 1: to another room. This is a high voltage bombardment chamber
Speaker 1: behind a steel door with thick glass viewing windows. He leaves,
Speaker 1: He like hangs the bat up in the room, leaves
Speaker 1: the room, puts on welding goggles, flips a switch. The
Speaker 1: electricity starts going nuts inside the room. It's like arcing
Speaker 1: from all these tesla coils and stuff, and the bat
Speaker 1: is just hanging there while Lugosi watches through the glass.
Speaker 1: And I think the director must have thought that people
Speaker 1: would just really get a kick out of the glandular
Speaker 1: stimulation scene because it goes on for some time. It's
Speaker 1: like zap zap zaps app for a while. Then Legosi
Speaker 1: goes inside the room to make some adjustments, then goes
Speaker 1: back outside and starts zapping it again, and we just
Speaker 1: get to watch.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean, I guess it's worth pointing out that, like,
Speaker 3: what the full run time of this picture is sixty
Speaker 3: eight minutes. Yeah, so maybe we do have a certain
Speaker 3: amount of padding going on here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, But as the electrical stimulation continues, the bat begins
Speaker 1: to flex its wings. So it's I guess it's coming
Speaker 1: to life, coming out of cold storage now. Once the
Speaker 1: stimulation is over, Legosi checks the bat for a heartbeat.
Speaker 1: He goes in with like a stethoscope, and he's checking
Speaker 1: it out, and he seems very very pleased with himself.
Speaker 1: But he is interrupted by a phone call. It's a
Speaker 1: call from his bosses that they are the business partners
Speaker 1: Henry Morton and Martin Heath Heath of this heath Ville Heath,
Speaker 1: the Heath Company, and Henry Morton is his partner, and
Speaker 1: they are inviting doctor Caruthers to a family get together
Speaker 1: at the Heath residence that night. And then Carrothers says
Speaker 1: he appreciates the invitation quote, but I am very busy
Speaker 1: working on a formula for a new shaving lotion. And
Speaker 1: then Heath replies, oh, you know, but Doc, this is
Speaker 1: my daughter's idea. And this is referring to Heath's adult
Speaker 1: daughter Mary. They say, you know, Henry Morton's son Don
Speaker 1: is going to propose to her tonight, and apparently she
Speaker 1: will be very upset if Bella Lagosi isn't there for that.
Speaker 1: So they hang up the phone, and then Henry Morton
Speaker 1: says he's going to be surprised when he finds the
Speaker 1: special occasion is to present him with this bonus check.
Speaker 1: He says this while holding the check in his hand,
Speaker 1: and then Heath takes the check and stares at it
Speaker 1: and says, almost wistfully, five thousand dollars. I don't know,
Speaker 1: maybe it's not coming across in the way I'm describing,
Speaker 1: but there are so many, like out loud references to
Speaker 1: this five thousand dollars check. It got very funny to me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, five thousand snaggers. Yeah, this is a lot of money.
Speaker 1: Well, whatever the amount is, it's just all these people
Speaker 1: gathered around being like, wow, this is the dollar amount
Speaker 1: of the check. Anyway, Before Carothers goes to the party,
Speaker 1: we see him explaining his giant bat scheme to the
Speaker 1: giant bat. He dips a cotton ball in the new
Speaker 1: shaving lotion he's making and he holds it up to
Speaker 1: the glandular stimulated bat, the glandularly stimulated bat, and the
Speaker 1: bat starts screaming, and Legosi is like, good, yes, I
Speaker 1: taught you to hate this fragrance while you slept. Now
Speaker 1: if you smell it while you are awake, you will
Speaker 1: strike to kill.
Speaker 3: All right, all right, murderous conditioning. Okay.
Speaker 1: Then we go to a scene of the party at
Speaker 1: Morton and Heath's house. So Mary is Heath's daughter, but
Speaker 1: they are also just a bunch of loose suns running around.
Speaker 1: I don't remember whose son is whose. There's a bunch
Speaker 1: of them. And Morton is like, remember, Roy, Tommy, you're
Speaker 1: not supposed to say anything about this five thousand dollars
Speaker 1: check that I hold in my hand until you get
Speaker 1: the signal from Heath. And then Mary, Heath and a
Speaker 1: Morton son named don A. They're sort of cuddling and
Speaker 1: flirting on the other couch and Morton starts to give
Speaker 1: them the same talk, and they have all these ideas
Speaker 1: about how they should unveil the five thousand dollars check.
Speaker 1: But then they find out car Others is not going
Speaker 1: to come to the party because he is busy with
Speaker 1: his lotion. So Roy, one of the heath sons, offers
Speaker 1: to take the check up to the laboratory and here
Speaker 1: we get our first like put on the lotion Roy scene.
Speaker 1: So Roy goes up to the lab and Carrothers reacts
Speaker 1: with this strange, kind of hard to read cascade of
Speaker 1: emotions when he receives the five thousand dollars check. He'll
Speaker 1: explain why in a minute. But then he's like, okay,
Speaker 1: Roy Heath, I want you to try my new aftershave.
Speaker 1: And so Roy takes some of it and he smells that.
Speaker 1: He says, ooh, pretty strong, isn't it. This establishes a pattern.
Speaker 1: All the victims are going to say this like wow,
Speaker 1: smells really strong. But Legosi reassures him. He says, no, no,
Speaker 1: the scent evaporates a short time after you use it.
Speaker 1: So Roy takes a few drops in his hand, and
Speaker 1: then the Legosi gleefully explains. He says, now, rub it
Speaker 1: on the tender part of your neck. Here. I love
Speaker 1: these scenes. So he keeps like touching his throat and
Speaker 1: being like, here's where you rub it. It's so soft
Speaker 1: on the skin.
Speaker 3: Yes, he says, you want to apply lots of it to
Speaker 3: the esophagus and the jugular.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right. So Roy rubs the lotion on his throat,
Speaker 1: then he departs. When he leaves, he says good night, doctor,
Speaker 1: and Legosi replies, goodbye Roy. He will also do this
Speaker 1: in every one of the murders. Yes. Then we get
Speaker 1: a weird voiceover of Legosi's thoughts. Is this the only
Speaker 1: time in the entire movie when we hear a character's
Speaker 1: thoughts out loud?
Speaker 3: I think so it is. Yeah, this really feels like
Speaker 3: one of those classic moments of the director or someone
Speaker 3: in the production saying, I don't think we got this across.
Speaker 3: Let's have some voice over here, and that's what they do.
Speaker 1: Absolutely feels tacked on. But what So He's standing there
Speaker 1: staring at the check and we hear Legosi's voiceover say,
Speaker 1: lovely check, isn't it? Doctor? They are wealthy because of you.
Speaker 1: You made them rich. Doctor. It was your formula tonight.
Speaker 1: They gave you five thousand dollars and wanted you to
Speaker 1: come down to their house and thank them for it.
Speaker 1: That was your money they gave you, like a bone
Speaker 1: tossed to a faithful dog. And we get some very
Speaker 1: good facial expressions from Bella here. First he looks sad,
Speaker 1: and then it turns into a grimace, and then it
Speaker 1: turns into maniacal laughter and then straight into a furious glower.
Speaker 1: He is ready now to send the bats, so he
Speaker 1: goes down into the secret passageway. He goes to his
Speaker 1: mutant bat and he says, tonight, you have work to do,
Speaker 1: and the bat flies out.
Speaker 3: Yep, yep. And I think the bat flying looks pretty good,
Speaker 3: though there's going to be a plot element that kind
Speaker 3: of tarnishes the effect a bit later on.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, So first we see Don and Mary out
Speaker 1: in the garden on a bench. Remember they were the
Speaker 1: ones who were going to get engaged. This part I
Speaker 1: found incredibly perplexing. Don says, you know, while our families
Speaker 1: are here, tonight is a good time to announce our engagement,
Speaker 1: and Mary says to him, looked on, I love you,
Speaker 1: I've loved you since we were kids, but not in
Speaker 1: that way. You're more like a brother to me. And
Speaker 1: I was like, what, how did you get to the
Speaker 1: point of thinking they were gonna be engaged?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Yeah, he seemed exceedingly sure of this. Yeah, so
Speaker 3: this was yeah, this is a real head scratcher, But
Speaker 3: he takes it well.
Speaker 1: He doesn't get mad or anything. He's just like, oh, okay,
Speaker 1: fair enough.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like we needed more information. Why was this
Speaker 3: miscommunication in place? Were they betrothed? Ye? What was going
Speaker 3: on hereh idea?
Speaker 1: Okay? But yeah, Don takes it well. He's like, okay.
Speaker 1: Then meanwhile, nearby Mary's brother, Roy, the guy who put
Speaker 1: the lotion on his throat, he arrives home, gets out
Speaker 1: of his car and is immediately dive bombed by at.
Speaker 1: And we don't see a lot of it. I mean,
Speaker 1: we see the bat flying, and we see sort of
Speaker 1: a dark dive bomb thing, but it's not like we
Speaker 1: get like a clear close up.
Speaker 3: Eventually, we'll probably watch Life Force for Weird House Cinema
Speaker 3: and we'll have to compare the dive bombing bat sequences.
Speaker 3: I think they have some of these in Fright Night
Speaker 3: as well, right in there, dive bombing bat scene in that.
Speaker 1: That sounds right. Yeah. Oh, and so you know, they
Speaker 1: hear him scream and Mary and Don come running and
Speaker 1: they find Roy in the driveway there and they're like,
Speaker 1: call doctor Carruther is no good. So you know, Carro
Speaker 1: others comes to check on him, and they have both
Speaker 1: families gathered around him as he's lying there in the
Speaker 1: driveway and there's a dialogue exchange that goes like this,
Speaker 1: Carrother says there's nothing I can do, and Heath says,
Speaker 1: you mean he's dead. Her other says, yes, I'd better
Speaker 1: call the coroner. Heath says, you think it's murder? Carro
Speaker 1: Other says, I don't know. I never saw anything like
Speaker 1: it before. The jugular vein is severed. They all look down.
Speaker 3: It cuts to black, and this is where the news
Speaker 3: media comes into play.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but because everybody trusts Carruthers, I mean, of course
Speaker 1: we should have.
Speaker 3: Yeah. They tell us this a lot. They're always like,
Speaker 3: everybody trusts corrects, everyone loves Corrutthers, The community loves him.
Speaker 3: We're given very little in addition to that to make
Speaker 3: us believe this is the case, because come on, it's
Speaker 3: bell Legosi. Uh, Like he brings that ara here. We
Speaker 3: don't really see him doing like nice things for the community.
Speaker 3: He just wants to do terrifying experiments in his laboratory.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's acting incredibly suspicious from the first scene.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but all right, fair enough, nobody suspects him.
Speaker 1: All right, So it's time to meet some new characters
Speaker 1: at the offices of a newspaper, The Chicago register, and
Speaker 1: so it shows a busy, bustling newsroom. We're two guys
Speaker 1: on the floor of the newsroom throwing punches. It looked
Speaker 1: like it, but then it cuts away quick.
Speaker 3: Yeah it's you know, it's a scrappy environment. They're they're
Speaker 3: having fun, they're working hard, they're playing hard.
Speaker 1: And so we're going to meet a couple of characters
Speaker 1: here the assignment editor McGinty, who again, he's your classic
Speaker 1: large cigar chewing police chief slash newspaper editor. He's telling
Speaker 1: the cop or reporter, you're a loose cannon. You're off
Speaker 1: the force. Here's your new partner. And in fact, we
Speaker 1: get all three of those in this movie.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, I do like the elements too, though with
Speaker 3: our newspaper editor here, who is like, we got to
Speaker 3: remember the Heath Company. It's a big account, you know,
Speaker 3: big advertising accounts for the paper. So they do interject
Speaker 3: a little bit of like realistic news room politics.
Speaker 1: Here, well kind of, but I didn't understand the dynamics,
Speaker 1: So yeah, I thought that was interesting. They're like, Heath
Speaker 1: is a big advertising account, so you've got to go
Speaker 1: to Heathville. You've got to get a photo photographer to
Speaker 1: go with you go to Heathville and do a big
Speaker 1: sensational news story about his son's unsolved mutant bat murder.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, I mean that part makes less sense. It
Speaker 3: would be it would be more realistic. It's like, okay,
Speaker 3: you're going you're going up there, but make sure you
Speaker 3: play it really respectful. We've got to cover this. But
Speaker 3: they're huge advertiser, so again, some things are maybe lost
Speaker 3: in the message here.
Speaker 1: I mean normally, if there's like a big industry mogul
Speaker 1: who has a child with their adult child is killed
Speaker 1: in an unsolved murder, you want the National Inquirer up
Speaker 1: there getting into it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well they send the A team, as we'll see.
Speaker 1: That's right. So our hero here is Johnny Layden. He's
Speaker 1: a scrappy reporter who's always causing trouble. Somebody's always calling
Speaker 1: the editor to get him fired. But you know what,
Speaker 1: he gets results. And McGinty explains, there's this mystery killing
Speaker 1: in Heathville. It's old Martin Heath's son. He wants Layden
Speaker 1: looking into it. Leydon is unfamiliar. He's like, who's Martin Heath?
Speaker 1: And McGinty this was also weird McGinty's like, who's Martin
Speaker 1: Heath say? Have you ever had a date with a girl?
Speaker 1: And Leyden says, you know, he might have had one
Speaker 1: at some point, And McGinty says, well, did she smell sweet?
Speaker 1: If so, that's because of Martin Heath Cosmetics Limited. They
Speaker 1: make all that goo that women put on their faces.
Speaker 1: The premise here that Heath is the only perfume and
Speaker 1: cosmetics company in the world and invented and has exclusive
Speaker 1: rights to the concept of makeup and perfume.
Speaker 3: I don't know. I guess they're just a major player anyway.
Speaker 1: So Layton goes to Heath Phil he takes along with
Speaker 1: him a photographer. As he was told to. This character
Speaker 1: has a great name, it's one Shot McGuire. One Shot
Speaker 1: McGuire is a bow tie guy who keeps his suit
Speaker 1: jacket buttoned. But he has a kind of he's a
Speaker 1: little bit more nerdy than Layton, but also has he's
Speaker 1: kind of got a nerdy but rascally temperament to match Layton's.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I don't know from the title, I'm not
Speaker 3: sure is he if he's supposed to be a really
Speaker 3: good photographer or just a really sloppy photographer like, oh,
Speaker 3: did you get pictures of the sporting event? I got
Speaker 3: one shot? Does that mean you only needed one like
Speaker 3: perfect shot, first take? Or you just really don't care?
Speaker 3: He just like good enough.
Speaker 1: I didn't know. Yeah. So if it's a writer and
Speaker 1: they call you like first draft McGuire, what does that
Speaker 1: mean that good?
Speaker 3: Yeah, nailed it first draft? Well, I guess sometimes it
Speaker 3: works like that. But one has right to be suspicious.
Speaker 1: So our two reporters go to Heathville. They meet the
Speaker 1: police chief there and they begin the inquest, and the
Speaker 1: police chief admits that they have not gotten very far
Speaker 1: with the investigation, but that Roy Heath suffered the strangest wounds.
Speaker 1: He had shallow slashes in his throat, too deep for fingernails,
Speaker 1: not deep enough to be a knife. And then the
Speaker 1: coroner says that they could have been the talons of
Speaker 1: a bird, a bird, but the sheriff says they know
Speaker 1: that it wasn't a bird because they found several hairs
Speaker 1: on the shoulder of Heath's coat, so it couldn't have
Speaker 1: been a bird.
Speaker 3: Soide note that there's going to be a lot of
Speaker 3: dialogue in this film related to the idea that people
Speaker 3: think bats are birds and need to be corrected on
Speaker 3: the matter.
Speaker 1: Multiple characters have to correct I think doctor Carruthers and
Speaker 1: Leyton are frequently correcting people on calling bats birds.
Speaker 3: Ye, nobody knows exactly what a bat is, but.
Speaker 1: They say that the hairs on the coat they're not human.
Speaker 1: Lab tests showed that they came from a mouse, and
Speaker 1: Layton says, say, a bat has hair like a mouse.
Speaker 1: What if it was a bat and I don't know,
Speaker 1: I call bs. I think that is too extreme of
Speaker 1: a bull's eye connection there, unless Layton has like undisclosed
Speaker 1: psychic powers or something. Another clue though. They say there
Speaker 1: was a peculiar odor about the wounds, but the police
Speaker 1: were unable to identify it, and now it has been
Speaker 1: destroyed by evaporation. So we're going to go on to
Speaker 1: the meeting with Mary that the reporters are continuing the
Speaker 1: investigation the share were the police chief is just like,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, sure, look into it. You know, you'll get
Speaker 1: no objection from me, which is kind of unusual for
Speaker 1: these films. I feel like it's always a territorial squabble
Speaker 1: about who gets to investigate. So the newspaperman go to
Speaker 1: the Heath residence. Of course, it's immediately clear that Leydon
Speaker 1: and Mary are going to fall in love, and then
Speaker 1: there's a secondary romance as well, because Mary's got the
Speaker 1: french maid, the gorgeous French maid named Maxine, who's running
Speaker 1: around saying, we medemoiselle and apparently she is just wild
Speaker 1: for photojournal East And from their very first introduction one shot,
Speaker 1: Maguire is saying, yes, I will marry this french maid.
Speaker 1: And now they've got competing theories about the murder. They ask,
Speaker 1: you know, did this guy have any enemies? Not really?
Speaker 1: Was it an animal attack? Carruthers says, yes, it was
Speaker 1: a wild animal who attacked him, but Leyden says, I
Speaker 1: don't think so. And this sort of leads into this
Speaker 1: middle section of the movie that's more just sort of
Speaker 1: investigating the murders and more murders taking place. So there
Speaker 1: is a murder of another one of the sons, this
Speaker 1: time it's a guy named Tommy. Legosi gives him the
Speaker 1: lotion to try, and Tommy puts it on and he's like, ooh,
Speaker 1: that feels great, very very soothing, and Legosi says, I
Speaker 1: don't think you will ever use anything else so he's,
Speaker 1: you know, walking around with the lotion on, and he
Speaker 1: gets attacked by a bat in the garden patio. Now
Speaker 1: at this bad attack, the journalists witness it, they see
Speaker 1: it happen, and so they try to report on it.
Speaker 1: They call it McGinty. They're like, yeah, he was attacked
Speaker 1: by a devil bat. McGuinty doesn't believe them at first,
Speaker 1: but then he does run with their story and the
Speaker 1: headline is mysterious devil bat kills Thomas Heath. I do
Speaker 1: like this movie shows us lots of newspaper headlines.
Speaker 3: Yeah. My one disappointment was I could make any of
Speaker 3: the lower headlines out. You know, that's always there's always
Speaker 3: a lot of fun there, especially in like parodies on
Speaker 3: the Simpson like, what are the stories that didn't make
Speaker 3: the very top because of whatever supernatural shenanigans are going on.
Speaker 1: I feel like multiple times we see a newspaper and
Speaker 1: there's another article with the headline praise from cheerleaders, m okay,
Speaker 1: otherwise a slow news day. Oh, and then they show
Speaker 1: a second paper that says who will be the devil
Speaker 1: Bat's next victim? Villagers cringe and terror of murderer.
Speaker 3: Oh.
Speaker 1: In another one of the articles. It has the headline
Speaker 1: para please the great.
Speaker 3: What yeah local theater.
Speaker 1: Maybe I don't know Laura mipsum. So anyway, there's this
Speaker 1: whole middle section where they've seen the Devil Bat. But
Speaker 1: McGinty's like, hey, I need a photo. We got to
Speaker 1: run a photo, So they stage a hoax photo using
Speaker 1: a stuffed bat from a taxidermy shop. Yes.
Speaker 3: I loved and hated this because it's just such a weird,
Speaker 3: wacky element that suddenly like journalistic integrities out the window
Speaker 3: and they're going to fake this shot. But then it
Speaker 3: does feel from a filmmaking standpoint like kind of an
Speaker 3: error because, let's face it, these bat effects, I think
Speaker 3: they're pretty great considering the budget and the time period.
Speaker 3: But when you also introduce a fake, fake bat into
Speaker 3: the scenario, that fake bat looks too much like the
Speaker 3: actual bat. Yes, and it makes me second guess the
Speaker 3: effects on some level. So I didn't didn't like that.
Speaker 1: Same thought the hoax bat looks the same as the
Speaker 1: real devil bat.
Speaker 3: Yeah, It's like if somebody wears a monster mask in
Speaker 3: a movie that also features a monster, that monster mask
Speaker 3: can't look too good and your actual monster effects better
Speaker 3: be like a cut above.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, yeah so this Oh but also this movie
Speaker 1: has a debunking scene. So the hoax photo is debunked
Speaker 1: by a skeptical scientist on a national radio program, and
Speaker 1: it shows just like everybody in the country sitting around
Speaker 1: listening to this radio program. They introduce a scientist named
Speaker 1: Professor Percival Garland Rains, whom the announcer calls the world's
Speaker 1: greatest authority on animals, and Rains says that devil bats
Speaker 1: may have existed in the dark ages when people lived
Speaker 1: in caves, but not anymore, and he has proof that
Speaker 1: the photo is a fake. He analyzed it under a
Speaker 1: magnifying glass, and he says the bat has a tag
Speaker 1: on it which says made in Japan. But I was thinking,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, what if the real devil bat is
Speaker 1: simply a manufactured object, you know, created by magic?
Speaker 3: How did they get a fake bat? You're shactured? Yeah,
Speaker 3: either across the ocean or like, are they selling these
Speaker 3: at the local store? Did just so many questions arise
Speaker 3: from this.
Speaker 1: I would have thought the taxidermy bats would be a
Speaker 1: more locally produced article.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Oh hey, folks were back. We had to just take
Speaker 1: a break in the middle of our recording session. But
Speaker 1: now we are in real time a few hours later,
Speaker 1: continuing our discussion of the devil bat So where did
Speaker 1: we leave off? It was where, Oh, they just pulled
Speaker 1: off the hoax and they got caught. They got caught
Speaker 1: by the radio guy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, they attempted to do the fake photo. And
Speaker 3: is it. Now we're in just a little bit where like,
Speaker 3: basically it's like, I've got to fire you guys. This
Speaker 3: is awful, and they're like, you can't fire us because
Speaker 3: we're onto this great case. We're going to keep working.
Speaker 1: It, that's right. So McGinty, they're on the phone with McGuinty,
Speaker 1: the chief the editor, and he fires Leyton and one
Speaker 1: shot McGuire though I guess they did so fair enough. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and obviously this is not the first time he has
Speaker 1: fired them. They even say so. They're like, you'll hire
Speaker 1: us back, you always do. But the real downside they
Speaker 1: don't seem all that upset about getting fired. The real
Speaker 1: downside is there now on the outs with their their
Speaker 1: new lady friends, Mary and Maxine are not happy with
Speaker 1: them for doing a hoax, especially since this hoax involves
Speaker 1: the creature that allegedly killed their brothers and family friends
Speaker 1: and so forth, and almost fiance.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it seems like a massiveness step, especially on that angle.
Speaker 1: But Layton's a real go getter. He doesn't let this
Speaker 1: put him to bed. He keeps investigating, and he finds
Speaker 1: out about the history of Carruthers and the Heath Company.
Speaker 1: He finds out the Caruthers missed out on getting part
Speaker 1: of the Heath Company fortune by just being being paid
Speaker 1: in cash instead. And there's some notes somewhere in here
Speaker 1: about like a chemist examines the Legosi lotion and finds
Speaker 1: out that it has a previously unknown element in it
Speaker 1: that could not be identified. I love this detail. It
Speaker 1: seems a bit much, but Bella explains that the otherwise
Speaker 1: unknown element was something he found in Tibet, which the
Speaker 1: Lamas use in their ceremonies.
Speaker 3: Okay, all right, I don't know what those ceremonies could be.
Speaker 3: It gets bats riled up in the scenario, but okay, fair.
Speaker 1: Enough anyway, So Leyton goes to confront Legosi with questions
Speaker 1: about all this stuff that they take him some of
Speaker 1: the after shape to analyze, I believe, and Legosi is like, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, to the chief of police and to Leyton,
Speaker 1: why didn't you both each take a bottle of this
Speaker 1: stuff home with you and use it. Now the chief
Speaker 1: of police he's having none of it. He says, if
Speaker 1: my wife ever smelled perfume on me, she'd suspect me. Sure,
Speaker 1: so he won't take it. But Leyton he's like, yeah, sure,
Speaker 1: I'll take some. And of course he gets attacked later
Speaker 1: that night while he is sitting out in the garden
Speaker 1: with one shot. But this actually works out to their
Speaker 1: benefit because Leyden pulled a revolver out of his coat pocket,
Speaker 1: shoots the devil bat, kills the devil bat. So the
Speaker 1: devil Bat wasn't I don't know all that threatening. In
Speaker 1: the end, it was destroyed by rather mundane means. And
Speaker 1: then it's the biggest story on all the newspapers. The
Speaker 1: headline is reporter kills devil bat, subhead shoots monster.
Speaker 3: Well, I wondered, did he write this story for the paper?
Speaker 3: That seems like it would be a massive misstep as well,
Speaker 3: But I don't think he would. He would probably fight
Speaker 3: for it. He's like, look, I killed the devil bat,
Speaker 3: I should get to write the article. Yes, I can
Speaker 3: maintain my journalistic integrity. Yes, I did just try and
Speaker 3: fake a bat photo.
Speaker 1: Do you see the article underneath shoots monster is called Americanism.
Speaker 3: I was trying to figure or if the Americanism is
Speaker 3: part of the monster shooting or is this a separate
Speaker 3: like article. There's a sub section somebody's like Weekly Callum
Speaker 3: on Americanism.
Speaker 1: In a classic display of Americanism, the reporter has shot
Speaker 1: the devil bat. But you know now that they've actually
Speaker 1: got a real dead devil bat corpse in hand, and
Speaker 1: not just a taxidermid object. They can prove they were
Speaker 1: right all along. So everybody has to eat crow. There's
Speaker 1: another radio program with the remember the skeptic professor rains.
Speaker 1: He comes back. He's like, look, I was wrong. The
Speaker 1: devil bat does exist, and it is the last of
Speaker 1: its kind, a giant bat from the Neolithic Age, which
Speaker 1: he explains is another word for the Stone Age. Thank you, professor.
Speaker 3: Of course, we know this is not true. We know
Speaker 3: that this bat is not an ancient creature. It is
Speaker 3: newly cooked up in Lagosi's microwave.
Speaker 1: How but he's the foremost authority on animals.
Speaker 3: Well yeah, I mean, maybe he recognizes the process that's
Speaker 3: going on, but he doesn't understand the technology involved.
Speaker 1: Shows how much you know, professor, get out of your
Speaker 1: ivory tower. You don't even know about Bella Legosi's bat microwave.
Speaker 1: So Bella has to cook up another bat from the freezer,
Speaker 1: which he does. He he like, gets it out and
Speaker 1: he cooks it with the electricity, and then he goes
Speaker 1: and checks the bat with the stethoscope and he's smiling.
Speaker 1: He says, splendid, you will be even greater than your
Speaker 1: unfortunate predecessor, and then the bat screams in stock footage
Speaker 1: and he's like, enraged, aren't you fine? I'm enraged also
Speaker 1: tonight I shall call on Henry Morton and you shall
Speaker 1: strike him down. So we get another scene, another one
Speaker 1: of these classic scenes of Bella convincing somebody to put
Speaker 1: the lotion on their skin. He goes to the offices
Speaker 1: of Heath Cosmetics where he's showing everything to Morton, the
Speaker 1: big boss, and he's like, you know, my lotion's so good,
Speaker 1: try it out, and Morton says, no, I'll try it
Speaker 1: tomorrow after I shave, you know, because it's after shave.
Speaker 1: He says, quote, then my skin will be more tender
Speaker 1: and receptive to the lotion, and Legosi is like, eh,
Speaker 1: why not try it now? See you can put it
Speaker 1: right over the jugular vein, where the skin is always
Speaker 1: tender and receptive to a lotion. Once again, comments about
Speaker 1: is it too strong? He's like, no, no, no, it'll
Speaker 1: evaporate quickly. So he sort of bullies Morton into putting
Speaker 1: the lotion on his throat. Then Morton starts gloating about
Speaker 1: how all of the doctor's formulas have been highly successful
Speaker 1: and it was quite foolish of him to take cash
Speaker 1: for his work instead of a cut of the profits.
Speaker 1: Otherwise he would be he would be a rich man now,
Speaker 1: So you're not feeling that bad for Morton's just being
Speaker 1: a jerk here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, he is. He absolutely is, though he does
Speaker 3: seem a bit oblivious too, like so he's not I
Speaker 3: don't know, it's a weird mix of him being kind
Speaker 3: of like accidentally jerky and still a bit maliciously jerky.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, you're right. He's like, huh, isn't it funny?
Speaker 1: You're the one that did the work, but I got
Speaker 1: rich and that that's funny, isn't it.
Speaker 3: Yeah? And then and he continues here as Legosi keeps
Speaker 3: making even more like cutting and suggestive comments that imply
Speaker 3: that he has been murdering people with bats.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right. So he's like, you know, you've had
Speaker 1: a lot of fun in your laboratory with your experiments,
Speaker 1: dreaming up something new. You're a dreamer, Doc, Money's bad
Speaker 1: for dreamers. And Legosi is just dissecting Morton's brain with
Speaker 1: his eyes, and Legosi tells more tells Morton that his
Speaker 1: feeble intellect cannot begin to comprehend the magnitude of his
Speaker 1: scientific discoveries. Morton's like, what discovery are you talking about?
Speaker 1: And he says when you find out, Henry, it will
Speaker 1: be too late for you anyway, good night. Oh and
Speaker 1: also before he leaves, he mentioned something about having already
Speaker 1: proved his discovery three times. There have been three murders.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and this still doesn't instantly sink in for Morton.
Speaker 1: It takes a minute.
Speaker 3: It takes a minute.
Speaker 1: Morton starts thinking about that, and he's like, huh. So
Speaker 1: he puts in a phone call to Martin Heath and
Speaker 1: he's like, I think I've got a clue to solve
Speaker 1: the murders. He says, if half of what I suspect
Speaker 1: is true. It's the most diabolical plot then a madman
Speaker 1: ever concocted. So they're both out driving on a dark
Speaker 1: road and Legosi leaves first, and he's also going to
Speaker 1: moreton Hates house. But Lugosi gets there before Morton and
Speaker 1: he parks. He opens the trunk of his car and
Speaker 1: a bat just screams and flies out of the trunk.
Speaker 1: And so, of course, right right after this, Morton arrives.
Speaker 1: But the bat it gets him. It devil bats him.
Speaker 1: Now in this case, a bunch of the guys in
Speaker 1: the house like they don't I think they don't see
Speaker 1: the bat, but they see Morton like he's banging on
Speaker 1: the door screaming for help, and they go and open
Speaker 1: the door and he just like collapses into the foyer dead. Uh,
Speaker 1: And you know they're like, oh, whoop's another one. So
Speaker 1: we see a newspaper headline again call and it's Devil
Speaker 1: Bat's mate kills Henry Morton. Yeah, I don't know, how
Speaker 1: do they know it's his mate?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I feel like that that headline. The editor was
Speaker 3: playing it up a little bit, like let's get a
Speaker 3: love angle in here between the bats.
Speaker 1: Bride of Devil Bat.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that was probably one of the candidates.
Speaker 1: Oh and while it's showing us all the headlines this
Speaker 1: time this has happened before. It's like superimposing the shots
Speaker 1: of the newspaper with that footage of like close up
Speaker 1: footage of a bat face. So who's the next victim
Speaker 1: going to be? Well, we see a silhouette of Bella
Speaker 1: Lagosi wearing a hat in the dark room with the
Speaker 1: bottle of his formula and he's surreptitiously adding it to something.
Speaker 1: What could it be? Well, after the scene, we get
Speaker 1: a scene where Leyden Leyton is addressing Martin Heath, Mary
Speaker 1: Legosi and one shot Maguire and he explains, you know,
Speaker 1: he's very glad that mister Heath invited him to come
Speaker 1: live in their home until Devil Bat two is defeated,
Speaker 1: because he's worried about Mary, right, you know, he thinks
Speaker 1: she may be targeted next. It's logical, but Heath hasn't
Speaker 1: quite caught on yet. He's like, why would you think that?
Speaker 1: And Leydon explains, well, the other victims were members of
Speaker 1: the Morton and Heath families. Therefore, he concludes that someone
Speaker 1: is using the bat to wipe out these two families. Legosi,
Speaker 1: of course, claims this is preposterous. He says the thought
Speaker 1: of a human controlling a bat is fantastical, and as
Speaker 1: a counterexample, he points out that even one shot McGuire
Speaker 1: was attacked by a bat, and he's not a heather
Speaker 1: A Morton, so that's a good point. But one shot
Speaker 1: McGuire argues, Now, wait a second, I'm basically a member
Speaker 1: of this family because I am definitely going to get
Speaker 1: married to the French maid.
Speaker 3: Oh well, yeah, that works out.
Speaker 1: So they all say they're good nights, and then Lugosi
Speaker 1: once again does it instance you know, Mary says good
Speaker 1: night to him and he says goodbye Mary. So later
Speaker 1: we see Mary getting ready for bed. She wonders if
Speaker 1: Maxine has filled her perfume bottles with something new, because
Speaker 1: there is a strong, smelling new fragrance in them. Maxine
Speaker 1: denies it, and Mary concludes that it must have been
Speaker 1: her father, who apparently secretly switcheroose her perfume every time
Speaker 1: his factory produces a new one. That's a bold move. Also,
Speaker 1: she's putting on perfume to go to bed.
Speaker 3: I mean, I don't maybe she skipped a shower, don't.
Speaker 3: I don't really know what the rules here.
Speaker 1: And maybe that was the thing in the fortieth or
Speaker 1: maybe people do that. I don't know what people do
Speaker 1: with perfume. Do people put on perfume to go to bed?
Speaker 1: Maybe they do?
Speaker 3: After this moody though, you'll never put on perfume before
Speaker 3: you go to bed again.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So anyway, so Mary goes to bed and we
Speaker 1: see the bat fly out and what's gonna happen. Of
Speaker 1: course you know it's gonna come to her room, but
Speaker 1: it actually doesn't get in. It like zooms through the night,
Speaker 1: screeching until it reaches Mary's window and then it's just
Speaker 1: there banging against the window and she wakes up alarmed.
Speaker 1: She screams. All the dudes come running and Mary survives
Speaker 1: the night. But the next morning there's an investigation what
Speaker 1: could have happened, and they discover the perfume switch. So Leyden,
Speaker 1: he's finally putting all the pieces together here. He thinks
Speaker 1: he's figured out the case, and he comes up with
Speaker 1: a plan. He's like, Okay, we're gonna lie to Carrothers
Speaker 1: and make him think that Mary was injured or perhaps
Speaker 1: driven insane by the bat, and then we're going to
Speaker 1: trick him into coming over to the house and then
Speaker 1: stall him here for time. Meanwhile, Leyden's gonna run around
Speaker 1: and do what he calls a little private bat hunting.
Speaker 1: What this really means is he's going up to Carruther's
Speaker 1: lab to snoop around. He does that, and he finds
Speaker 1: the secret passageway and goes into the bat dungeon.
Speaker 3: All right, so now all is becoming revealed.
Speaker 1: But the others don't do a great job at their
Speaker 1: part of this plan. So like they're trying to stall
Speaker 1: corre others at the house and he's trying to leave
Speaker 1: if he needs to get back to his lab, and
Speaker 1: one shot Maguire is like, I don't feel so good.
Speaker 1: You ought to see my tongue. It looks like a
Speaker 1: squirrel's tail. But Carrothers just advises him to take a
Speaker 1: mercury compound. And so Carrothers goes back to the lab.
Speaker 1: There's some cat and mouse there with Leyden sneaking around
Speaker 1: while Carrothers is, you know, doing things, and Leyden witnesses
Speaker 1: corro Others talking to his bats. So there's no going
Speaker 1: back now. He knows what's up. I think he's going
Speaker 1: to let them out for the night, because if you
Speaker 1: interpreted this the same way, Rob, I think he thinks
Speaker 1: the jig is up and he doesn't want the bats around.
Speaker 1: If somebody comes snooping.
Speaker 3: Let him go, like flush the bats down the toe.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. And so Leyden sneaks around around the house,
Speaker 1: knocks on the front door, and he asks for some
Speaker 1: of the shaving lotion. He says he thinks that if
Speaker 1: he douses himself in it, it might attract the killer
Speaker 1: Legosi plays dumb, but you know, gives him the bottle anyway,
Speaker 1: and Leyden dabs some around his throat and he really
Speaker 1: gets it up in there, and he explains his plan
Speaker 1: is to go sit in the garden and quote, when
Speaker 1: the killer bat does one of its power dives, I'll
Speaker 1: blast it, which is what he did last time. So
Speaker 1: I guess he's planning to do this again. Maybe he's
Speaker 1: hoping there are only two bats total. And so Carruthers
Speaker 1: agrees to come along and watch this experiment. So they
Speaker 1: have a little tense conversation in the garden at night.
Speaker 1: They're a little apprehensive, or at least corrothers is. They
Speaker 1: trade some comments with heavy implication that maybe they understand
Speaker 1: one another's motives. And then suddenly, at one point in
Speaker 1: the conversation, Leyden just like tosses a bunch of the
Speaker 1: shaving low on her others and then reveals that he
Speaker 1: knows the whole plot. And so at first Carruthers seems
Speaker 1: weirdly kind of gloomy. He just kind of accepts his fate,
Speaker 1: but then tries to make a break for it, Like
Speaker 1: he tries to grab and wrestle the gun from Leyden,
Speaker 1: but the devil Bat appears and everybody scatters.
Speaker 3: Right right, And you know what's going to happen next?
Speaker 3: What is the come uppance of any mad scientist that
Speaker 3: creates monsters? Oh?
Speaker 1: Of course foiled by his own monster. Yeah, not foiled,
Speaker 1: so Corruthers, Well, first he tries to trick Mary into
Speaker 1: coming back to his lab, but he doesn't make it.
Speaker 1: He gets he gets devil Bat dive bombed in the
Speaker 1: garden on the way there, and so then Leyden comes
Speaker 1: and has to explain to Mary. I laughed out loud
Speaker 1: at this part where he's like the devil Bat belonged
Speaker 1: to him, Mary, He committed those murders, and then Mary
Speaker 1: just lays her head on Leyden's shoulder and then it's
Speaker 1: the end. Title the end.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're like, check on the doctor, and they're like,
Speaker 3: I don't think the doc made. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I love the abruptness with which these older movies end
Speaker 1: is just the bad guy dies, the leading lady like
Speaker 1: kisses or layser head on the shoulder of the leading man,
Speaker 1: and then you get title card, the end, all within
Speaker 1: twenty seconds.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, it's been over an hour. People need
Speaker 3: to get home from the theater and or they need
Speaker 3: to watch the next movie that's playing immediately after this one.
Speaker 3: But I think All Things Considered is a pretty good
Speaker 3: final showdown, like with the back and forth between the
Speaker 3: hero and the villain in sometimes they're even more by
Speaker 3: the books than this just We definitely watched some of
Speaker 3: those and talked about them on Weird House Cinema, where
Speaker 3: it's like bad guy gets makes a break for it
Speaker 3: and is shot by the police, Monster is shot by
Speaker 3: the police, Monster is killed.
Speaker 1: By the military.
Speaker 3: Arrives Clint Eastwood is in a jet plane.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. Tarantula.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so this one is a little more thought out
Speaker 3: than that a little less by the numbers, but then
Speaker 3: it does have that classic abrupt thirties and forties ending,
Speaker 3: which yeah, I mean it cleans it up nicely. It's
Speaker 3: just like bam, that's it.
Speaker 1: Nothing could destroy the monster except the power of explosives.
Speaker 3: And it's just so ridiculous that, granted years later, someone
Speaker 3: would say, I got an idea for a sequel to
Speaker 3: this picture. What if he didn't do those murders. The
Speaker 3: whole movie was about him doing the murders. It's not
Speaker 3: in question.
Speaker 1: I've almost got to watch that now.
Speaker 3: Oh, I don't know. It might maybe it's fun. I
Speaker 3: don't know. I haven't seen it. But it doesn't have legosy.
Speaker 1: Oh it's called Devil Bat's Daughter, that's what it.
Speaker 3: Is, which is weird because she's she's not the daughter
Speaker 3: of the Devil Bat, she's Corrother's daughter.
Speaker 1: But you know, yeah, the poster makes it look like
Speaker 1: a Western.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know. It's supposedly, yeah, less of a
Speaker 3: horror film. And it has Miss America from nineteen forty
Speaker 3: one in it, so oh it's got that going for it. Okay,
Speaker 3: all right, so there you have it. Devil Bat, The
Speaker 3: Devil Bat sorry, except no substitutes. Yeah, this is a
Speaker 3: it's it's a surprisingly fun watch. Flick moved right along,
Speaker 3: had some fun performances in it.
Speaker 1: I feel like we really shouldn't stop here. We should
Speaker 1: just keep going with killer bat movies and find them,
Speaker 1: rank them, discuss what they have in common, the themes they address.
Speaker 1: To what extent was Devil Bat really about the bats?
Speaker 1: And to what extent was it really about pride and lotion?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I think it essentially is about pride and lotion,
Speaker 3: much like Breaking Bad. His Breaking Bad is not really
Speaker 3: about the meth, it's about other things. But undeniably a
Speaker 3: giant bat movie. So yeah, I'd be interesting to look
Speaker 3: and see what all we have to consider in terms
Speaker 3: of other giant bad films, aside from the ones we
Speaker 3: already mentioned, like Life Force and possibly Friday Night.
Speaker 1: Oh what do you know? The British Film Institute website
Speaker 1: has a list of ten great bat films.
Speaker 3: Oh excellent, just straight up bat films, not like bad
Speaker 3: human hybrids, because that's a kind of another subgenre which
Speaker 3: I can think of at least one really good example there.
Speaker 1: But oh, one of the examples is Abominable Doctor Fibes
Speaker 1: because remember one of the guys gets attacked by bats.
Speaker 3: Oh that's right. Yeah. I mean, if you have vampires
Speaker 3: in your film, there's a very good chance you can
Speaker 3: have bats. There's a good chance is going to turn
Speaker 3: into a bat or bats, and uh yeah, I'm here
Speaker 3: for it.
Speaker 1: All right. I think that does it for this one.
Speaker 3: All right, we'll go ahead and close it out. But
Speaker 3: just a reminder that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is
Speaker 3: primarily a science and culture podcast. Core episodes on Tuesdays
Speaker 3: and Thursdays, but on Fridays we set aside most serious
Speaker 3: concerns to just talk about a weird film on Weird
Speaker 3: House Cinema. If you want to see a list of
Speaker 3: all the episodes we've done over the years, look us
Speaker 3: up on the letterbox dot com. That's l E T
Speaker 3: T E R bo x D dot com. Our profile
Speaker 3: is weird House and we got a list right there.
Speaker 3: You can look at it, look at all the fun
Speaker 3: you know, box arts and poster arts. You can arrange
Speaker 3: things by decade and see what we've gotten into, what
Speaker 3: we haven't gotten into. Right in with your suggestions, because
Speaker 3: we always want to hear what kind of films you'd
Speaker 3: like us to talk about. And we also want your
Speaker 3: feedback on the films that we've discussed. If you have
Speaker 3: a hit true with the Devil bat If, so let
Speaker 3: us know about it.
Speaker 1: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
Speaker 1: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 1: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 1: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 1: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind dot com.
Speaker 2: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
Speaker 2: more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.