WEBVTT - Weirdhouse Cinema Rewind: The Devil Bat 0:00:04.440 --> 0:00:08.159 Hello, Welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind. My name is 0:00:08.240 --> 0:00:11.320 Joe McCormick. Today we're bringing you an older episode of 0:00:11.360 --> 0:00:15.800 Weird House Cinema. This one originally published on July twelfth, 0:00:15.840 --> 0:00:19.239 twenty twenty four, and it is our feature on The 0:00:19.280 --> 0:00:24.079 Devil Bat from nineteen forty, starring Bella Lagosi. So let's 0:00:24.160 --> 0:00:24.760 jump right in. 0:00:28.360 --> 0:00:35.000 Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:38.479 --> 0:00:41.960 Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb. 0:00:41.960 --> 0:00:44.960 And I am Joe McCormick. And today on Weird House 0:00:44.960 --> 0:00:47.800 Cinema we are going to be talking about the nineteen 0:00:47.960 --> 0:00:52.839 forty horror thriller The Devil Bat starring Bella Lagosi and 0:00:52.920 --> 0:00:57.000 Suzanne Karen, a movie where the one sentence plot Summarie 0:00:57.080 --> 0:01:00.880 not only includes the phrase giant mutant bat, but also 0:01:00.920 --> 0:01:01.720 the word lotion. 0:01:02.360 --> 0:01:06.160 Yeah that's right. Yeah. In this episode, we're returning once 0:01:06.200 --> 0:01:10.080 more to the nineteen forties. This is only our third 0:01:10.200 --> 0:01:13.160 forties picture on Weird House with and the first in 0:01:13.200 --> 0:01:16.440 a long time, following nineteen forties Doctor Cyclops and nineteen 0:01:16.480 --> 0:01:19.640 forty six is The Beast with Five Fingers. So I 0:01:19.680 --> 0:01:22.480 am excited to return to one of our least explored 0:01:22.480 --> 0:01:25.160 decades on the show, like this, the thirties and the twenties, 0:01:25.160 --> 0:01:26.280 we just haven't hit as much. 0:01:26.560 --> 0:01:28.679 Yes, though, you know, some of our the sci fi 0:01:28.760 --> 0:01:32.160 movies we've done from like the thirties and the forties 0:01:32.280 --> 0:01:36.640 have been some of my favorites. Actually. Oh, I actually 0:01:36.720 --> 0:01:39.880 in fact came to the idea of doing Devil Bat 0:01:39.880 --> 0:01:44.120 this week by looking specifically for movies that are similar 0:01:44.160 --> 0:01:47.320 to the Beast with Five Fingers starring Peter Lourie, which 0:01:47.440 --> 0:01:50.400 I loved, and I was thinking, ooh, I want something 0:01:50.440 --> 0:01:53.120 in that zone, and this is what I turned up, 0:01:53.440 --> 0:01:56.200 And I think it's close. Beast with Five Fingers I 0:01:56.200 --> 0:02:01.080 think was a little more, you know, higher budget, a 0:02:01.120 --> 0:02:03.800 little more elaborate, had a little bit more class, but 0:02:04.000 --> 0:02:06.160 ultimately on I think the same frequency. 0:02:06.520 --> 0:02:08.799 Yeah, it had more of a gothic flare. This one 0:02:08.880 --> 0:02:11.800 is more Middle America meets mutant bats. 0:02:12.160 --> 0:02:15.680 Yeah. And while I would say that the plot of 0:02:15.760 --> 0:02:19.639 this movie is quite formulaic, like there is a pattern 0:02:19.720 --> 0:02:22.919 that's established with how each of the Bat murders takes 0:02:22.919 --> 0:02:25.120 place that just sort of repeats and is the same 0:02:25.120 --> 0:02:27.480 way each time. It's almost like the setup to a joke, 0:02:27.560 --> 0:02:30.040 you know where it's just like there's a very formulaic 0:02:30.080 --> 0:02:33.800 repetition until the inversion. It's like that, and yet at 0:02:33.840 --> 0:02:36.400 the same time, the script isn't actually half bad. I 0:02:36.400 --> 0:02:39.800 think there is more kind of character and flare in 0:02:39.840 --> 0:02:42.600 it than you would get for a lot of similar 0:02:42.639 --> 0:02:45.560 movies from this time period. I'll also say for a 0:02:45.560 --> 0:02:49.000 horror movie from nineteen forty, I found Devil Bat to 0:02:49.080 --> 0:02:53.480 have a surprisingly lively pace after the first ten minutes 0:02:53.600 --> 0:02:56.600 or so, that is the opening scene. I don't know 0:02:56.639 --> 0:02:58.840 if you felt the same way. Rob opening scene is 0:02:58.919 --> 0:03:02.040 almost comically dull. It's like they thought, you know what 0:03:02.040 --> 0:03:05.400 people want to see, Bela Lugosi looking through a pane 0:03:05.440 --> 0:03:08.639 of glass for like three minutes straight while he microwaves 0:03:08.680 --> 0:03:09.079 a bat. 0:03:09.320 --> 0:03:12.480 Yeah. Yeah, there are a lot of scenes of Bello 0:03:12.560 --> 0:03:15.480 Lugosi microwaving bats in this film, and you just need 0:03:15.520 --> 0:03:18.320 to be on board for that. But but then again, 0:03:18.800 --> 0:03:21.000 it's Bela Lgosi, And if you have to ask, you 0:03:21.000 --> 0:03:24.120 have to watch any actor do these scenes, it might 0:03:24.160 --> 0:03:26.680 as well be Bella because at least, uh you know, 0:03:26.720 --> 0:03:28.960 he had you know, even at this point point in 0:03:28.960 --> 0:03:30.720 his career, uh you know, he still had a lot 0:03:30.720 --> 0:03:32.840 of energy, a lot of charisma, and you see that 0:03:32.919 --> 0:03:35.040 in a film like this, where he's working alongside a 0:03:35.040 --> 0:03:38.320 lot of very solid professional actors of the time period. 0:03:38.400 --> 0:03:40.640 This is not this is a low budget picture, but 0:03:40.680 --> 0:03:43.320 it's not like a zero talent picture. This is not 0:03:43.440 --> 0:03:46.760 the ed Woods end of the spectrum for Bello's career. 0:03:47.440 --> 0:03:50.520 But even with all these other, like very perfectly perfectly 0:03:50.560 --> 0:03:53.360 good and sometimes kind of great performances around him, he 0:03:53.440 --> 0:03:55.320 still shines and you still see that in him. 0:03:55.640 --> 0:03:58.600 I totally agree, Yeah, Bella Bella is the star. There's 0:03:58.680 --> 0:04:01.800 no question about that. Which is it's always a good 0:04:01.840 --> 0:04:04.960 move to make the villain the real star of the movie. 0:04:05.720 --> 0:04:07.839 I like that choice here, and I think it works out. 0:04:07.880 --> 0:04:09.800 But also, as I was saying, I think even with 0:04:09.880 --> 0:04:13.680 the more mundane characters and the more mundane scenes, I 0:04:13.720 --> 0:04:16.320 think it's pretty lively, Like the pace really picks up 0:04:16.360 --> 0:04:20.599 once we meet the journalist character, and there's a good 0:04:20.640 --> 0:04:23.400 bit of snap and personality to the dialogue. 0:04:23.560 --> 0:04:27.559 Absolutely, it doesn't have the at times dull plotting pace 0:04:27.640 --> 0:04:31.400 that you encounter in genre pictures from these decades. So 0:04:31.560 --> 0:04:33.080 of course I had to look up this one in 0:04:33.160 --> 0:04:37.719 the Psychotronic Encyclopedia film and Michael Weldon, the reviewer, the 0:04:37.720 --> 0:04:40.440 author there. Look him up if you're not familiar with him. 0:04:40.440 --> 0:04:43.000 If you love weird films, you'd love the work of 0:04:43.040 --> 0:04:46.280 Michael Weldon. He points out that this was a Producer's 0:04:46.360 --> 0:04:50.800 Releasing Corporation or PRC film, and PRC was the quote 0:04:50.839 --> 0:04:53.680 cheapest studio in the business, bottom of the ranking of 0:04:53.720 --> 0:04:56.680 the eleven Hollywood film companies active in the nineteen forties. 0:04:57.560 --> 0:04:59.719 They only lasted from like nineteen thirty nine to nineteen 0:04:59.720 --> 0:05:02.599 forties seven, and The Devil Bat was their very first 0:05:02.680 --> 0:05:06.280 horror film. It was also a success, so they followed 0:05:06.279 --> 0:05:09.560 it up in forty six with what Welden refers to 0:05:09.600 --> 0:05:12.880 as a cheat sequel, which does certainly sound like a 0:05:12.960 --> 0:05:16.120 cheat because it concerns the daughter of Bela Lugosi's character, 0:05:17.160 --> 0:05:19.400 while also, yeah, it's his daughter. 0:05:19.760 --> 0:05:22.160 Can't recall him having one in this movie. 0:05:21.839 --> 0:05:24.200 I know, so he has one now, so introducing the 0:05:24.320 --> 0:05:28.640 unknown daughter and then completely exonerating his character for all 0:05:28.680 --> 0:05:31.280 of his actions in the first film and blaming them 0:05:31.320 --> 0:05:35.000 on a new villain. This is a picture no spoilers. 0:05:35.000 --> 0:05:37.359 This is a picture where there's never any doubt that 0:05:37.480 --> 0:05:41.680 Belo Lagosa is murder is plotting to murder people with 0:05:42.000 --> 0:05:45.080 mutant bats and doing it, and there's scenes with internal 0:05:45.160 --> 0:05:46.479 dialogue about it. 0:05:46.839 --> 0:05:50.039 Yeah. In fact, I would almost say, if there were 0:05:50.080 --> 0:05:53.880 any criticism I would make of the plot in this movie, 0:05:53.920 --> 0:05:56.600 the first one I would probably make is that the 0:05:57.560 --> 0:06:00.159 good characters are trying to solve a mystery, but you 0:06:00.200 --> 0:06:02.200 know the answer to the mystery the whole time. You 0:06:02.279 --> 0:06:05.000 know the answer before they even start investigating. So there's 0:06:05.000 --> 0:06:08.480 no tension for the audience in resolving the mystery, except 0:06:08.600 --> 0:06:11.080 like wanting to see what happens when Belly gets caught. 0:06:11.320 --> 0:06:13.919 But there's no ambiguity. Yes, he's sending the bats. We 0:06:14.000 --> 0:06:16.440 know he's sending the bats. We watched him make the bats. 0:06:16.600 --> 0:06:19.200 Yeah. Yeah, you completely derail everything about the first movie. 0:06:19.440 --> 0:06:22.719 So so yeah, it's not supposed to be that great. 0:06:23.000 --> 0:06:24.960 It's supposed to be more of a psychological thriller and 0:06:25.040 --> 0:06:27.039 less of a horror film. And I'm not even sure 0:06:27.040 --> 0:06:28.000 there are any bats in it. 0:06:28.120 --> 0:06:31.840 But what we're not talking about that don't have bats? 0:06:32.040 --> 0:06:34.720 I know, I know, but anyway, we're not talking about 0:06:34.720 --> 0:06:38.080 Devil Bat two or the bat daughter of Bat Devil. 0:06:38.240 --> 0:06:41.480 I forget what it's called now. But Weldon certainly liked 0:06:41.480 --> 0:06:43.760 this one. He thought this one was pretty lively, And 0:06:43.839 --> 0:06:45.800 I have to say, given the low budget nature of 0:06:45.839 --> 0:06:48.640 the picture, I have to say, uh yeah, the pace 0:06:48.720 --> 0:06:51.880 is great and the bad action looks I thought surprisingly good. 0:06:51.880 --> 0:06:53.520 I know we're going to maybe disagree a little bit 0:06:53.520 --> 0:06:56.040 on the special effects in this film, but I went 0:06:56.080 --> 0:06:59.720 into it with very little expectations from us flapping bats. 0:07:00.440 --> 0:07:04.040 I love any bad effects in a film, from bad 0:07:04.040 --> 0:07:07.039 puppets to great puppets, from bad CGI to just you know, 0:07:07.720 --> 0:07:11.120 mind bending CGI. I'll take any of it. And so 0:07:11.240 --> 0:07:14.120 I was expecting everything to be a lot more flippity 0:07:14.120 --> 0:07:17.880 and floppity, and I was pleasantly surprised that it was 0:07:17.920 --> 0:07:18.960 more believable than that. 0:07:19.280 --> 0:07:22.440 It is better than the batpuppet in Suspiria. But that's 0:07:22.520 --> 0:07:23.240 not a high bar. 0:07:24.320 --> 0:07:26.400 The bar is love for this sort of thing. I wouldn't. 0:07:27.600 --> 0:07:31.000 But yeah, what will I say. I don't think it 0:07:31.120 --> 0:07:36.400 looks great. I don't think it looks realistic, but it 0:07:36.400 --> 0:07:38.600 it's fun. You know they staged the scenes. 0:07:38.640 --> 0:07:41.480 Well, yeah, all right, I have an elevator pitch for 0:07:41.560 --> 0:07:43.720 this one. I think it'll make sense once we get 0:07:43.720 --> 0:07:46.920 into the plot, but it's breaking bad except with bats 0:07:46.920 --> 0:07:47.680 in aftershave. 0:07:48.720 --> 0:07:52.040 Yeah, that's right. Yeah, it's if Walter White, instead of 0:07:52.200 --> 0:07:54.560 making methamphetamine was making bats. 0:07:54.800 --> 0:07:56.520 Yeah, because you have a so you do have a 0:07:56.560 --> 0:07:59.680 similar plot with him, like like he was this brilliant 0:07:59.680 --> 0:08:03.920 innovation who kind of got jerked around by the moneymen 0:08:05.040 --> 0:08:08.360 and has a lot of personal pride and his scientific powers. 0:08:09.240 --> 0:08:12.280 But again, no meth just bats and after shaft. 0:08:12.760 --> 0:08:15.160 Yeah, I think a great villain they always need one, 0:08:15.360 --> 0:08:19.200 like characteristic sin of your seven deadlys, and in both cases, 0:08:19.240 --> 0:08:20.400 the sin here is pride. 0:08:20.760 --> 0:08:23.280 Yes, all right, let's go ahead and listen to at 0:08:23.360 --> 0:08:25.320 least some of the trailer audio here. I think this 0:08:25.360 --> 0:08:27.680 one gives you some of the snappy dialogue as well. 0:08:42.040 --> 0:08:44.040 When an animal attacks a human, there's bound to be 0:08:44.080 --> 0:08:44.720 a lot of noise. 0:08:44.960 --> 0:08:47.959 I die of the scientist. They many things into consideration. 0:08:48.280 --> 0:08:50.000 A layman my overlook. 0:08:50.200 --> 0:08:53.200 Ever smelled anything like this before. Found it in Don 0:08:53.200 --> 0:08:57.000 Martin's bathroom. Yes, that's the same stuff that's been on 0:08:57.040 --> 0:08:59.439 every one of the Devil bats victims. All four of 0:08:59.480 --> 0:09:01.400 the murdered people had this lotion on them when the 0:09:01.400 --> 0:09:04.760 Devil Bat struck Late And I'm afraid all these murders 0:09:04.760 --> 0:09:08.360 have affected you my Now, my plan is to sit 0:09:08.440 --> 0:09:10.160 in the garden and when the killer makes one of 0:09:10.160 --> 0:09:12.600 those power dives, I'm blasting. 0:09:25.880 --> 0:09:28.199 All right now. At this point, you may be wondering, 0:09:28.320 --> 0:09:32.000 where can I see the devil bat? This one apparently 0:09:32.080 --> 0:09:35.120 entered into the public domain a while ago, which may 0:09:35.200 --> 0:09:38.160 sound good at first, but this isn't necessarily a good thing, because, well, 0:09:38.200 --> 0:09:40.280 it means you can easily find a film like this 0:09:40.679 --> 0:09:43.640 in various streaming and physical formats. Not all of them 0:09:43.679 --> 0:09:46.240 are going to be worth your time. The best source 0:09:46.280 --> 0:09:48.280 that I'm aware of for the film is the twenty 0:09:48.360 --> 0:09:51.280 thirteen Kinoclassics disc. You can get it on DVD or 0:09:51.280 --> 0:09:55.120 Blu Ray mastered in HD from archival film Elements, and 0:09:55.160 --> 0:09:58.040 that one also features audio commentary by film historian Richard 0:09:58.040 --> 0:10:02.000 Harlan Smith. They had every intention of viewing it in 0:10:02.080 --> 0:10:05.520 this format. They have this disc at Atlanta's own video Drome, 0:10:05.920 --> 0:10:08.080 but then my week got super busy. I wasn't able 0:10:08.080 --> 0:10:10.040 to make it over there and rent it, so I 0:10:10.120 --> 0:10:12.079 had had to find a stream instead. I found a 0:10:12.080 --> 0:10:14.160 pretty solid stream of it, but I am going to 0:10:14.200 --> 0:10:16.559 rent the disc at some point. From the drone and 0:10:16.679 --> 0:10:19.920 maybe dive in a little deeper, you know, little forward 0:10:19.920 --> 0:10:23.679 facing research for forthcoming Bell Legosi Pictures. 0:10:23.840 --> 0:10:26.840 I do want to see a higher resolution version than 0:10:26.880 --> 0:10:29.160 I saw of the flat bats, the flat bats on 0:10:29.200 --> 0:10:29.960 the coat hangers. 0:10:30.200 --> 0:10:33.360 Yes, all right, let's get into the people who made 0:10:33.400 --> 0:10:36.199 this film. Starting in the director's chair as usual, it's 0:10:36.280 --> 0:10:40.439 gene Yarborough, who lived nineteen hundred through nineteen seventy five, 0:10:40.960 --> 0:10:43.480 American producer and director who worked his way out. This 0:10:43.520 --> 0:10:46.400 is one of those crazy Hollywood stories, a guy who 0:10:46.400 --> 0:10:49.120 worked his way up from being a chauffeur for like 0:10:49.160 --> 0:10:52.480 a producer his too, all the way up to being 0:10:52.520 --> 0:10:57.319 a director. His directorial duties began in RCO's short subjects division, 0:10:57.360 --> 0:11:00.720 so doing a lot of shorts for RKO beginning back 0:11:00.760 --> 0:11:02.920 in nineteen thirty six, and then he went on to 0:11:02.920 --> 0:11:06.280 direct his first full feature for the Poverty Row Studio 0:11:06.400 --> 0:11:08.760 this is the term for like the lower budget Hollywood 0:11:08.800 --> 0:11:13.680 studios Progressive Pictures in nineteen thirty eight, Who's called Rebellious Daughters. 0:11:14.080 --> 0:11:15.120 Oh boy. 0:11:15.360 --> 0:11:17.560 The head of that studio would then go on to 0:11:17.679 --> 0:11:21.880 found PRC, the studio behind this picture. So he did 0:11:21.880 --> 0:11:25.480 this film in nineteen forty followed by I believe a 0:11:25.520 --> 0:11:28.120 few different PRC films, Caught in the Act and South 0:11:28.120 --> 0:11:30.720 of Panama in forty one, and The Brute Man in 0:11:30.800 --> 0:11:34.240 forty six. That one starred Rondo Hatton. You know the 0:11:35.080 --> 0:11:36.640 If you've ever seen a picture of him, you know 0:11:36.679 --> 0:11:40.040 a very very famous character actor with an extremely unique look. 0:11:40.400 --> 0:11:43.480 And even if you haven't seen a Rondo picture, you 0:11:43.520 --> 0:11:47.080 may have seen The Rocketeer, which features a henchman character 0:11:47.520 --> 0:11:52.680 who is modeled via special makeup effects to look like 0:11:52.800 --> 0:11:59.080 a Rondeau character. Okay, yeah so. Yarborough also directed for 0:11:59.160 --> 0:12:01.400 other studios during the time, and moved on to work 0:12:01.440 --> 0:12:04.440 for Monogram Pictures, which became Allied Artists in fifty three, 0:12:04.840 --> 0:12:08.800 and ultimately Universal Pictures, where he directed the nineteen forty 0:12:08.800 --> 0:12:11.720 six Rondo film House of Horrors and some of the 0:12:11.800 --> 0:12:15.760 lesser known but still quite successful Abbit and Costello movies, 0:12:15.800 --> 0:12:18.880 as well as multiple episodes of TVs. The Abbot and 0:12:18.920 --> 0:12:21.679 Costello Show, which ran fifty two through fifty four. I 0:12:21.679 --> 0:12:23.400 don't know about you, Joe, but I often forget that 0:12:23.440 --> 0:12:25.840 there are all these abb and Costello movies. There's something 0:12:25.880 --> 0:12:29.439 like thirty seven of them, though I'm mostly familiar with it. 0:12:29.480 --> 0:12:31.200 Imagine a lot of you are only familiar with the 0:12:31.200 --> 0:12:33.040 ones that have monsters in the title, like you know, 0:12:33.080 --> 0:12:36.160 Abit and Costello meet Frankenstein or whatever. He did not 0:12:36.240 --> 0:12:39.400 direct any of those. He directed these various other ones 0:12:39.400 --> 0:12:42.560 that don't even necessarily mention Abbot and Costello in the title. 0:12:42.800 --> 0:12:44.880 I've actually never seen any of those, but I know 0:12:44.920 --> 0:12:46.840 some of the core ones where they meet I don't know, 0:12:46.880 --> 0:12:50.440 Dracula or Frankenstein. Whatever the main universal crossover ones are 0:12:50.600 --> 0:12:52.120 are supposed to be pretty funny. 0:12:52.400 --> 0:12:54.040 Yeah, I don't know. I don't think I've ever watched 0:12:54.080 --> 0:12:58.240 one myself. So Yarborough cut his teeth on quick and 0:12:58.280 --> 0:13:02.040 low budget film projects. He developed a great reputation and 0:13:02.080 --> 0:13:04.560 skill set for quick turnaround and this made it been 0:13:04.600 --> 0:13:06.640 natural for television. So he just ended up doing more 0:13:06.640 --> 0:13:09.319 and more of that, serving as a director for TV 0:13:09.400 --> 0:13:12.439 until around nineteen seventy one. His last feature film was 0:13:12.520 --> 0:13:15.800 nineteen sixty seven's Hillbilly's in a Haunted House. I believe 0:13:15.800 --> 0:13:19.560 I've seen a riff tracks version of this. It features 0:13:19.640 --> 0:13:24.240 John Carrodine, Lon Cheney Jr. Basil Rathbone, and Merle Haggard. 0:13:24.360 --> 0:13:25.760 Merle Haggard, well. 0:13:25.679 --> 0:13:27.600 Yeah, it is Hillbilly's in a Haunted House. I think, 0:13:27.640 --> 0:13:31.520 if memory serves, it's like a Nashville country act, you know, 0:13:32.120 --> 0:13:36.400 contemporary to the time, encountering creepy characters in a haunted house. 0:13:36.440 --> 0:13:38.959 I don't recall it being very good, but I remember 0:13:39.000 --> 0:13:39.880 there being some laughs. 0:13:40.400 --> 0:13:43.439 Mama tried to make me not a hillbillyon a haunted. 0:13:43.160 --> 0:13:47.559 House, but it failed. Now the screenplay here is by 0:13:47.600 --> 0:13:50.400 John T. Neville, who lived eighteen eighty six through nineteen 0:13:50.480 --> 0:13:54.640 seventy American screenwriter with credits going back to nineteen twenty seven. 0:13:54.679 --> 0:13:57.000 He worked on a lot of westerns and adventure films, 0:13:57.000 --> 0:13:59.160 with some crime and sports thrown in there. There's like 0:13:59.200 --> 0:14:04.400 a boxing film called The Heart Punch, I think. But however, 0:14:04.559 --> 0:14:07.160 this in nineteen forty six is The Flying Serpent. Seems 0:14:07.160 --> 0:14:09.319 to be. They seem to be the only horror films 0:14:09.320 --> 0:14:11.840 that he worked on, and The Flying Serpent is said 0:14:11.840 --> 0:14:14.200 to be very similar in plot to The Devil Bat, 0:14:14.480 --> 0:14:18.080 but with some sort of giant Meso American flying serpent 0:14:18.520 --> 0:14:22.320 instead of a devil Bat. And I can only assume 0:14:22.320 --> 0:14:24.400 this might have been at least some small influence on 0:14:24.480 --> 0:14:26.440 the much later film Cue The Winged Serpent. 0:14:26.960 --> 0:14:31.000 Ah, okay, you remember. Actually there is a similar plot 0:14:31.040 --> 0:14:34.640 device to make a connection to another director who made 0:14:34.640 --> 0:14:37.600 a name for himself by working fast and cheap, Roger 0:14:37.640 --> 0:14:40.160 Corman's movie Not of This Earth, the one where the 0:14:40.560 --> 0:14:42.960 guy from another planet is trying to send people back, 0:14:43.200 --> 0:14:46.400 trying to steal people's Earth blood because his home planet 0:14:46.400 --> 0:14:49.480 has been contaminated. But he's also got a suitcase that 0:14:49.520 --> 0:14:52.240 sends out this flying bat monster. It's like an alien 0:14:52.320 --> 0:14:54.000 that I guess steals people's blood. 0:14:54.320 --> 0:14:57.120 I like that one. There's a really cheap kind of 0:14:57.200 --> 0:14:59.640 variation on this theme too, and the phantom creeps the 0:15:01.200 --> 0:15:04.440 at times exciting, at times exceedingly dull, Bella Lagosi cereal 0:15:04.840 --> 0:15:06.720 for more or less this same time period, they're like 0:15:06.840 --> 0:15:08.640 robot spiders or something of that effect. 0:15:09.080 --> 0:15:11.280 A couple times recently that's come up. Did you say 0:15:11.280 --> 0:15:14.200 there's a version of that that's like condensed that maybe 0:15:14.200 --> 0:15:15.200 we could watch for the show. 0:15:15.320 --> 0:15:17.600 There is At some point it was cut down from 0:15:17.640 --> 0:15:20.040 like what did I would I say before some way 0:15:20.120 --> 0:15:23.560 too much from an extremely long serial format into a 0:15:23.600 --> 0:15:26.760 condensed film format that probably makes less sense but is 0:15:26.840 --> 0:15:29.920 probably less boring. Okay, all right, so that was the 0:15:29.920 --> 0:15:33.560 screenwriter The original story credit goes to George Bricker eighteen 0:15:33.600 --> 0:15:36.360 ninety eight through nineteen fifty five. Worked from the mid 0:15:36.400 --> 0:15:39.160 thirties to the mid fifties, with his most notable works 0:15:39.200 --> 0:15:41.960 being a pair that pair of nineteen forty six Rondo 0:15:42.040 --> 0:15:45.080 Hattan Films, nineteen forty six is She Wolf of London, 0:15:45.120 --> 0:15:48.080 which was also directed by Yarborough, and nineteen fifty two's 0:15:48.120 --> 0:15:51.920 macau All right, but getting into the cast, Yes, of 0:15:51.960 --> 0:15:54.520 course this is a Bella Lagosi film, and we've talked 0:15:54.520 --> 0:15:58.200 about Bella Lgosi at least briefly before, because we covered 0:15:58.280 --> 0:16:00.320 Plan nine from outer Space, and I think out when 0:16:00.360 --> 0:16:03.200 we said this cannot be the first episode where we 0:16:03.240 --> 0:16:05.520 really talk about Bella, will have to come back to him. 0:16:05.720 --> 0:16:07.400 So I guess this is the episode where we go 0:16:07.480 --> 0:16:09.360 into more detail about Bella Lagosi. 0:16:09.760 --> 0:16:12.760 Okay, because in fact, I think we recently re ran 0:16:12.880 --> 0:16:15.440 Plan nine for matter Swedes, which of course made for 0:16:15.480 --> 0:16:18.200 a really fun weird house episode. But yes, Bella is 0:16:18.280 --> 0:16:21.360 barely in planine and he's only a couple of scenes, 0:16:21.400 --> 0:16:23.240 so I can understand why we said that. So let's 0:16:23.280 --> 0:16:24.040 talk about him now. 0:16:24.120 --> 0:16:27.760 Yeah, that was his last picture and certainly not his 0:16:27.760 --> 0:16:30.440 best picture. This is not his best picture either, but 0:16:30.560 --> 0:16:32.440 I think it's more fitting to talk about him here. 0:16:32.640 --> 0:16:34.360 Yeah, Yeah, this is a good one. 0:16:34.560 --> 0:16:39.000 Yeah, Bell Goosie Here plays doctor Paul Carruthers. Lagosi lived 0:16:39.000 --> 0:16:43.280 eighteen eighty two through nineteen fifty six. Legendary Hungarian American 0:16:43.320 --> 0:16:46.800 actor and classic horror icon who's of course, best known 0:16:46.840 --> 0:16:49.960 for his portrayal of Dracula in the nineteen thirty one 0:16:50.080 --> 0:16:53.080 Universal horror film of the same name. I mean, it's 0:16:53.120 --> 0:16:58.080 pretty impressive. I think that all these years after that 0:16:58.120 --> 0:17:00.400 film came out, he is still like one of the 0:17:00.440 --> 0:17:03.600 stars you think of when you think of Dracula, Like, yeah, 0:17:03.640 --> 0:17:06.200 you think of Christopher Lee. You probably think of Gary Oldman. 0:17:06.520 --> 0:17:08.359 Maybe there's one or two others in the mix, but 0:17:08.760 --> 0:17:11.280 probably not like I feel like, I feel like Bela 0:17:11.400 --> 0:17:14.280 Lagosi is still like somewhere in that top three for 0:17:14.440 --> 0:17:17.480 most film fans, oh yeah, or horror fans in general. 0:17:17.800 --> 0:17:21.199 So Lgosi started out in Hungarian theater in silent films, 0:17:21.320 --> 0:17:23.439 before making his way to Germany and doing some silent 0:17:23.440 --> 0:17:26.720 films there, and finally making his way to America. His 0:17:26.840 --> 0:17:28.400 May he made his way up to New York became 0:17:28.520 --> 0:17:31.000 very active in the theater scene there, mostly as an actor, 0:17:31.000 --> 0:17:33.320 but I think he did a little directing as well. 0:17:34.240 --> 0:17:37.040 I don't have any details on that, but he also 0:17:37.160 --> 0:17:39.679 did some silent films there, and it's here that he 0:17:39.800 --> 0:17:42.919 landed the lead in the Broadway play Dracula in nineteen 0:17:42.960 --> 0:17:45.959 twenty seven, and then moved to la in nineteen twenty eight. 0:17:46.000 --> 0:17:48.800 I believe it's part of a tour of Dracula, and 0:17:48.840 --> 0:17:51.600 this is where he kicked off his proper Hollywood career. 0:17:52.160 --> 0:17:55.240 The next year, he appeared in Todd Browning's The Thirteenth Chair. 0:17:56.000 --> 0:17:58.080 Browning would of course go on to direct Bella in 0:17:58.119 --> 0:18:01.600 that nineteen thirty one adaptation of the Dracula stage play, 0:18:02.080 --> 0:18:04.200 and this of course led to his you know, many 0:18:04.240 --> 0:18:07.000 of his best known films, especially the horror films that 0:18:07.119 --> 0:18:10.520 remained such a central part of his legacy. Though we 0:18:10.600 --> 0:18:12.960 have to point out that he was he was type 0:18:12.960 --> 0:18:16.119 cast by all of this, and I think accounts indicate 0:18:16.160 --> 0:18:19.280 that he was rather he felt limited by this, like 0:18:19.560 --> 0:18:24.359 he saw himself as a more versatile actor, but he 0:18:24.440 --> 0:18:28.000 was mostly relegated too horror roles and the you know, 0:18:28.040 --> 0:18:31.159 the scary Bella Legosi type characters that we think of 0:18:31.240 --> 0:18:34.560 today and wasn't really able to break out of that. 0:18:34.600 --> 0:18:36.440 And we have to remember too and all of this that, yeah, 0:18:36.480 --> 0:18:39.440 as big of a film as Dracula was, as things 0:18:39.480 --> 0:18:44.080 like Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein were horror and science fiction, 0:18:44.160 --> 0:18:47.560 these other genres were very much considered further down the 0:18:47.600 --> 0:18:51.320 studio pecking order, but anyway had a number of notable films, 0:18:51.359 --> 0:18:54.840 followed thirty two's Murders in the Room Morgue, White Zombie, 0:18:54.840 --> 0:18:57.800 and Island of Lost Souls thirty four as the Black Cat, 0:18:57.920 --> 0:19:00.720 That's when we might come back to Mark the Vampire 0:19:00.960 --> 0:19:04.159 thirty nine, Son of Frankenstein, and the serial The Phantom 0:19:04.200 --> 0:19:08.239 Creeps Nineteen forty gave us The Devil Bat, followed by 0:19:08.280 --> 0:19:10.720 the likes of forty two's The Ghost of Frankenstein and 0:19:10.760 --> 0:19:14.639 The Corpse Vanishes, forty three's Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman forty 0:19:14.640 --> 0:19:18.960 eighth Abadan Costello Meet Frankenstein. This being his last A 0:19:19.119 --> 0:19:23.200 List movie and also his final portrayal of Count Dracula. 0:19:23.320 --> 0:19:25.320 So I feel like The Devil Bat in the arc 0:19:25.359 --> 0:19:28.399 of Legosi's film career is kind of positioned in the 0:19:28.440 --> 0:19:33.280 middle between his early apex with Dracula, in the early 0:19:33.800 --> 0:19:37.239 universal movies, and then what would happen later in the 0:19:37.240 --> 0:19:39.359 fifties when he would end up working with ed Wood. 0:19:39.840 --> 0:19:44.080 Yeah, the fifties were rougher, you know, including fifty two's 0:19:44.119 --> 0:19:47.399 Bella Lugosi Meets of Brooklyn Gorilla that's at least one 0:19:47.440 --> 0:19:50.439 of the titles, and of course that trio of Edwood films. 0:19:50.440 --> 0:19:53.040 Fifty three is Glenn or Glinda, fifty five's Bride of 0:19:53.040 --> 0:19:56.000 the Monster, and fifty seven's Plan nine from Outer Space. 0:19:56.480 --> 0:19:59.720 And during this period in particular, understand he battled physical 0:19:59.720 --> 0:20:04.000 anim drug addiction, for which he saw treatment and financial problems. 0:20:05.200 --> 0:20:08.080 And it is fitting though that he was apparently buried 0:20:08.119 --> 0:20:12.199 in that Dracula cape. You know, he ultimately, you know, 0:20:12.359 --> 0:20:14.840 he wanted to escape the legacy of that character to 0:20:14.880 --> 0:20:18.119 a certain extent, but he also fully embraced, like the 0:20:18.520 --> 0:20:22.000 star power, the lasting legacy of what that role meant. 0:20:22.359 --> 0:20:27.159 I believe Devil bat is not Bela Lugosi's best performance 0:20:27.200 --> 0:20:29.480 of all time. It's not in his top top tier. 0:20:30.160 --> 0:20:33.200 But I would find Bella entertaining if he were sleepwalking, 0:20:33.240 --> 0:20:35.639 And so I love all of his scenes, even the 0:20:35.640 --> 0:20:40.399 ones where he's just like infinitely sniffing chemicals or looking 0:20:40.440 --> 0:20:42.600 through the glass. You know, he's great and all that, 0:20:43.080 --> 0:20:46.600 but the really good scenes are the dialogue scenes where 0:20:46.640 --> 0:20:48.960 he's like trying to get somebody to try on the 0:20:49.000 --> 0:20:51.879 lotion that makes the bats kill them. He has so 0:20:52.000 --> 0:20:55.280 many hilariously overt like I am about to murder you 0:20:55.320 --> 0:20:56.400 with the bat lines. 0:20:56.760 --> 0:20:59.879 Yeah, yeah, so yeah. The charisma and the Dallon shines. 0:21:00.640 --> 0:21:02.639 And one of the reasons again that Plan nine from 0:21:02.880 --> 0:21:06.679 Outer Space is not generally considered her a good film 0:21:07.080 --> 0:21:09.040 is that Bela Agosi's barely in it. Like if he 0:21:09.080 --> 0:21:13.679 had been in it more, had he not died, you know, 0:21:13.720 --> 0:21:16.200 it would have been a better picture. Would it have 0:21:16.240 --> 0:21:18.080 been good, No, but it would have been a better picture. 0:21:26.520 --> 0:21:28.520 All right, Let's get into the supporting cast here, because 0:21:28.520 --> 0:21:31.080 we have some interesting characters here as well. We have 0:21:31.200 --> 0:21:35.720 Suzanne Karen playing Mary Heath. She's one of the daughters 0:21:35.760 --> 0:21:38.760 of the the main family is involved in this pivotal 0:21:38.920 --> 0:21:40.840 fragrance company in the film. 0:21:41.119 --> 0:21:43.480 Yeah, the plot is sort of so like Bela Lagosi 0:21:43.560 --> 0:21:46.000 is trying to wipe out these two families who run 0:21:46.280 --> 0:21:50.320 this cosmetics and perfume company, and there's this long list 0:21:50.359 --> 0:21:53.280 of brothers he's working down before he gets to marry 0:21:53.359 --> 0:21:55.200 And I guess the whole point is the audience is 0:21:55.240 --> 0:21:57.280 supposed to be like, no, you know, you can get 0:21:57.320 --> 0:21:58.879 all the brothers, but don't hurt Mary. 0:21:59.359 --> 0:22:04.520 Yeah. You know, classic classic structure here. You know, you 0:22:04.560 --> 0:22:08.520 have your your vengeful killer who either begins by killing 0:22:09.280 --> 0:22:13.040 characters you want to see die or at least you're 0:22:13.119 --> 0:22:15.639 neutral about, before working their way to the characters that 0:22:15.640 --> 0:22:17.920 you're more invested in. Yeah, and this is the one 0:22:17.920 --> 0:22:18.560 we're invested in. 0:22:18.640 --> 0:22:18.880 Yeah. 0:22:19.600 --> 0:22:23.320 So Karen Was She lived nineteen twelve through two thousand 0:22:23.320 --> 0:22:26.040 and four American actress and dancer who also worked in 0:22:26.040 --> 0:22:28.639 the New York theater and on Broadway. In Hollywood. She 0:22:28.680 --> 0:22:31.479 worked in I believe some Three Stooges shorts, as well 0:22:31.480 --> 0:22:34.360 as some various uncredited roles and occasional lead roles such 0:22:34.359 --> 0:22:36.680 as this. She was active on the screen from around 0:22:36.720 --> 0:22:39.639 thirty three to forty four, but also made an uncredited 0:22:39.680 --> 0:22:42.840 cameo in nineteen eighty four as the Cotton Club. I 0:22:42.880 --> 0:22:46.679 think she's good in this. She has very captivating eyes 0:22:47.200 --> 0:22:48.840 in a solid performance. Like I said, this is a 0:22:48.840 --> 0:22:51.919 film that may be low budget but is filled with 0:22:52.040 --> 0:22:55.119 very competent actors. Yeah, all right. The next one of 0:22:55.119 --> 0:22:57.920 note ooh, this one's a real treat is the character 0:22:58.000 --> 0:23:01.560 Johnny Layton. He's your hot reporter looking into all these 0:23:01.880 --> 0:23:04.960 what turned out to be mutant bat murders, and for 0:23:05.000 --> 0:23:10.879 a time they think prehistoric bat murders. Played by Dave O'Brien, 0:23:10.960 --> 0:23:15.560 who lived nineteen twelve through nineteen sixty nine, American film actor, 0:23:16.320 --> 0:23:20.760 I think at least one time director, also a screenwriter. 0:23:20.800 --> 0:23:23.400 He wrote a number of screenplays as well. He's pretty prolific, 0:23:24.240 --> 0:23:29.199 and I think he was credited has co credit on 0:23:29.240 --> 0:23:32.280 an Emmy for work on The Red Skeleton show writing comedy. 0:23:32.400 --> 0:23:37.120 So this guy was very talented. He worked a lot 0:23:37.160 --> 0:23:43.400 in these categories, but he's best remembered today, perhaps secondarily 0:23:43.600 --> 0:23:46.479 for his role in this film, but mostly for his 0:23:46.600 --> 0:23:52.920 role as a deranged dope theend in the nineteen thirty 0:23:52.960 --> 0:23:56.720 six film Tell Your Children, better known, I think to everyone, 0:23:57.440 --> 0:24:00.800 as its re released title ref for Madness. 0:24:01.520 --> 0:24:06.239 We just a powerhouse performance. He's the one who is 0:24:06.359 --> 0:24:10.560 aggressively puffing the marijuana cigarette over and over as the 0:24:10.640 --> 0:24:13.120 lady is playing the piano and he's screaming at her 0:24:13.119 --> 0:24:16.840 to play faster. Play faster. Yes, and the narrator tells 0:24:16.920 --> 0:24:20.240 us that this is what happens to the refer addict 0:24:20.320 --> 0:24:22.760 that he ends up with, is they call him like 0:24:22.840 --> 0:24:24.919 inescapable madness or something. 0:24:25.560 --> 0:24:31.040 A notorious film, a piece of anti marijuana propaganda that 0:24:31.040 --> 0:24:33.480 would later on to become like a cult classic because 0:24:33.480 --> 0:24:37.320 it is so ridiculously over the top and an ultimately 0:24:37.440 --> 0:24:40.440 very telling of this time period and its sensibilities and 0:24:40.800 --> 0:24:45.520 objectives in his messaging. But it's a delirious performance, and 0:24:45.600 --> 0:24:49.280 it's interesting that it ultimately outshines a lot of his 0:24:50.080 --> 0:24:52.919 very successful and popular contemporary work, Like he was a 0:24:53.040 --> 0:24:56.679 successful contemporary actor. But you know, we often end up 0:24:56.720 --> 0:24:58.280 remembering folks for the weird stuff. 0:24:58.800 --> 0:25:02.040 Yeah, yeah, so yeah, as you said in Devil Bat 0:25:02.080 --> 0:25:05.760 he plays our sort of Jack Rabbit wise newspaperman. He's cool, 0:25:05.920 --> 0:25:09.520 he's quick witted, he's a touch devious, like he's got 0:25:09.520 --> 0:25:11.680 a little bit of a flim flam artist in him, 0:25:11.720 --> 0:25:14.960 but just enough that he's he's a bad boy, but 0:25:15.040 --> 0:25:16.040 still the good guy. 0:25:16.720 --> 0:25:19.600 Yeah. It's weird that there's a whole subplot that goes 0:25:19.640 --> 0:25:23.199 on with him and his photographer attempting to fake a 0:25:23.240 --> 0:25:25.400 bad attack or fake a bat so they can get 0:25:25.400 --> 0:25:28.960 a photograph of it, so they don't have a They're 0:25:28.960 --> 0:25:32.480 a little low on journalistic integrity. But there's still our heroes. 0:25:32.520 --> 0:25:34.960 We're still totally rooting for them. You know. 0:25:35.000 --> 0:25:37.320 We've talked on the show before about how so many 0:25:37.840 --> 0:25:41.359 sci fi and horror films from before roughly the sixties 0:25:41.760 --> 0:25:44.520 have very boring male leads. I mean, some after the 0:25:44.560 --> 0:25:47.200 sixties do too, but especially like in the fifties, that's 0:25:47.320 --> 0:25:51.600 just the dead zone for protagonists in this Male protagonists 0:25:52.000 --> 0:25:56.640 in these genres the kind of low deaf rectangles who 0:25:56.640 --> 0:25:59.080 are there to just kind of look vaguely handsome and 0:25:59.119 --> 0:26:03.040 punch the villain, rescue the female lead, but don't really 0:26:03.040 --> 0:26:06.240 have any interesting dialogue or sharp angles to their personality. 0:26:06.480 --> 0:26:08.880 I found this guy refreshingly different. He's got a good 0:26:08.880 --> 0:26:12.640 bit of personality. There are weird quirks about him, and 0:26:12.720 --> 0:26:15.760 some of his dialogue is kind of witty. You know 0:26:15.800 --> 0:26:18.720 who he actually reminded me of was the male lead 0:26:18.920 --> 0:26:22.200 in Doctor X from nineteen thirty two, that the pre 0:26:22.280 --> 0:26:26.800 code horror film with synthetic flesh. That character was also 0:26:27.000 --> 0:26:28.840 a wise cracking newspaper reporter. 0:26:29.359 --> 0:26:31.399 That's good, I mean, I guess that ultimately, like the 0:26:31.440 --> 0:26:35.479 news paper reporter, just in the long term, as a 0:26:35.520 --> 0:26:38.120 fictional archetype, you know, kind of removed from the reality 0:26:38.160 --> 0:26:42.760 of actual journalism. It is often a space where we 0:26:42.840 --> 0:26:45.040 play with more rogue individuals. 0:26:45.080 --> 0:26:45.240 You know. 0:26:45.280 --> 0:26:48.879 They are in this gray space between like pure authority 0:26:48.920 --> 0:26:52.840 figures and of course the criminal elemental forces of chaos 0:26:53.400 --> 0:26:56.280 and so forth. And so there is often a lot 0:26:56.280 --> 0:26:58.760 of room there for it to be wacky, weird or 0:26:58.760 --> 0:27:01.280 even just completely chaotic, you know. And it's like, yeah, 0:27:01.359 --> 0:27:03.640 fear and loathing in Las Vegas, you know, getting into 0:27:03.680 --> 0:27:06.919 gonzo journalism and all. So even in this time period 0:27:06.920 --> 0:27:09.040 where there's a lot that's you know, getting more and 0:27:09.080 --> 0:27:12.240 more straight laced and buckled down, this is so much 0:27:12.240 --> 0:27:15.359 better than just your square jawed, you know, steak eating 0:27:15.400 --> 0:27:18.320 policeman type character you would get in various other pictures. 0:27:18.680 --> 0:27:21.560 Yeah, and though I don't want to oversell the weirdness 0:27:21.600 --> 0:27:23.399 of this character. He's not super I mean, he's not 0:27:23.480 --> 0:27:26.120 Hunter Thompson, but he is kind of a fox. He's 0:27:26.160 --> 0:27:28.560 kind of like he's kind of wily and funny and 0:27:30.080 --> 0:27:32.520 not just there to be your you know, lawful, good 0:27:32.560 --> 0:27:33.280 slab of meat. 0:27:33.560 --> 0:27:35.840 Yeah, and Ultimately, I thought it held his own in 0:27:36.240 --> 0:27:38.080 his big one on one scene with Bella at the 0:27:38.160 --> 0:27:38.760 end of the picture. 0:27:39.000 --> 0:27:40.800 Yeah, I agreed, all right. 0:27:41.040 --> 0:27:44.040 Supporting character in this is Yolanda Donlin, who plays the 0:27:44.119 --> 0:27:47.480 character Maxine, who is a French maid. She lived in 0:27:47.560 --> 0:27:50.920 nineteen twenty through twenty fourteen American born British based actress 0:27:51.160 --> 0:27:53.840 who mostly worked in the UK. This is not the 0:27:53.880 --> 0:27:57.000 only film where she plays a french Maid, but her 0:27:57.040 --> 0:27:59.120 career on the British stage seems to have been far 0:27:59.160 --> 0:28:01.919 more substantial. So she worked with the likes of Laurence 0:28:01.920 --> 0:28:05.040 Olivier and her last film was nineteen seventy six is 0:28:05.080 --> 0:28:06.080 Seven Nights in Japan. 0:28:06.840 --> 0:28:09.439 She was a ray of sunshine here. I loved Maxine 0:28:09.800 --> 0:28:10.200 all right. 0:28:10.880 --> 0:28:15.400 The main perfume boss is this guy, Henry Morton, and 0:28:15.480 --> 0:28:18.280 he is played by Guy Usher, who lived eighteen eighty 0:28:18.280 --> 0:28:21.480 three through nineteen forty four. Prolific character actor of the 0:28:21.520 --> 0:28:23.520 thirties and forties. His films include The Case of the 0:28:23.520 --> 0:28:25.880 Black Cat from thirty six, Buck Rogers from thirty nine, 0:28:26.400 --> 0:28:30.080 and The Spanish Kate Mystery from nineteen thirty five. I 0:28:30.080 --> 0:28:31.199 thought he's pretty solid in this. 0:28:31.560 --> 0:28:33.880 Yeah, he is business man. 0:28:34.200 --> 0:28:37.119 Yeah, he has a kind of there's a very funny 0:28:37.480 --> 0:28:40.840 but at times a very awkwardly written scene with him 0:28:40.840 --> 0:28:44.239 in Bell Lagosi's character where bell We'll get to it, 0:28:44.280 --> 0:28:45.160 but what is. 0:28:45.120 --> 0:28:47.320 It one of the many scenes where Bella is trying 0:28:47.360 --> 0:28:48.960 to convince somebody to put lotion on. 0:28:49.440 --> 0:28:53.360 Yes, and also like Bell Lagosi like eventually just out 0:28:53.400 --> 0:28:57.440 of pride, like all but admitting to the previous murders 0:28:57.480 --> 0:29:00.520 in the film, and Henry Morton's just kind of like, 0:29:00.640 --> 0:29:02.920 what is this guy talking about? And then finally Don's 0:29:02.920 --> 0:29:04.680 on him. Oh he killed all these people? Yeah? 0:29:04.800 --> 0:29:07.160 Yeah? Oh wait next, are we going to get to 0:29:07.160 --> 0:29:08.560 the newspaper editor. 0:29:08.840 --> 0:29:13.640 Yes, the character is Joe McGuinty. The actor is Arthur Q. 0:29:13.920 --> 0:29:17.240 Brian who of eighteen ninety nine through nineteen fifty nine 0:29:17.680 --> 0:29:21.640 American actor and radio personality who he had many other credits, 0:29:21.880 --> 0:29:24.000 but he served as the voice of the Looney Tunes 0:29:24.080 --> 0:29:28.520 character Elmer Fudd from nineteen forty through nineteen fifty nine. Yeah, 0:29:28.560 --> 0:29:31.440 he was not the originator, and there were others who 0:29:31.440 --> 0:29:34.000 did that voice during this time, but he was an 0:29:34.040 --> 0:29:36.880 official Elmer Fudd voice actor. 0:29:37.400 --> 0:29:39.800 That totally fits. I did not make that connection. 0:29:40.520 --> 0:29:43.520 I mean, it's it's not. It feels like the least 0:29:43.520 --> 0:29:45.160 shocking thing in the world when you see him in 0:29:45.160 --> 0:29:48.840 the film, because he looks like Elmer Fudd. It's like 0:29:48.880 --> 0:29:50.760 he has a very Elmer Fudd look. He's just not 0:29:50.800 --> 0:29:52.280 wearing the hunting cap. 0:29:52.560 --> 0:29:55.680 But he's also so I mean, it's early in the 0:29:55.720 --> 0:29:58.520 existence of this cliche. So I guess he's one of 0:29:58.560 --> 0:30:01.560 the examples that is being copied in later films and 0:30:01.600 --> 0:30:05.680 TV shows. But he is the classic like police chief 0:30:05.920 --> 0:30:10.000 or newspaper editor who's barking at our rogue main character 0:30:10.040 --> 0:30:13.320 about how you're a loose cannon. He's mcgarnigle's boss on 0:30:13.360 --> 0:30:16.280 the Simpsons. He's like, well, mccarnicle, you know, Billy is dead. 0:30:18.200 --> 0:30:20.240 Yeah, there are a lot of fun scenes with this character. 0:30:20.840 --> 0:30:23.520 All right, And I'm gonna mention the musical director here. 0:30:23.560 --> 0:30:25.320 This is you know, films of this nature from this 0:30:25.360 --> 0:30:29.400 time period, they're often using like stock music, and ultimately, 0:30:29.440 --> 0:30:32.400 I don't know, I couldn't tell. I didn't do deep 0:30:32.480 --> 0:30:35.760 enough research to find out exactly how much this guy 0:30:35.840 --> 0:30:37.960 worked on the music, how much of it his stock 0:30:38.200 --> 0:30:41.080 and so forth, But he was very prolific. So I'm 0:30:41.120 --> 0:30:44.400 just gonna mention him briefly anyway, It's David Chudnow, who 0:30:44.440 --> 0:30:48.240 lived nineteen oh nine through two thousand and two, Russian 0:30:48.320 --> 0:30:51.560 born composer and musical director who worked as music supervisor 0:30:51.680 --> 0:30:54.440 or musical director on one hundred and sixty four credits 0:30:54.480 --> 0:30:58.200 between thirty eight and fifty six. His composer credits include 0:30:58.280 --> 0:31:01.360 nineteen forty two Is the Mad Monster and then later 0:31:01.560 --> 0:31:05.160 Russ Meyer's nineteen sixty one film Erotica, and he went 0:31:05.200 --> 0:31:07.640 on to produce a number of projects in the sixties 0:31:07.640 --> 0:31:10.200 and seventies, mostly the films that were directed by his 0:31:10.280 --> 0:31:15.200 son byronshud Now born nineteen twenty six, including a trilogy 0:31:15.320 --> 0:31:18.840 of G rated intelligent Doberman pictures. I've mentioned these on 0:31:18.880 --> 0:31:22.400 the show before. They are The Doberman Gang seventy two, 0:31:22.680 --> 0:31:26.400 The Daring Doberman's from seventy three, and The Amazing Doberman's 0:31:26.440 --> 0:31:30.440 from seventy six. William Goldstein of Doctor Fib's fame was 0:31:30.480 --> 0:31:32.160 one of the writers on that last picture. 0:31:32.880 --> 0:31:36.120 These are Doberman. You're not talking about people named Doberman. 0:31:36.200 --> 0:31:37.480 These are Doberman's the dogs. 0:31:37.480 --> 0:31:42.280 These are straight up dogs. I think solving crimes and stuff. Again, 0:31:42.360 --> 0:31:44.280 not a horror movie or anything. It's like apparently g 0:31:44.400 --> 0:31:47.320 rated fun, but it was like a whole franchise that 0:31:47.400 --> 0:31:50.120 I feel like this largely forgot beautiful. 0:31:50.520 --> 0:31:52.440 Well, I don't want to be mean, but I do 0:31:52.480 --> 0:31:56.240 not Nothing about the music in this movie really struck me. 0:31:56.440 --> 0:31:57.360 It was kind of forgettable. 0:31:57.480 --> 0:32:00.200 It does everything expect a film from this time period do, 0:32:00.400 --> 0:32:03.560 and nothing more. All right, well, shall we unleash the 0:32:03.600 --> 0:32:05.240 plot in an unsuspecting audience. 0:32:05.360 --> 0:32:08.120 Yeah, let's open the window and let the bats out. Okay, 0:32:08.880 --> 0:32:13.320 So we begin with a text legend over like superimposed 0:32:13.360 --> 0:32:16.760 over a shot of just a town that by the way, 0:32:17.000 --> 0:32:19.720 did you have an idea of where this was supposed 0:32:19.720 --> 0:32:23.120 to take place? Because the opening shots made me think 0:32:23.200 --> 0:32:26.400 this is supposed to be in the American Southwest. Looks 0:32:26.440 --> 0:32:30.000 like the Southwest, But then the reporter that goes to 0:32:30.080 --> 0:32:32.200 investigate is from the Chicago Register. 0:32:33.240 --> 0:32:35.880 Yeah, oh, you know, they might just have a satellite 0:32:35.880 --> 0:32:39.800 office here. So I don't know. Everything feels very solid 0:32:39.840 --> 0:32:40.880 Middle America, you know. 0:32:41.400 --> 0:32:47.400 Okay, Anyway, the text says, all Heathville loved Paul Carruthers. 0:32:47.480 --> 0:32:51.320 They're kindly village doctor. No one suspected that in his 0:32:51.440 --> 0:32:55.480 home laboratory on a hillside overlooking the magnificent estate of 0:32:55.640 --> 0:33:01.080 Martin Heath. The doctor found time to conduct certain private experiments, 0:33:01.760 --> 0:33:08.760 weird terrifying experiments. Period. Okay, so then we open on 0:33:08.960 --> 0:33:12.720 Bela Lugosi hunched over a table covered in chemistry equipment. 0:33:12.760 --> 0:33:16.680 You got beakers, flasks, gas flames, in a room with 0:33:16.840 --> 0:33:22.160 fake stonework walls, and he's doing chemistry, mixing solutions, decanting 0:33:22.200 --> 0:33:25.840 things into bottles, occasionally just having him a little free sample, 0:33:26.000 --> 0:33:28.400 like like sniffing, you know, getting a sniff. 0:33:28.240 --> 0:33:31.080 Yep, yep, doing some mad science. Basically, you know what 0:33:31.120 --> 0:33:33.440 he's up to. You didn't even need the crawl. Of course, 0:33:33.480 --> 0:33:37.280 Bello Lugosi is up to weird, terrifying experiments and you know, 0:33:37.320 --> 0:33:39.760 I don't know, we don't know. It's illegal, you know, 0:33:39.840 --> 0:33:42.440 God bless him. Go ahead do your weird terrifying stuff. 0:33:42.760 --> 0:33:44.800 Why would he be sniffing the chemicals if there was 0:33:44.840 --> 0:33:49.840 anything wrong with them? So he goes into a secret passageway. 0:33:50.480 --> 0:33:53.080 This is accessed by way of a hidden switch in 0:33:53.120 --> 0:33:56.560 a bookcase, and this leads down into a dungeon. And 0:33:56.640 --> 0:34:00.880 the dungeon is full of bats. It's hard to tell 0:34:00.920 --> 0:34:03.400 exactly what's going on. So Rob, I'm going to lay 0:34:03.400 --> 0:34:05.440 it out what I thought was going on, and you 0:34:05.480 --> 0:34:08.600 tell me if it matches your impression. I think there 0:34:08.640 --> 0:34:13.760 are lots of bats, but for substantial portions of the movie, 0:34:14.320 --> 0:34:17.920 only one bat seems to be active at a time. 0:34:18.480 --> 0:34:22.360 So I believe these other bats are backup bats that 0:34:22.440 --> 0:34:27.839 are in storage waiting to be activated by the microwave, 0:34:27.880 --> 0:34:29.920 as you put it, the thing that he's going to 0:34:29.960 --> 0:34:31.840 put this bat into in a minute. 0:34:31.960 --> 0:34:34.359 That's right. You can only cook up one mutant bat 0:34:34.360 --> 0:34:36.080 at a time, but you've got to have a lot 0:34:36.120 --> 0:34:38.680 of normal bats on hand to cook up if something 0:34:38.719 --> 0:34:40.239 happens to that prime bat. 0:34:40.440 --> 0:34:43.279 Okay, So the bats are dangling upside down from what 0:34:43.400 --> 0:34:46.719 looked like coat hangers. There is one main bat at 0:34:46.760 --> 0:34:49.480 the center of the room. It's bigger than all the others, 0:34:49.800 --> 0:34:52.759 and Legosi approaches it to say the first line of 0:34:52.800 --> 0:34:54.600 the film, what do you think the opening line of 0:34:54.680 --> 0:34:59.040 dialogue in this movie will be? He says, ah, my friend, 0:34:59.440 --> 0:35:05.319 our theory of glandular stimulation through electrical impulses was correct. 0:35:06.360 --> 0:35:08.839 That's a hell of an opener. And then he goes 0:35:08.840 --> 0:35:11.680 on to say, a few days ago, you were as 0:35:11.719 --> 0:35:15.040 small as your companion, and now look at you, and 0:35:15.400 --> 0:35:17.920 I think he's got to be a good thirty percent 0:35:17.960 --> 0:35:21.200 bigger than the other bats. Now Here we cut to 0:35:21.360 --> 0:35:24.080 a close up shot of a real bat's face. We 0:35:24.120 --> 0:35:27.120 will see this exact same bat close up footage so 0:35:27.280 --> 0:35:30.239 many times in the movie. I don't know if it 0:35:30.280 --> 0:35:32.239 was something shot for the film or if they were 0:35:32.239 --> 0:35:34.719 just getting you know, nature stock footage, but it's like 0:35:34.840 --> 0:35:36.960 right up in the bat's face and it's some kind 0:35:36.960 --> 0:35:41.040 of bat like looking around, looking like it's struggling against restraints. 0:35:41.600 --> 0:35:43.760 Yeah, I thought they did a pretty good job integrating 0:35:43.800 --> 0:35:47.439 their live animal shots and their prop shots here. Of course, 0:35:47.480 --> 0:35:49.840 as you might expect, this is often the case. The 0:35:49.880 --> 0:35:52.080 bat we see enclose up is clearly a fruit bat 0:35:52.080 --> 0:35:54.839 of some sort, yes, which is of course in real life, 0:35:54.880 --> 0:35:58.200 absolutely not interested in human flesh or anything like that. 0:35:58.280 --> 0:36:02.000 It wants to eat mangoes or something. But they to 0:36:02.040 --> 0:36:04.480 the untrained eye, they look more ferocious. They look kind 0:36:04.480 --> 0:36:07.960 of like wolves, so that's what we get. But yeah, 0:36:08.000 --> 0:36:10.520 I thought the integration between the shots was pretty good, though. 0:36:10.560 --> 0:36:13.080 The hanger bat kind of looks like some sort of 0:36:13.080 --> 0:36:14.760 like cured bat jerky, right. 0:36:14.880 --> 0:36:17.560 Yes, it looks like a bat got caught into a 0:36:17.640 --> 0:36:20.600 hydraulic press and so it's just a furry pancake with 0:36:20.680 --> 0:36:22.440 wings and then they left it out to dry in 0:36:22.480 --> 0:36:22.839 the sun. 0:36:23.120 --> 0:36:23.640 Exactly. 0:36:23.760 --> 0:36:28.120 Yeah, So Lugosi dismounts the bat hangar and transports it 0:36:28.160 --> 0:36:31.880 to another room. This is a high voltage bombardment chamber 0:36:32.000 --> 0:36:36.240 behind a steel door with thick glass viewing windows. He leaves, 0:36:36.320 --> 0:36:38.920 He like hangs the bat up in the room, leaves 0:36:38.960 --> 0:36:41.920 the room, puts on welding goggles, flips a switch. The 0:36:41.960 --> 0:36:45.040 electricity starts going nuts inside the room. It's like arcing 0:36:45.120 --> 0:36:48.600 from all these tesla coils and stuff, and the bat 0:36:48.719 --> 0:36:51.600 is just hanging there while Lugosi watches through the glass. 0:36:52.200 --> 0:36:54.960 And I think the director must have thought that people 0:36:55.000 --> 0:36:57.839 would just really get a kick out of the glandular 0:36:57.920 --> 0:37:01.160 stimulation scene because it goes on for some time. It's 0:37:01.200 --> 0:37:04.440 like zap zap zaps app for a while. Then Legosi 0:37:04.600 --> 0:37:07.879 goes inside the room to make some adjustments, then goes 0:37:07.920 --> 0:37:10.319 back outside and starts zapping it again, and we just 0:37:10.360 --> 0:37:11.120 get to watch. 0:37:11.520 --> 0:37:14.080 Yeah. I mean, I guess it's worth pointing out that, like, 0:37:14.120 --> 0:37:17.160 what the full run time of this picture is sixty 0:37:17.200 --> 0:37:20.359 eight minutes. Yeah, so maybe we do have a certain 0:37:20.360 --> 0:37:21.680 amount of padding going on here. 0:37:21.880 --> 0:37:26.320 Yeah, But as the electrical stimulation continues, the bat begins 0:37:26.440 --> 0:37:29.719 to flex its wings. So it's I guess it's coming 0:37:29.800 --> 0:37:34.160 to life, coming out of cold storage now. Once the 0:37:34.200 --> 0:37:37.400 stimulation is over, Legosi checks the bat for a heartbeat. 0:37:37.400 --> 0:37:39.480 He goes in with like a stethoscope, and he's checking 0:37:39.520 --> 0:37:42.160 it out, and he seems very very pleased with himself. 0:37:42.520 --> 0:37:45.160 But he is interrupted by a phone call. It's a 0:37:45.160 --> 0:37:48.720 call from his bosses that they are the business partners 0:37:48.760 --> 0:37:52.719 Henry Morton and Martin Heath Heath of this heath Ville Heath, 0:37:52.719 --> 0:37:55.319 the Heath Company, and Henry Morton is his partner, and 0:37:55.360 --> 0:37:58.400 they are inviting doctor Caruthers to a family get together 0:37:58.480 --> 0:38:02.320 at the Heath residence that night. And then Carrothers says 0:38:02.360 --> 0:38:05.960 he appreciates the invitation quote, but I am very busy 0:38:06.000 --> 0:38:09.560 working on a formula for a new shaving lotion. And 0:38:09.600 --> 0:38:12.239 then Heath replies, oh, you know, but Doc, this is 0:38:12.280 --> 0:38:15.720 my daughter's idea. And this is referring to Heath's adult 0:38:15.800 --> 0:38:19.720 daughter Mary. They say, you know, Henry Morton's son Don 0:38:19.960 --> 0:38:23.200 is going to propose to her tonight, and apparently she 0:38:23.360 --> 0:38:25.920 will be very upset if Bella Lagosi isn't there for that. 0:38:27.560 --> 0:38:30.400 So they hang up the phone, and then Henry Morton 0:38:30.480 --> 0:38:33.319 says he's going to be surprised when he finds the 0:38:33.360 --> 0:38:36.800 special occasion is to present him with this bonus check. 0:38:37.480 --> 0:38:40.000 He says this while holding the check in his hand, 0:38:40.320 --> 0:38:43.040 and then Heath takes the check and stares at it 0:38:43.120 --> 0:38:48.319 and says, almost wistfully, five thousand dollars. I don't know, 0:38:48.320 --> 0:38:50.440 maybe it's not coming across in the way I'm describing, 0:38:50.480 --> 0:38:53.600 but there are so many, like out loud references to 0:38:53.719 --> 0:38:56.640 this five thousand dollars check. It got very funny to me. 0:38:56.840 --> 0:38:59.960 Yeah, five thousand snaggers. Yeah, this is a lot of money. 0:39:00.360 --> 0:39:03.000 Well, whatever the amount is, it's just all these people 0:39:03.080 --> 0:39:05.920 gathered around being like, wow, this is the dollar amount 0:39:06.000 --> 0:39:10.200 of the check. Anyway, Before Carothers goes to the party, 0:39:10.280 --> 0:39:13.279 we see him explaining his giant bat scheme to the 0:39:13.320 --> 0:39:16.440 giant bat. He dips a cotton ball in the new 0:39:16.480 --> 0:39:19.160 shaving lotion he's making and he holds it up to 0:39:19.200 --> 0:39:24.600 the glandular stimulated bat, the glandularly stimulated bat, and the 0:39:24.640 --> 0:39:28.080 bat starts screaming, and Legosi is like, good, yes, I 0:39:28.160 --> 0:39:31.520 taught you to hate this fragrance while you slept. Now 0:39:31.560 --> 0:39:33.640 if you smell it while you are awake, you will 0:39:33.680 --> 0:39:34.960 strike to kill. 0:39:35.320 --> 0:39:38.080 All right, all right, murderous conditioning. Okay. 0:39:38.360 --> 0:39:40.160 Then we go to a scene of the party at 0:39:40.160 --> 0:39:43.520 Morton and Heath's house. So Mary is Heath's daughter, but 0:39:43.560 --> 0:39:47.040 they are also just a bunch of loose suns running around. 0:39:47.320 --> 0:39:49.719 I don't remember whose son is whose. There's a bunch 0:39:49.800 --> 0:39:53.680 of them. And Morton is like, remember, Roy, Tommy, you're 0:39:53.680 --> 0:39:56.440 not supposed to say anything about this five thousand dollars 0:39:56.480 --> 0:39:58.600 check that I hold in my hand until you get 0:39:58.640 --> 0:40:02.160 the signal from Heath. And then Mary, Heath and a 0:40:02.280 --> 0:40:05.080 Morton son named don A. They're sort of cuddling and 0:40:05.120 --> 0:40:07.960 flirting on the other couch and Morton starts to give 0:40:08.000 --> 0:40:10.400 them the same talk, and they have all these ideas 0:40:10.440 --> 0:40:13.239 about how they should unveil the five thousand dollars check. 0:40:13.680 --> 0:40:16.400 But then they find out car Others is not going 0:40:16.440 --> 0:40:18.319 to come to the party because he is busy with 0:40:18.360 --> 0:40:22.080 his lotion. So Roy, one of the heath sons, offers 0:40:22.120 --> 0:40:25.239 to take the check up to the laboratory and here 0:40:25.239 --> 0:40:28.160 we get our first like put on the lotion Roy scene. 0:40:28.600 --> 0:40:31.880 So Roy goes up to the lab and Carrothers reacts 0:40:31.880 --> 0:40:35.080 with this strange, kind of hard to read cascade of 0:40:35.120 --> 0:40:38.480 emotions when he receives the five thousand dollars check. He'll 0:40:38.520 --> 0:40:41.280 explain why in a minute. But then he's like, okay, 0:40:41.360 --> 0:40:44.239 Roy Heath, I want you to try my new aftershave. 0:40:44.800 --> 0:40:46.800 And so Roy takes some of it and he smells that. 0:40:46.880 --> 0:40:50.480 He says, ooh, pretty strong, isn't it. This establishes a pattern. 0:40:50.680 --> 0:40:52.879 All the victims are going to say this like wow, 0:40:52.960 --> 0:40:57.399 smells really strong. But Legosi reassures him. He says, no, no, 0:40:57.480 --> 0:41:00.279 the scent evaporates a short time after you use it. 0:41:00.760 --> 0:41:03.200 So Roy takes a few drops in his hand, and 0:41:03.200 --> 0:41:06.680 then the Legosi gleefully explains. He says, now, rub it 0:41:06.760 --> 0:41:09.919 on the tender part of your neck. Here. I love 0:41:10.000 --> 0:41:12.319 these scenes. So he keeps like touching his throat and 0:41:12.360 --> 0:41:15.000 being like, here's where you rub it. It's so soft 0:41:15.080 --> 0:41:15.640 on the skin. 0:41:16.080 --> 0:41:18.040 Yes, he says, you want to apply lots of it to 0:41:18.080 --> 0:41:19.640 the esophagus and the jugular. 0:41:19.960 --> 0:41:24.200 Yeah, that's right. So Roy rubs the lotion on his throat, 0:41:24.360 --> 0:41:27.360 then he departs. When he leaves, he says good night, doctor, 0:41:27.760 --> 0:41:32.279 and Legosi replies, goodbye Roy. He will also do this 0:41:32.440 --> 0:41:35.520 in every one of the murders. Yes. Then we get 0:41:35.560 --> 0:41:38.879 a weird voiceover of Legosi's thoughts. Is this the only 0:41:38.960 --> 0:41:41.600 time in the entire movie when we hear a character's 0:41:41.640 --> 0:41:42.480 thoughts out loud? 0:41:42.560 --> 0:41:44.880 I think so it is. Yeah, this really feels like 0:41:44.880 --> 0:41:48.240 one of those classic moments of the director or someone 0:41:48.280 --> 0:41:51.080 in the production saying, I don't think we got this across. 0:41:51.360 --> 0:41:54.000 Let's have some voice over here, and that's what they do. 0:41:54.400 --> 0:41:57.359 Absolutely feels tacked on. But what So He's standing there 0:41:57.400 --> 0:42:00.759 staring at the check and we hear Legosi's voiceover say, 0:42:01.000 --> 0:42:05.120 lovely check, isn't it? Doctor? They are wealthy because of you. 0:42:05.120 --> 0:42:09.080 You made them rich. Doctor. It was your formula tonight. 0:42:09.239 --> 0:42:12.440 They gave you five thousand dollars and wanted you to 0:42:12.440 --> 0:42:14.600 come down to their house and thank them for it. 0:42:14.880 --> 0:42:17.760 That was your money they gave you, like a bone 0:42:17.920 --> 0:42:21.120 tossed to a faithful dog. And we get some very 0:42:21.120 --> 0:42:25.560 good facial expressions from Bella here. First he looks sad, 0:42:25.600 --> 0:42:27.799 and then it turns into a grimace, and then it 0:42:27.840 --> 0:42:32.280 turns into maniacal laughter and then straight into a furious glower. 0:42:32.520 --> 0:42:34.920 He is ready now to send the bats, so he 0:42:34.960 --> 0:42:37.640 goes down into the secret passageway. He goes to his 0:42:37.719 --> 0:42:40.480 mutant bat and he says, tonight, you have work to do, 0:42:41.080 --> 0:42:42.360 and the bat flies out. 0:42:42.880 --> 0:42:46.000 Yep, yep. And I think the bat flying looks pretty good, 0:42:46.000 --> 0:42:47.759 though there's going to be a plot element that kind 0:42:47.760 --> 0:42:50.160 of tarnishes the effect a bit later on. 0:42:50.520 --> 0:43:03.200 Yeah. Yeah, So first we see Don and Mary out 0:43:03.200 --> 0:43:05.279 in the garden on a bench. Remember they were the 0:43:05.320 --> 0:43:08.120 ones who were going to get engaged. This part I 0:43:08.200 --> 0:43:11.680 found incredibly perplexing. Don says, you know, while our families 0:43:11.719 --> 0:43:14.440 are here, tonight is a good time to announce our engagement, 0:43:15.040 --> 0:43:18.400 and Mary says to him, looked on, I love you, 0:43:18.440 --> 0:43:20.680 I've loved you since we were kids, but not in 0:43:20.719 --> 0:43:23.359 that way. You're more like a brother to me. And 0:43:23.760 --> 0:43:25.719 I was like, what, how did you get to the 0:43:25.760 --> 0:43:28.120 point of thinking they were gonna be engaged? 0:43:28.760 --> 0:43:32.759 Yeah? Yeah, he seemed exceedingly sure of this. Yeah, so 0:43:32.920 --> 0:43:35.120 this was yeah, this is a real head scratcher, But 0:43:35.280 --> 0:43:36.200 he takes it well. 0:43:36.480 --> 0:43:38.680 He doesn't get mad or anything. He's just like, oh, okay, 0:43:38.680 --> 0:43:39.520 fair enough. 0:43:39.640 --> 0:43:42.600 Yeah, it's like we needed more information. Why was this 0:43:42.880 --> 0:43:46.600 miscommunication in place? Were they betrothed? Ye? What was going 0:43:46.640 --> 0:43:47.960 on hereh idea? 0:43:48.080 --> 0:43:50.360 Okay? But yeah, Don takes it well. He's like, okay. 0:43:50.360 --> 0:43:54.759 Then meanwhile, nearby Mary's brother, Roy, the guy who put 0:43:54.800 --> 0:43:57.440 the lotion on his throat, he arrives home, gets out 0:43:57.440 --> 0:44:00.280 of his car and is immediately dive bombed by at. 0:44:00.880 --> 0:44:04.239 And we don't see a lot of it. I mean, 0:44:04.239 --> 0:44:06.080 we see the bat flying, and we see sort of 0:44:06.160 --> 0:44:08.040 a dark dive bomb thing, but it's not like we 0:44:08.080 --> 0:44:09.719 get like a clear close up. 0:44:10.239 --> 0:44:13.760 Eventually, we'll probably watch Life Force for Weird House Cinema 0:44:13.800 --> 0:44:16.400 and we'll have to compare the dive bombing bat sequences. 0:44:16.440 --> 0:44:19.160 I think they have some of these in Fright Night 0:44:19.200 --> 0:44:22.280 as well, right in there, dive bombing bat scene in that. 0:44:21.880 --> 0:44:24.880 That sounds right. Yeah. Oh, and so you know, they 0:44:24.880 --> 0:44:27.239 hear him scream and Mary and Don come running and 0:44:27.280 --> 0:44:29.799 they find Roy in the driveway there and they're like, 0:44:29.840 --> 0:44:33.319 call doctor Carruther is no good. So you know, Carro 0:44:33.320 --> 0:44:35.520 others comes to check on him, and they have both 0:44:35.520 --> 0:44:37.800 families gathered around him as he's lying there in the 0:44:37.920 --> 0:44:41.480 driveway and there's a dialogue exchange that goes like this, 0:44:41.600 --> 0:44:44.760 Carrother says there's nothing I can do, and Heath says, 0:44:44.920 --> 0:44:48.200 you mean he's dead. Her other says, yes, I'd better 0:44:48.239 --> 0:44:51.439 call the coroner. Heath says, you think it's murder? Carro 0:44:51.440 --> 0:44:54.040 Other says, I don't know. I never saw anything like 0:44:54.080 --> 0:44:57.880 it before. The jugular vein is severed. They all look down. 0:44:58.239 --> 0:45:01.640 It cuts to black, and this is where the news 0:45:01.640 --> 0:45:02.680 media comes into play. 0:45:02.880 --> 0:45:06.080 Yeah, but because everybody trusts Carruthers, I mean, of course 0:45:06.120 --> 0:45:06.480 we should have. 0:45:06.600 --> 0:45:08.680 Yeah. They tell us this a lot. They're always like, 0:45:08.680 --> 0:45:11.640 everybody trusts corrects, everyone loves Corrutthers, The community loves him. 0:45:11.920 --> 0:45:16.200 We're given very little in addition to that to make 0:45:16.280 --> 0:45:18.239 us believe this is the case, because come on, it's 0:45:18.239 --> 0:45:21.759 bell Legosi. Uh, Like he brings that ara here. We 0:45:21.800 --> 0:45:24.759 don't really see him doing like nice things for the community. 0:45:24.880 --> 0:45:27.640 He just wants to do terrifying experiments in his laboratory. 0:45:27.719 --> 0:45:31.040 Yeah, he's acting incredibly suspicious from the first scene. 0:45:31.400 --> 0:45:34.400 Yeah, but all right, fair enough, nobody suspects him. 0:45:34.719 --> 0:45:36.680 All right, So it's time to meet some new characters 0:45:36.680 --> 0:45:39.920 at the offices of a newspaper, The Chicago register, and 0:45:40.040 --> 0:45:43.720 so it shows a busy, bustling newsroom. We're two guys 0:45:43.760 --> 0:45:46.960 on the floor of the newsroom throwing punches. It looked 0:45:47.040 --> 0:45:48.440 like it, but then it cuts away quick. 0:45:48.760 --> 0:45:51.759 Yeah it's you know, it's a scrappy environment. They're they're 0:45:51.800 --> 0:45:53.520 having fun, they're working hard, they're playing hard. 0:45:53.760 --> 0:45:55.360 And so we're going to meet a couple of characters 0:45:55.360 --> 0:45:59.400 here the assignment editor McGinty, who again, he's your classic 0:45:59.600 --> 0:46:04.920 large cigar chewing police chief slash newspaper editor. He's telling 0:46:04.960 --> 0:46:07.960 the cop or reporter, you're a loose cannon. You're off 0:46:07.960 --> 0:46:10.040 the force. Here's your new partner. And in fact, we 0:46:10.120 --> 0:46:11.800 get all three of those in this movie. 0:46:12.200 --> 0:46:15.080 Yes, yes, I do like the elements too, though with 0:46:15.520 --> 0:46:18.239 our newspaper editor here, who is like, we got to 0:46:18.239 --> 0:46:20.840 remember the Heath Company. It's a big account, you know, 0:46:20.880 --> 0:46:24.160 big advertising accounts for the paper. So they do interject 0:46:24.239 --> 0:46:29.520 a little bit of like realistic news room politics. 0:46:28.920 --> 0:46:32.400 Here, well kind of, but I didn't understand the dynamics, 0:46:32.400 --> 0:46:34.600 So yeah, I thought that was interesting. They're like, Heath 0:46:34.680 --> 0:46:37.000 is a big advertising account, so you've got to go 0:46:37.040 --> 0:46:40.319 to Heathville. You've got to get a photo photographer to 0:46:40.360 --> 0:46:44.640 go with you go to Heathville and do a big 0:46:44.680 --> 0:46:48.719 sensational news story about his son's unsolved mutant bat murder. 0:46:49.040 --> 0:46:52.560 Yeah yeah, I mean that part makes less sense. It 0:46:52.560 --> 0:46:54.800 would be it would be more realistic. It's like, okay, 0:46:54.800 --> 0:46:56.840 you're going you're going up there, but make sure you 0:46:56.840 --> 0:46:59.719 play it really respectful. We've got to cover this. But 0:46:59.760 --> 0:47:03.120 they're huge advertiser, so again, some things are maybe lost 0:47:03.160 --> 0:47:03.919 in the message here. 0:47:04.120 --> 0:47:07.000 I mean normally, if there's like a big industry mogul 0:47:07.040 --> 0:47:10.359 who has a child with their adult child is killed 0:47:10.400 --> 0:47:13.600 in an unsolved murder, you want the National Inquirer up 0:47:13.640 --> 0:47:14.719 there getting into it. 0:47:15.400 --> 0:47:17.879 Yeah, well they send the A team, as we'll see. 0:47:18.200 --> 0:47:21.120 That's right. So our hero here is Johnny Layden. He's 0:47:21.160 --> 0:47:25.040 a scrappy reporter who's always causing trouble. Somebody's always calling 0:47:25.040 --> 0:47:27.120 the editor to get him fired. But you know what, 0:47:27.400 --> 0:47:32.000 he gets results. And McGinty explains, there's this mystery killing 0:47:32.000 --> 0:47:34.960 in Heathville. It's old Martin Heath's son. He wants Layden 0:47:35.000 --> 0:47:39.480 looking into it. Leydon is unfamiliar. He's like, who's Martin Heath? 0:47:39.600 --> 0:47:42.640 And McGinty this was also weird McGinty's like, who's Martin 0:47:42.680 --> 0:47:45.360 Heath say? Have you ever had a date with a girl? 0:47:46.000 --> 0:47:48.000 And Leyden says, you know, he might have had one 0:47:48.040 --> 0:47:51.600 at some point, And McGinty says, well, did she smell sweet? 0:47:52.040 --> 0:47:55.560 If so, that's because of Martin Heath Cosmetics Limited. They 0:47:55.600 --> 0:48:00.120 make all that goo that women put on their faces. 0:48:00.120 --> 0:48:02.759 The premise here that Heath is the only perfume and 0:48:02.800 --> 0:48:06.560 cosmetics company in the world and invented and has exclusive 0:48:06.640 --> 0:48:08.880 rights to the concept of makeup and perfume. 0:48:09.280 --> 0:48:11.640 I don't know. I guess they're just a major player anyway. 0:48:11.680 --> 0:48:14.120 So Layton goes to Heath Phil he takes along with 0:48:14.200 --> 0:48:17.240 him a photographer. As he was told to. This character 0:48:17.320 --> 0:48:21.439 has a great name, it's one Shot McGuire. One Shot 0:48:21.520 --> 0:48:23.680 McGuire is a bow tie guy who keeps his suit 0:48:23.760 --> 0:48:27.560 jacket buttoned. But he has a kind of he's a 0:48:27.560 --> 0:48:30.239 little bit more nerdy than Layton, but also has he's 0:48:30.320 --> 0:48:33.880 kind of got a nerdy but rascally temperament to match Layton's. 0:48:34.400 --> 0:48:36.840 Yeah, and I don't know from the title, I'm not 0:48:36.840 --> 0:48:38.399 sure is he if he's supposed to be a really 0:48:38.440 --> 0:48:41.879 good photographer or just a really sloppy photographer like, oh, 0:48:42.000 --> 0:48:44.359 did you get pictures of the sporting event? I got 0:48:44.360 --> 0:48:46.719 one shot? Does that mean you only needed one like 0:48:46.760 --> 0:48:50.719 perfect shot, first take? Or you just really don't care? 0:48:50.800 --> 0:48:51.960 He just like good enough. 0:48:52.400 --> 0:48:54.319 I didn't know. Yeah. So if it's a writer and 0:48:54.320 --> 0:48:56.880 they call you like first draft McGuire, what does that 0:48:56.960 --> 0:48:58.120 mean that good? 0:48:58.800 --> 0:49:01.799 Yeah, nailed it first draft? Well, I guess sometimes it 0:49:01.840 --> 0:49:06.279 works like that. But one has right to be suspicious. 0:49:06.640 --> 0:49:11.120 So our two reporters go to Heathville. They meet the 0:49:11.120 --> 0:49:13.480 police chief there and they begin the inquest, and the 0:49:13.480 --> 0:49:15.920 police chief admits that they have not gotten very far 0:49:15.960 --> 0:49:20.240 with the investigation, but that Roy Heath suffered the strangest wounds. 0:49:20.280 --> 0:49:24.120 He had shallow slashes in his throat, too deep for fingernails, 0:49:24.280 --> 0:49:27.040 not deep enough to be a knife. And then the 0:49:27.080 --> 0:49:29.800 coroner says that they could have been the talons of 0:49:29.840 --> 0:49:33.640 a bird, a bird, but the sheriff says they know 0:49:33.760 --> 0:49:36.400 that it wasn't a bird because they found several hairs 0:49:36.440 --> 0:49:38.920 on the shoulder of Heath's coat, so it couldn't have 0:49:38.960 --> 0:49:39.520 been a bird. 0:49:40.360 --> 0:49:42.080 Soide note that there's going to be a lot of 0:49:42.120 --> 0:49:44.280 dialogue in this film related to the idea that people 0:49:44.320 --> 0:49:47.000 think bats are birds and need to be corrected on 0:49:47.040 --> 0:49:47.399 the matter. 0:49:47.880 --> 0:49:51.560 Multiple characters have to correct I think doctor Carruthers and 0:49:51.719 --> 0:49:55.000 Leyton are frequently correcting people on calling bats birds. 0:49:55.040 --> 0:49:57.879 Ye, nobody knows exactly what a bat is, but. 0:49:57.840 --> 0:50:00.840 They say that the hairs on the coat they're not human. 0:50:01.080 --> 0:50:04.359 Lab tests showed that they came from a mouse, and 0:50:04.480 --> 0:50:07.800 Layton says, say, a bat has hair like a mouse. 0:50:07.840 --> 0:50:10.080 What if it was a bat and I don't know, 0:50:10.320 --> 0:50:12.920 I call bs. I think that is too extreme of 0:50:12.920 --> 0:50:16.120 a bull's eye connection there, unless Layton has like undisclosed 0:50:16.400 --> 0:50:20.000 psychic powers or something. Another clue though. They say there 0:50:20.040 --> 0:50:23.280 was a peculiar odor about the wounds, but the police 0:50:23.280 --> 0:50:26.000 were unable to identify it, and now it has been 0:50:26.040 --> 0:50:30.040 destroyed by evaporation. So we're going to go on to 0:50:30.320 --> 0:50:33.520 the meeting with Mary that the reporters are continuing the 0:50:33.560 --> 0:50:36.560 investigation the share were the police chief is just like, 0:50:36.600 --> 0:50:39.359 oh yeah, sure, look into it. You know, you'll get 0:50:39.360 --> 0:50:42.440 no objection from me, which is kind of unusual for 0:50:42.480 --> 0:50:45.040 these films. I feel like it's always a territorial squabble 0:50:45.080 --> 0:50:49.160 about who gets to investigate. So the newspaperman go to 0:50:49.200 --> 0:50:52.840 the Heath residence. Of course, it's immediately clear that Leydon 0:50:52.880 --> 0:50:55.040 and Mary are going to fall in love, and then 0:50:55.040 --> 0:50:57.800 there's a secondary romance as well, because Mary's got the 0:50:58.280 --> 0:51:01.560 french maid, the gorgeous French maid named Maxine, who's running 0:51:01.560 --> 0:51:05.560 around saying, we medemoiselle and apparently she is just wild 0:51:05.719 --> 0:51:10.279 for photojournal East And from their very first introduction one shot, 0:51:10.360 --> 0:51:13.560 Maguire is saying, yes, I will marry this french maid. 0:51:15.280 --> 0:51:19.719 And now they've got competing theories about the murder. They ask, 0:51:19.800 --> 0:51:22.160 you know, did this guy have any enemies? Not really? 0:51:22.800 --> 0:51:25.719 Was it an animal attack? Carruthers says, yes, it was 0:51:25.760 --> 0:51:28.680 a wild animal who attacked him, but Leyden says, I 0:51:28.719 --> 0:51:31.839 don't think so. And this sort of leads into this 0:51:31.920 --> 0:51:34.120 middle section of the movie that's more just sort of 0:51:34.160 --> 0:51:38.080 investigating the murders and more murders taking place. So there 0:51:38.160 --> 0:51:40.239 is a murder of another one of the sons, this 0:51:40.360 --> 0:51:44.160 time it's a guy named Tommy. Legosi gives him the 0:51:44.200 --> 0:51:47.279 lotion to try, and Tommy puts it on and he's like, ooh, 0:51:47.360 --> 0:51:50.560 that feels great, very very soothing, and Legosi says, I 0:51:50.600 --> 0:51:55.200 don't think you will ever use anything else so he's, 0:51:55.280 --> 0:51:57.320 you know, walking around with the lotion on, and he 0:51:57.360 --> 0:52:00.359 gets attacked by a bat in the garden patio. Now 0:52:00.719 --> 0:52:04.120 at this bad attack, the journalists witness it, they see 0:52:04.120 --> 0:52:06.680 it happen, and so they try to report on it. 0:52:06.719 --> 0:52:08.800 They call it McGinty. They're like, yeah, he was attacked 0:52:08.800 --> 0:52:11.880 by a devil bat. McGuinty doesn't believe them at first, 0:52:11.920 --> 0:52:13.920 but then he does run with their story and the 0:52:13.920 --> 0:52:18.319 headline is mysterious devil bat kills Thomas Heath. I do 0:52:18.480 --> 0:52:21.200 like this movie shows us lots of newspaper headlines. 0:52:21.600 --> 0:52:24.480 Yeah. My one disappointment was I could make any of 0:52:24.560 --> 0:52:28.560 the lower headlines out. You know, that's always there's always 0:52:28.600 --> 0:52:30.680 a lot of fun there, especially in like parodies on 0:52:30.760 --> 0:52:33.399 the Simpson like, what are the stories that didn't make 0:52:34.360 --> 0:52:38.279 the very top because of whatever supernatural shenanigans are going on. 0:52:38.600 --> 0:52:40.799 I feel like multiple times we see a newspaper and 0:52:40.840 --> 0:52:46.640 there's another article with the headline praise from cheerleaders, m okay, 0:52:46.840 --> 0:52:50.600 otherwise a slow news day. Oh, and then they show 0:52:50.640 --> 0:52:52.960 a second paper that says who will be the devil 0:52:52.960 --> 0:52:56.680 Bat's next victim? Villagers cringe and terror of murderer. 0:52:57.080 --> 0:52:57.279 Oh. 0:52:57.360 --> 0:52:59.640 In another one of the articles. It has the headline 0:52:59.680 --> 0:53:01.160 para please the great. 0:53:01.280 --> 0:53:03.719 What yeah local theater. 0:53:03.840 --> 0:53:07.759 Maybe I don't know Laura mipsum. So anyway, there's this 0:53:07.800 --> 0:53:10.239 whole middle section where they've seen the Devil Bat. But 0:53:10.360 --> 0:53:12.640 McGinty's like, hey, I need a photo. We got to 0:53:12.719 --> 0:53:16.600 run a photo, So they stage a hoax photo using 0:53:16.640 --> 0:53:20.080 a stuffed bat from a taxidermy shop. Yes. 0:53:20.239 --> 0:53:23.080 I loved and hated this because it's just such a weird, 0:53:23.120 --> 0:53:26.120 wacky element that suddenly like journalistic integrities out the window 0:53:26.160 --> 0:53:28.440 and they're going to fake this shot. But then it 0:53:28.520 --> 0:53:31.560 does feel from a filmmaking standpoint like kind of an 0:53:31.719 --> 0:53:34.920 error because, let's face it, these bat effects, I think 0:53:34.920 --> 0:53:37.960 they're pretty great considering the budget and the time period. 0:53:38.280 --> 0:53:43.680 But when you also introduce a fake, fake bat into 0:53:43.800 --> 0:53:46.480 the scenario, that fake bat looks too much like the 0:53:46.520 --> 0:53:48.560 actual bat. Yes, and it makes me second guess the 0:53:48.600 --> 0:53:51.960 effects on some level. So I didn't didn't like that. 0:53:52.239 --> 0:53:54.640 Same thought the hoax bat looks the same as the 0:53:54.680 --> 0:53:55.520 real devil bat. 0:53:55.760 --> 0:53:58.080 Yeah, It's like if somebody wears a monster mask in 0:53:58.160 --> 0:54:01.560 a movie that also features a monster, that monster mask 0:54:01.920 --> 0:54:05.560 can't look too good and your actual monster effects better 0:54:05.600 --> 0:54:06.680 be like a cut above. 0:54:06.960 --> 0:54:10.480 Yes, yeah, yeah so this Oh but also this movie 0:54:10.560 --> 0:54:14.600 has a debunking scene. So the hoax photo is debunked 0:54:14.680 --> 0:54:18.200 by a skeptical scientist on a national radio program, and 0:54:18.239 --> 0:54:20.399 it shows just like everybody in the country sitting around 0:54:20.480 --> 0:54:24.040 listening to this radio program. They introduce a scientist named 0:54:24.120 --> 0:54:28.680 Professor Percival Garland Rains, whom the announcer calls the world's 0:54:28.840 --> 0:54:33.560 greatest authority on animals, and Rains says that devil bats 0:54:33.600 --> 0:54:36.640 may have existed in the dark ages when people lived 0:54:36.680 --> 0:54:39.920 in caves, but not anymore, and he has proof that 0:54:39.960 --> 0:54:42.480 the photo is a fake. He analyzed it under a 0:54:42.520 --> 0:54:45.520 magnifying glass, and he says the bat has a tag 0:54:45.600 --> 0:54:49.080 on it which says made in Japan. But I was thinking, 0:54:49.120 --> 0:54:51.040 wait a minute, what if the real devil bat is 0:54:51.080 --> 0:54:55.320 simply a manufactured object, you know, created by magic? 0:54:55.640 --> 0:55:00.799 How did they get a fake bat? You're shactured? Yeah, 0:55:00.840 --> 0:55:04.080 either across the ocean or like, are they selling these 0:55:04.120 --> 0:55:06.800 at the local store? Did just so many questions arise 0:55:06.840 --> 0:55:07.120 from this. 0:55:07.400 --> 0:55:09.880 I would have thought the taxidermy bats would be a 0:55:09.920 --> 0:55:11.520 more locally produced article. 0:55:11.640 --> 0:55:21.239 Yeah. 0:55:21.280 --> 0:55:23.200 Oh hey, folks were back. We had to just take 0:55:23.239 --> 0:55:25.319 a break in the middle of our recording session. But 0:55:25.840 --> 0:55:28.200 now we are in real time a few hours later, 0:55:28.280 --> 0:55:31.759 continuing our discussion of the devil bat So where did 0:55:31.840 --> 0:55:34.280 we leave off? It was where, Oh, they just pulled 0:55:34.280 --> 0:55:36.440 off the hoax and they got caught. They got caught 0:55:36.480 --> 0:55:37.520 by the radio guy. 0:55:39.520 --> 0:55:41.600 Yeah, yeah, they attempted to do the fake photo. And 0:55:41.719 --> 0:55:43.960 is it. Now we're in just a little bit where like, 0:55:44.000 --> 0:55:45.680 basically it's like, I've got to fire you guys. This 0:55:45.760 --> 0:55:48.719 is awful, and they're like, you can't fire us because 0:55:48.719 --> 0:55:51.400 we're onto this great case. We're going to keep working. 0:55:51.120 --> 0:55:54.120 It, that's right. So McGinty, they're on the phone with McGuinty, 0:55:54.280 --> 0:55:58.000 the chief the editor, and he fires Leyton and one 0:55:58.040 --> 0:56:02.200 shot McGuire though I guess they did so fair enough. Yeah, 0:56:02.239 --> 0:56:04.279 and obviously this is not the first time he has 0:56:04.320 --> 0:56:06.879 fired them. They even say so. They're like, you'll hire 0:56:06.920 --> 0:56:10.600 us back, you always do. But the real downside they 0:56:10.600 --> 0:56:12.719 don't seem all that upset about getting fired. The real 0:56:12.719 --> 0:56:15.359 downside is there now on the outs with their their 0:56:15.400 --> 0:56:18.400 new lady friends, Mary and Maxine are not happy with 0:56:18.440 --> 0:56:22.239 them for doing a hoax, especially since this hoax involves 0:56:22.360 --> 0:56:27.320 the creature that allegedly killed their brothers and family friends 0:56:27.320 --> 0:56:29.000 and so forth, and almost fiance. 0:56:29.560 --> 0:56:32.839 Yeah, it seems like a massiveness step, especially on that angle. 0:56:33.000 --> 0:56:35.160 But Layton's a real go getter. He doesn't let this 0:56:36.400 --> 0:56:39.720 put him to bed. He keeps investigating, and he finds 0:56:39.719 --> 0:56:42.920 out about the history of Carruthers and the Heath Company. 0:56:43.000 --> 0:56:45.759 He finds out the Caruthers missed out on getting part 0:56:45.760 --> 0:56:48.359 of the Heath Company fortune by just being being paid 0:56:48.400 --> 0:56:52.799 in cash instead. And there's some notes somewhere in here 0:56:52.840 --> 0:56:56.880 about like a chemist examines the Legosi lotion and finds 0:56:56.920 --> 0:56:59.880 out that it has a previously unknown element in it 0:57:00.239 --> 0:57:04.360 that could not be identified. I love this detail. It 0:57:04.400 --> 0:57:08.920 seems a bit much, but Bella explains that the otherwise 0:57:09.040 --> 0:57:13.040 unknown element was something he found in Tibet, which the 0:57:13.200 --> 0:57:15.200 Lamas use in their ceremonies. 0:57:15.960 --> 0:57:19.440 Okay, all right, I don't know what those ceremonies could be. 0:57:19.800 --> 0:57:24.080 It gets bats riled up in the scenario, but okay, fair. 0:57:23.960 --> 0:57:28.520 Enough anyway, So Leyton goes to confront Legosi with questions 0:57:28.520 --> 0:57:30.160 about all this stuff that they take him some of 0:57:30.200 --> 0:57:34.480 the after shape to analyze, I believe, and Legosi is like, oh, 0:57:34.520 --> 0:57:36.400 you know, to the chief of police and to Leyton, 0:57:36.440 --> 0:57:38.640 why didn't you both each take a bottle of this 0:57:38.680 --> 0:57:41.479 stuff home with you and use it. Now the chief 0:57:41.520 --> 0:57:43.800 of police he's having none of it. He says, if 0:57:43.840 --> 0:57:46.959 my wife ever smelled perfume on me, she'd suspect me. Sure, 0:57:47.600 --> 0:57:50.520 so he won't take it. But Leyton he's like, yeah, sure, 0:57:50.720 --> 0:57:53.400 I'll take some. And of course he gets attacked later 0:57:53.480 --> 0:57:55.480 that night while he is sitting out in the garden 0:57:55.560 --> 0:57:58.640 with one shot. But this actually works out to their 0:57:58.640 --> 0:58:02.000 benefit because Leyden pulled a revolver out of his coat pocket, 0:58:02.320 --> 0:58:06.120 shoots the devil bat, kills the devil bat. So the 0:58:06.160 --> 0:58:08.480 devil Bat wasn't I don't know all that threatening. In 0:58:08.520 --> 0:58:12.000 the end, it was destroyed by rather mundane means. And 0:58:12.080 --> 0:58:15.520 then it's the biggest story on all the newspapers. The 0:58:15.560 --> 0:58:19.840 headline is reporter kills devil bat, subhead shoots monster. 0:58:21.280 --> 0:58:23.520 Well, I wondered, did he write this story for the paper? 0:58:23.560 --> 0:58:26.680 That seems like it would be a massive misstep as well, 0:58:26.720 --> 0:58:28.919 But I don't think he would. He would probably fight 0:58:29.000 --> 0:58:30.880 for it. He's like, look, I killed the devil bat, 0:58:30.960 --> 0:58:34.600 I should get to write the article. Yes, I can 0:58:35.240 --> 0:58:38.560 maintain my journalistic integrity. Yes, I did just try and 0:58:38.600 --> 0:58:39.480 fake a bat photo. 0:58:40.920 --> 0:58:45.560 Do you see the article underneath shoots monster is called Americanism. 0:58:46.200 --> 0:58:48.640 I was trying to figure or if the Americanism is 0:58:48.720 --> 0:58:50.720 part of the monster shooting or is this a separate 0:58:51.000 --> 0:58:54.360 like article. There's a sub section somebody's like Weekly Callum 0:58:54.360 --> 0:58:55.200 on Americanism. 0:58:55.400 --> 0:58:58.400 In a classic display of Americanism, the reporter has shot 0:58:58.440 --> 0:59:02.120 the devil bat. But you know now that they've actually 0:59:02.120 --> 0:59:05.400 got a real dead devil bat corpse in hand, and 0:59:05.480 --> 0:59:08.960 not just a taxidermid object. They can prove they were 0:59:09.000 --> 0:59:12.960 right all along. So everybody has to eat crow. There's 0:59:13.000 --> 0:59:16.480 another radio program with the remember the skeptic professor rains. 0:59:16.880 --> 0:59:19.440 He comes back. He's like, look, I was wrong. The 0:59:19.440 --> 0:59:22.480 devil bat does exist, and it is the last of 0:59:22.520 --> 0:59:26.240 its kind, a giant bat from the Neolithic Age, which 0:59:26.240 --> 0:59:29.920 he explains is another word for the Stone Age. Thank you, professor. 0:59:30.280 --> 0:59:32.280 Of course, we know this is not true. We know 0:59:32.400 --> 0:59:36.240 that this bat is not an ancient creature. It is 0:59:36.480 --> 0:59:39.320 newly cooked up in Lagosi's microwave. 0:59:39.760 --> 0:59:42.080 How but he's the foremost authority on animals. 0:59:42.960 --> 0:59:46.440 Well yeah, I mean, maybe he recognizes the process that's 0:59:46.480 --> 0:59:48.720 going on, but he doesn't understand the technology involved. 0:59:49.400 --> 0:59:51.560 Shows how much you know, professor, get out of your 0:59:51.600 --> 0:59:55.360 ivory tower. You don't even know about Bella Legosi's bat microwave. 0:59:55.840 --> 0:59:58.440 So Bella has to cook up another bat from the freezer, 0:59:58.440 --> 1:00:01.360 which he does. He he like, gets it out and 1:00:01.400 --> 1:00:04.000 he cooks it with the electricity, and then he goes 1:00:04.040 --> 1:00:06.480 and checks the bat with the stethoscope and he's smiling. 1:00:06.680 --> 1:00:09.440 He says, splendid, you will be even greater than your 1:00:09.520 --> 1:00:14.080 unfortunate predecessor, and then the bat screams in stock footage 1:00:14.480 --> 1:00:18.320 and he's like, enraged, aren't you fine? I'm enraged also 1:00:18.560 --> 1:00:21.760 tonight I shall call on Henry Morton and you shall 1:00:21.800 --> 1:00:25.480 strike him down. So we get another scene, another one 1:00:25.480 --> 1:00:28.200 of these classic scenes of Bella convincing somebody to put 1:00:28.240 --> 1:00:31.200 the lotion on their skin. He goes to the offices 1:00:31.240 --> 1:00:35.480 of Heath Cosmetics where he's showing everything to Morton, the 1:00:35.480 --> 1:00:38.280 big boss, and he's like, you know, my lotion's so good, 1:00:38.320 --> 1:00:40.560 try it out, and Morton says, no, I'll try it 1:00:40.600 --> 1:00:43.960 tomorrow after I shave, you know, because it's after shave. 1:00:44.640 --> 1:00:47.560 He says, quote, then my skin will be more tender 1:00:47.600 --> 1:00:50.680 and receptive to the lotion, and Legosi is like, eh, 1:00:50.720 --> 1:00:52.920 why not try it now? See you can put it 1:00:53.040 --> 1:00:55.880 right over the jugular vein, where the skin is always 1:00:55.960 --> 1:00:59.800 tender and receptive to a lotion. Once again, comments about 1:00:59.880 --> 1:01:02.880 is it too strong? He's like, no, no, no, it'll 1:01:02.920 --> 1:01:05.840 evaporate quickly. So he sort of bullies Morton into putting 1:01:05.840 --> 1:01:09.320 the lotion on his throat. Then Morton starts gloating about 1:01:09.320 --> 1:01:12.200 how all of the doctor's formulas have been highly successful 1:01:12.240 --> 1:01:14.400 and it was quite foolish of him to take cash 1:01:14.440 --> 1:01:16.280 for his work instead of a cut of the profits. 1:01:16.320 --> 1:01:18.400 Otherwise he would be he would be a rich man now, 1:01:18.880 --> 1:01:21.800 So you're not feeling that bad for Morton's just being 1:01:21.840 --> 1:01:22.480 a jerk here. 1:01:23.080 --> 1:01:25.800 Yeah, yeah, he is. He absolutely is, though he does 1:01:25.840 --> 1:01:28.560 seem a bit oblivious too, like so he's not I 1:01:28.600 --> 1:01:31.600 don't know, it's a weird mix of him being kind 1:01:31.640 --> 1:01:36.560 of like accidentally jerky and still a bit maliciously jerky. 1:01:36.880 --> 1:01:40.160 Yeah, yeah, you're right. He's like, huh, isn't it funny? 1:01:40.200 --> 1:01:41.840 You're the one that did the work, but I got 1:01:41.920 --> 1:01:43.680 rich and that that's funny, isn't it. 1:01:43.880 --> 1:01:47.160 Yeah? And then and he continues here as Legosi keeps 1:01:47.200 --> 1:01:51.280 making even more like cutting and suggestive comments that imply 1:01:51.440 --> 1:01:53.120 that he has been murdering people with bats. 1:01:53.280 --> 1:01:55.960 Yeah, that's right. So he's like, you know, you've had 1:01:55.960 --> 1:01:58.240 a lot of fun in your laboratory with your experiments, 1:01:58.320 --> 1:02:01.120 dreaming up something new. You're a dreamer, Doc, Money's bad 1:02:01.200 --> 1:02:05.120 for dreamers. And Legosi is just dissecting Morton's brain with 1:02:05.200 --> 1:02:09.800 his eyes, and Legosi tells more tells Morton that his 1:02:09.800 --> 1:02:13.320 feeble intellect cannot begin to comprehend the magnitude of his 1:02:13.360 --> 1:02:17.280 scientific discoveries. Morton's like, what discovery are you talking about? 1:02:17.560 --> 1:02:19.960 And he says when you find out, Henry, it will 1:02:20.000 --> 1:02:26.440 be too late for you anyway, good night. Oh and 1:02:26.600 --> 1:02:29.360 also before he leaves, he mentioned something about having already 1:02:29.440 --> 1:02:32.760 proved his discovery three times. There have been three murders. 1:02:33.240 --> 1:02:36.080 Yeah, and this still doesn't instantly sink in for Morton. 1:02:37.240 --> 1:02:38.040 It takes a minute. 1:02:38.080 --> 1:02:38.840 It takes a minute. 1:02:39.080 --> 1:02:41.720 Morton starts thinking about that, and he's like, huh. So 1:02:41.760 --> 1:02:43.960 he puts in a phone call to Martin Heath and 1:02:44.000 --> 1:02:45.640 he's like, I think I've got a clue to solve 1:02:45.640 --> 1:02:48.840 the murders. He says, if half of what I suspect 1:02:48.920 --> 1:02:51.760 is true. It's the most diabolical plot then a madman 1:02:51.840 --> 1:02:55.880 ever concocted. So they're both out driving on a dark 1:02:56.000 --> 1:02:59.680 road and Legosi leaves first, and he's also going to 1:02:59.800 --> 1:03:04.160 moreton Hates house. But Lugosi gets there before Morton and 1:03:04.280 --> 1:03:06.880 he parks. He opens the trunk of his car and 1:03:06.920 --> 1:03:09.440 a bat just screams and flies out of the trunk. 1:03:10.560 --> 1:03:13.120 And so, of course, right right after this, Morton arrives. 1:03:13.160 --> 1:03:16.160 But the bat it gets him. It devil bats him. 1:03:16.520 --> 1:03:18.480 Now in this case, a bunch of the guys in 1:03:18.520 --> 1:03:20.840 the house like they don't I think they don't see 1:03:20.880 --> 1:03:23.800 the bat, but they see Morton like he's banging on 1:03:23.840 --> 1:03:25.800 the door screaming for help, and they go and open 1:03:25.840 --> 1:03:29.560 the door and he just like collapses into the foyer dead. Uh, 1:03:29.600 --> 1:03:32.760 And you know they're like, oh, whoop's another one. So 1:03:33.000 --> 1:03:36.200 we see a newspaper headline again call and it's Devil 1:03:36.240 --> 1:03:39.520 Bat's mate kills Henry Morton. Yeah, I don't know, how 1:03:39.520 --> 1:03:40.600 do they know it's his mate? 1:03:41.120 --> 1:03:43.200 Yeah? I feel like that that headline. The editor was 1:03:43.200 --> 1:03:44.800 playing it up a little bit, like let's get a 1:03:44.840 --> 1:03:46.720 love angle in here between the bats. 1:03:46.880 --> 1:03:47.919 Bride of Devil Bat. 1:03:48.080 --> 1:03:50.960 Yeah, that was probably one of the candidates. 1:03:51.320 --> 1:03:53.400 Oh and while it's showing us all the headlines this 1:03:53.480 --> 1:03:56.520 time this has happened before. It's like superimposing the shots 1:03:56.560 --> 1:03:59.600 of the newspaper with that footage of like close up 1:03:59.640 --> 1:04:04.040 footage of a bat face. So who's the next victim 1:04:04.120 --> 1:04:06.720 going to be? Well, we see a silhouette of Bella 1:04:06.800 --> 1:04:09.440 Lagosi wearing a hat in the dark room with the 1:04:09.440 --> 1:04:13.360 bottle of his formula and he's surreptitiously adding it to something. 1:04:13.440 --> 1:04:17.439 What could it be? Well, after the scene, we get 1:04:17.520 --> 1:04:21.480 a scene where Leyden Leyton is addressing Martin Heath, Mary 1:04:21.680 --> 1:04:25.360 Legosi and one shot Maguire and he explains, you know, 1:04:25.400 --> 1:04:28.360 he's very glad that mister Heath invited him to come 1:04:28.440 --> 1:04:31.200 live in their home until Devil Bat two is defeated, 1:04:31.840 --> 1:04:34.080 because he's worried about Mary, right, you know, he thinks 1:04:34.080 --> 1:04:38.240 she may be targeted next. It's logical, but Heath hasn't 1:04:38.320 --> 1:04:40.440 quite caught on yet. He's like, why would you think that? 1:04:41.200 --> 1:04:44.800 And Leydon explains, well, the other victims were members of 1:04:44.840 --> 1:04:48.240 the Morton and Heath families. Therefore, he concludes that someone 1:04:48.320 --> 1:04:52.440 is using the bat to wipe out these two families. Legosi, 1:04:52.560 --> 1:04:55.959 of course, claims this is preposterous. He says the thought 1:04:56.000 --> 1:05:00.800 of a human controlling a bat is fantastical, and as 1:05:00.840 --> 1:05:03.760 a counterexample, he points out that even one shot McGuire 1:05:03.960 --> 1:05:05.880 was attacked by a bat, and he's not a heather 1:05:06.000 --> 1:05:09.000 A Morton, so that's a good point. But one shot 1:05:09.080 --> 1:05:12.320 McGuire argues, Now, wait a second, I'm basically a member 1:05:12.360 --> 1:05:14.800 of this family because I am definitely going to get 1:05:14.840 --> 1:05:16.560 married to the French maid. 1:05:16.880 --> 1:05:18.360 Oh well, yeah, that works out. 1:05:18.640 --> 1:05:20.800 So they all say they're good nights, and then Lugosi 1:05:21.080 --> 1:05:23.880 once again does it instance you know, Mary says good 1:05:23.920 --> 1:05:27.600 night to him and he says goodbye Mary. So later 1:05:27.640 --> 1:05:29.920 we see Mary getting ready for bed. She wonders if 1:05:30.080 --> 1:05:33.880 Maxine has filled her perfume bottles with something new, because 1:05:33.880 --> 1:05:37.280 there is a strong, smelling new fragrance in them. Maxine 1:05:37.280 --> 1:05:40.080 denies it, and Mary concludes that it must have been 1:05:40.080 --> 1:05:44.520 her father, who apparently secretly switcheroose her perfume every time 1:05:44.560 --> 1:05:49.920 his factory produces a new one. That's a bold move. Also, 1:05:50.160 --> 1:05:51.840 she's putting on perfume to go to bed. 1:05:52.920 --> 1:05:55.680 I mean, I don't maybe she skipped a shower, don't. 1:05:55.720 --> 1:05:57.200 I don't really know what the rules here. 1:05:57.680 --> 1:05:59.200 And maybe that was the thing in the fortieth or 1:05:59.280 --> 1:06:01.000 maybe people do that. I don't know what people do 1:06:01.080 --> 1:06:03.320 with perfume. Do people put on perfume to go to bed? 1:06:03.320 --> 1:06:03.840 Maybe they do? 1:06:04.160 --> 1:06:06.680 After this moody though, you'll never put on perfume before 1:06:06.680 --> 1:06:07.560 you go to bed again. 1:06:08.400 --> 1:06:12.440 Yeah. So anyway, so Mary goes to bed and we 1:06:12.480 --> 1:06:14.880 see the bat fly out and what's gonna happen. Of 1:06:14.920 --> 1:06:16.480 course you know it's gonna come to her room, but 1:06:16.520 --> 1:06:19.160 it actually doesn't get in. It like zooms through the night, 1:06:19.240 --> 1:06:22.400 screeching until it reaches Mary's window and then it's just 1:06:22.440 --> 1:06:24.920 there banging against the window and she wakes up alarmed. 1:06:25.000 --> 1:06:28.080 She screams. All the dudes come running and Mary survives 1:06:28.080 --> 1:06:31.480 the night. But the next morning there's an investigation what 1:06:31.680 --> 1:06:35.920 could have happened, and they discover the perfume switch. So Leyden, 1:06:36.080 --> 1:06:38.720 he's finally putting all the pieces together here. He thinks 1:06:38.720 --> 1:06:40.880 he's figured out the case, and he comes up with 1:06:40.880 --> 1:06:44.080 a plan. He's like, Okay, we're gonna lie to Carrothers 1:06:44.080 --> 1:06:47.440 and make him think that Mary was injured or perhaps 1:06:47.600 --> 1:06:50.240 driven insane by the bat, and then we're going to 1:06:50.320 --> 1:06:52.880 trick him into coming over to the house and then 1:06:53.000 --> 1:06:56.800 stall him here for time. Meanwhile, Leyden's gonna run around 1:06:56.840 --> 1:07:00.200 and do what he calls a little private bat hunting. 1:07:01.280 --> 1:07:03.440 What this really means is he's going up to Carruther's 1:07:03.560 --> 1:07:07.040 lab to snoop around. He does that, and he finds 1:07:07.160 --> 1:07:09.680 the secret passageway and goes into the bat dungeon. 1:07:10.000 --> 1:07:12.640 All right, so now all is becoming revealed. 1:07:13.000 --> 1:07:15.840 But the others don't do a great job at their 1:07:15.880 --> 1:07:18.680 part of this plan. So like they're trying to stall 1:07:18.760 --> 1:07:21.720 corre others at the house and he's trying to leave 1:07:21.760 --> 1:07:23.360 if he needs to get back to his lab, and 1:07:24.120 --> 1:07:26.440 one shot Maguire is like, I don't feel so good. 1:07:26.520 --> 1:07:28.040 You ought to see my tongue. It looks like a 1:07:28.040 --> 1:07:31.520 squirrel's tail. But Carrothers just advises him to take a 1:07:31.520 --> 1:07:35.840 mercury compound. And so Carrothers goes back to the lab. 1:07:35.880 --> 1:07:38.600 There's some cat and mouse there with Leyden sneaking around 1:07:38.640 --> 1:07:42.800 while Carrothers is, you know, doing things, and Leyden witnesses 1:07:42.840 --> 1:07:46.439 corro Others talking to his bats. So there's no going 1:07:46.480 --> 1:07:50.720 back now. He knows what's up. I think he's going 1:07:50.760 --> 1:07:53.160 to let them out for the night, because if you 1:07:53.200 --> 1:07:55.440 interpreted this the same way, Rob, I think he thinks 1:07:55.480 --> 1:07:57.919 the jig is up and he doesn't want the bats around. 1:07:57.960 --> 1:07:59.320 If somebody comes snooping. 1:08:00.240 --> 1:08:02.760 Let him go, like flush the bats down the toe. 1:08:02.960 --> 1:08:09.080 Yeah, exactly. And so Leyden sneaks around around the house, 1:08:09.160 --> 1:08:11.560 knocks on the front door, and he asks for some 1:08:11.600 --> 1:08:13.760 of the shaving lotion. He says he thinks that if 1:08:13.800 --> 1:08:17.200 he douses himself in it, it might attract the killer 1:08:17.800 --> 1:08:20.759 Legosi plays dumb, but you know, gives him the bottle anyway, 1:08:21.120 --> 1:08:23.599 and Leyden dabs some around his throat and he really 1:08:23.680 --> 1:08:26.040 gets it up in there, and he explains his plan 1:08:26.120 --> 1:08:28.360 is to go sit in the garden and quote, when 1:08:28.400 --> 1:08:30.960 the killer bat does one of its power dives, I'll 1:08:31.000 --> 1:08:33.680 blast it, which is what he did last time. So 1:08:33.760 --> 1:08:35.880 I guess he's planning to do this again. Maybe he's 1:08:35.880 --> 1:08:40.080 hoping there are only two bats total. And so Carruthers 1:08:40.120 --> 1:08:43.760 agrees to come along and watch this experiment. So they 1:08:43.800 --> 1:08:46.639 have a little tense conversation in the garden at night. 1:08:47.240 --> 1:08:49.800 They're a little apprehensive, or at least corrothers is. They 1:08:49.840 --> 1:08:53.400 trade some comments with heavy implication that maybe they understand 1:08:53.439 --> 1:08:56.920 one another's motives. And then suddenly, at one point in 1:08:56.960 --> 1:08:59.439 the conversation, Leyden just like tosses a bunch of the 1:08:59.479 --> 1:09:02.640 shaving low on her others and then reveals that he 1:09:02.760 --> 1:09:05.920 knows the whole plot. And so at first Carruthers seems 1:09:05.960 --> 1:09:08.719 weirdly kind of gloomy. He just kind of accepts his fate, 1:09:09.120 --> 1:09:10.960 but then tries to make a break for it, Like 1:09:11.000 --> 1:09:13.320 he tries to grab and wrestle the gun from Leyden, 1:09:13.680 --> 1:09:16.720 but the devil Bat appears and everybody scatters. 1:09:16.760 --> 1:09:18.559 Right right, And you know what's going to happen next? 1:09:18.880 --> 1:09:21.040 What is the come uppance of any mad scientist that 1:09:21.080 --> 1:09:22.200 creates monsters? Oh? 1:09:22.240 --> 1:09:25.439 Of course foiled by his own monster. Yeah, not foiled, 1:09:25.680 --> 1:09:28.840 so Corruthers, Well, first he tries to trick Mary into 1:09:28.880 --> 1:09:31.519 coming back to his lab, but he doesn't make it. 1:09:31.560 --> 1:09:34.320 He gets he gets devil Bat dive bombed in the 1:09:34.360 --> 1:09:39.000 garden on the way there, and so then Leyden comes 1:09:39.000 --> 1:09:41.639 and has to explain to Mary. I laughed out loud 1:09:41.680 --> 1:09:44.400 at this part where he's like the devil Bat belonged 1:09:44.400 --> 1:09:47.799 to him, Mary, He committed those murders, and then Mary 1:09:47.920 --> 1:09:50.840 just lays her head on Leyden's shoulder and then it's 1:09:50.880 --> 1:09:52.400 the end. Title the end. 1:09:52.720 --> 1:09:54.479 Yeah, they're like, check on the doctor, and they're like, 1:09:54.479 --> 1:09:56.040 I don't think the doc made. Yeah. 1:09:56.280 --> 1:09:59.639 I love the abruptness with which these older movies end 1:09:59.760 --> 1:10:03.760 is just the bad guy dies, the leading lady like 1:10:03.840 --> 1:10:06.920 kisses or layser head on the shoulder of the leading man, 1:10:07.439 --> 1:10:10.280 and then you get title card, the end, all within 1:10:10.600 --> 1:10:11.560 twenty seconds. 1:10:11.880 --> 1:10:13.880 Yeah, I mean, it's been over an hour. People need 1:10:13.920 --> 1:10:16.320 to get home from the theater and or they need 1:10:16.360 --> 1:10:19.000 to watch the next movie that's playing immediately after this one. 1:10:19.120 --> 1:10:21.599 But I think All Things Considered is a pretty good 1:10:21.640 --> 1:10:24.000 final showdown, like with the back and forth between the 1:10:24.040 --> 1:10:29.720 hero and the villain in sometimes they're even more by 1:10:29.720 --> 1:10:33.680 the books than this just We definitely watched some of 1:10:33.680 --> 1:10:36.200 those and talked about them on Weird House Cinema, where 1:10:36.240 --> 1:10:38.360 it's like bad guy gets makes a break for it 1:10:38.360 --> 1:10:41.000 and is shot by the police, Monster is shot by 1:10:41.040 --> 1:10:43.600 the police, Monster is killed. 1:10:43.280 --> 1:10:46.200 By the military. 1:10:46.680 --> 1:10:48.280 Arrives Clint Eastwood is in a jet plane. 1:10:48.320 --> 1:10:49.680 Yeah, exactly. Tarantula. 1:10:49.800 --> 1:10:52.800 Yeah, so this one is a little more thought out 1:10:52.840 --> 1:10:55.439 than that a little less by the numbers, but then 1:10:55.479 --> 1:10:59.639 it does have that classic abrupt thirties and forties ending, 1:10:59.720 --> 1:11:02.559 which yeah, I mean it cleans it up nicely. It's 1:11:02.560 --> 1:11:03.519 just like bam, that's it. 1:11:04.479 --> 1:11:07.880 Nothing could destroy the monster except the power of explosives. 1:11:09.200 --> 1:11:12.519 And it's just so ridiculous that, granted years later, someone 1:11:12.560 --> 1:11:14.880 would say, I got an idea for a sequel to 1:11:14.880 --> 1:11:18.120 this picture. What if he didn't do those murders. The 1:11:18.200 --> 1:11:21.760 whole movie was about him doing the murders. It's not 1:11:21.880 --> 1:11:22.360 in question. 1:11:22.640 --> 1:11:24.080 I've almost got to watch that now. 1:11:24.280 --> 1:11:26.200 Oh, I don't know. It might maybe it's fun. I 1:11:26.240 --> 1:11:28.679 don't know. I haven't seen it. But it doesn't have legosy. 1:11:28.920 --> 1:11:31.439 Oh it's called Devil Bat's Daughter, that's what it. 1:11:31.360 --> 1:11:34.519 Is, which is weird because she's she's not the daughter 1:11:34.560 --> 1:11:36.439 of the Devil Bat, she's Corrother's daughter. 1:11:36.520 --> 1:11:39.559 But you know, yeah, the poster makes it look like 1:11:39.560 --> 1:11:40.720 a Western. 1:11:40.720 --> 1:11:42.479 Yeah, I don't know. It's supposedly, yeah, less of a 1:11:42.520 --> 1:11:44.840 horror film. And it has Miss America from nineteen forty 1:11:44.880 --> 1:11:47.679 one in it, so oh it's got that going for it. Okay, 1:11:48.400 --> 1:11:51.559 all right, so there you have it. Devil Bat, The 1:11:51.640 --> 1:11:57.320 Devil Bat sorry, except no substitutes. Yeah, this is a 1:11:57.040 --> 1:12:01.320 it's it's a surprisingly fun watch. Flick moved right along, 1:12:02.600 --> 1:12:04.000 had some fun performances in it. 1:12:04.280 --> 1:12:06.639 I feel like we really shouldn't stop here. We should 1:12:06.720 --> 1:12:10.800 just keep going with killer bat movies and find them, 1:12:11.000 --> 1:12:14.040 rank them, discuss what they have in common, the themes they address. 1:12:14.400 --> 1:12:17.400 To what extent was Devil Bat really about the bats? 1:12:17.800 --> 1:12:20.280 And to what extent was it really about pride and lotion? 1:12:21.160 --> 1:12:23.679 Yeah? I think it essentially is about pride and lotion, 1:12:23.840 --> 1:12:27.200 much like Breaking Bad. His Breaking Bad is not really 1:12:27.240 --> 1:12:32.400 about the meth, it's about other things. But undeniably a 1:12:32.720 --> 1:12:36.200 giant bat movie. So yeah, I'd be interesting to look 1:12:36.240 --> 1:12:37.880 and see what all we have to consider in terms 1:12:37.880 --> 1:12:39.640 of other giant bad films, aside from the ones we 1:12:39.720 --> 1:12:43.360 already mentioned, like Life Force and possibly Friday Night. 1:12:43.600 --> 1:12:46.560 Oh what do you know? The British Film Institute website 1:12:46.600 --> 1:12:49.080 has a list of ten great bat films. 1:12:49.360 --> 1:12:51.920 Oh excellent, just straight up bat films, not like bad 1:12:52.000 --> 1:12:55.040 human hybrids, because that's a kind of another subgenre which 1:12:55.320 --> 1:12:57.439 I can think of at least one really good example there. 1:12:57.960 --> 1:13:01.960 But oh, one of the examples is Abominable Doctor Fibes 1:13:02.000 --> 1:13:04.559 because remember one of the guys gets attacked by bats. 1:13:04.720 --> 1:13:07.839 Oh that's right. Yeah. I mean, if you have vampires 1:13:07.880 --> 1:13:09.439 in your film, there's a very good chance you can 1:13:09.479 --> 1:13:11.439 have bats. There's a good chance is going to turn 1:13:11.479 --> 1:13:16.439 into a bat or bats, and uh yeah, I'm here 1:13:16.479 --> 1:13:16.720 for it. 1:13:17.000 --> 1:13:18.759 All right. I think that does it for this one. 1:13:19.120 --> 1:13:20.840 All right, we'll go ahead and close it out. But 1:13:21.320 --> 1:13:23.479 just a reminder that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is 1:13:23.520 --> 1:13:26.759 primarily a science and culture podcast. Core episodes on Tuesdays 1:13:26.760 --> 1:13:29.000 and Thursdays, but on Fridays we set aside most serious 1:13:29.040 --> 1:13:31.360 concerns to just talk about a weird film on Weird 1:13:31.400 --> 1:13:33.120 House Cinema. If you want to see a list of 1:13:33.160 --> 1:13:34.920 all the episodes we've done over the years, look us 1:13:35.000 --> 1:13:36.920 up on the letterbox dot com. That's l E T 1:13:36.920 --> 1:13:39.040 T E R bo x D dot com. Our profile 1:13:39.120 --> 1:13:41.400 is weird House and we got a list right there. 1:13:41.439 --> 1:13:43.960 You can look at it, look at all the fun 1:13:44.640 --> 1:13:47.759 you know, box arts and poster arts. You can arrange 1:13:47.760 --> 1:13:49.880 things by decade and see what we've gotten into, what 1:13:49.920 --> 1:13:53.240 we haven't gotten into. Right in with your suggestions, because 1:13:53.280 --> 1:13:55.160 we always want to hear what kind of films you'd 1:13:55.200 --> 1:13:57.479 like us to talk about. And we also want your 1:13:57.520 --> 1:13:59.680 feedback on the films that we've discussed. If you have 1:13:59.720 --> 1:14:02.200 a hit true with the Devil bat If, so let 1:14:02.280 --> 1:14:03.000 us know about it. 1:14:03.320 --> 1:14:06.960 Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway. 1:14:07.360 --> 1:14:09.040 If you would like to get in touch with us 1:14:09.080 --> 1:14:11.599 with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest 1:14:11.600 --> 1:14:13.799 a topic for the future, or just to say hello, 1:14:14.080 --> 1:14:16.519 you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow 1:14:16.600 --> 1:14:24.280 your Mind dot com. 1:14:24.400 --> 1:14:27.360 Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For 1:14:27.439 --> 1:14:30.240 more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, 1:14:30.360 --> 1:14:33.600 Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.