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The Bat Whispers

USA 1930
produced by
Joseph M. Schenck for Art Cinema Corporation
directed by Roland West
starring Chester Morris, Una Merkel, Spencer Charters, Maude Eburne, Grayce Hampton, Gustav von Seyffertitz, Hugh Huntley, Charles Dow Clark, Chance Ward, William Bakewell, Wilson Benge, Richard Tucker, DeWitt Jennings, Sydney D'Albrook, S.E. Jennings
screenplay by Roland West, based on a play by Avery Hopwood, Mary Roberts Rinehart

The Bat

review by
Mike Haberfelner

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Mysterious master criminal the Bat  has just left the big city for the countryside where he (she ?) wittnesses a bank robbery & follows the culprit to Old Man Fleming's house - & Old Man Fleming is actually the man whose bank was robbed (!). But Old Man Fleming is away for the summer & has rented his enormous mansion to Hillary Van Gorder (Grayce Hampton) & her maid Lizzie (Maude Eburne). So it's in the best of interests of both the (unknown) bankrobber & the mysterious Bat who wants to get his hands on the loot to scare off resolute Hillary - but she shows no interest in doing so despite the Bat's scaretactics, & any number of suspicious characters showing up at her doorstep: doctor VanRiess (Gustav von Seyfferitz), who urges her to leave the mansion & clearly has an agenda besides healing patients, the gardener Brooke (William Bakewell) her niece Dale (Una Merkel) brings to the mansion - who of course soon turns out to be both the cashier blamed for the bank robbery, and Dale's fiancé -, the clumsy caretaker (Spencer Charters) who might - or might not - be as stupid as he looks, Old Man Fleming's son Richard (Hugh Huntley), or even police detective Anderson (Chester Morris).

Soon, Dale finds out that the loot might be hidden in some hidden room somewhere in the mansion (don't ask how she found that out), but Richard Fleming, the only one who has blueprints of the building, refuses to hand them over to Dale ... & for that he is soon shot by the Bat. Investigating this murder, Anderson soon enocunters doc VanRiess having an unhealthy interest into the blueprints - or what part of them the Bat failed to take - & accuses him to have robbed the bank together with Old Man Fleming ... however as a reward for his detective work, Anderson gets hit over the head by VanRiess. 

Much confusion ensues when Dale actually finds the hidden room, but sees the Bat kill another man & attacking her, too (she manages to escape), & it's not made any better when incompetent private investigator Jones (Charles Dow Clark) shows up to mess up everything even more.

Only a stranger, who shows up injured at the mansion's doorstep & whom Anderson claims to be the Bat, can shed light on the proceedings. When he traps the bat in his own trap & reveals him to be ... detective Anderson - actually a fraud who has taken on Anderson's identity, with the stranger being the real Anderson. But the Bat can make good an escape, until he steps into a beartrap that timid maid Lizzie has naively laid out to catch the criminal ...

 

This movie is already the second version of the popular stageplay The Bat by Avery Hopwood & Mary Roberts Rinehart, the first one was madein 1926, also directed by Roland West. The play is said to have been - along with Zorro & The Shadow - one of the key influences for Bob Kane's/DC-Comics' Batman.

The movie in itself, an early talkie example of the popular old dark house-genre does have its nice touches, including some inspired modelwork to create the illusion of the camera sweeping over a city & up & down buildings, to create a sense of dynamics & depth - which is all limited to the beginning of the movie though, before the main action in the old dark house even begins (in a prologue that has only very little to do with the actual story). 

Once the film moves to the mansion however, despite some atmospheric shots, the audience would be hard-pressed to find anything really inspiring though, with a way too convoluted & over-populated mystery plot that seems to change directions on a whim & throws any kind of criminalistic logic out of the window ever so often, making the movie, along with it's solution, rather a disappointment.

 

review © by Mike Haberfelner

 

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In times of uncertainty of a possible zombie outbreak, a woman has to decide between two men - only one of them's one of the undead.

 

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special appearances by
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directed by
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written by
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produced by
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now streaming at

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Robots and rats,
demons and potholes,
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love and death and everything in between,
Tales to Chill
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Tales to Chill
Your Bones to
-
a collection of short stories and mini-plays
ranging from the horrific to the darkly humourous,
from the post-apocalyptic
to the weirdly romantic,
tales that will give you a chill and maybe a chuckle, all thought up by
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screenwriter and film reviewer
Michael Haberfelner.

 

Tales to Chill
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the new anthology by
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Out now from
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