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