The Devil Bat ** (1940, Bela Lugosi, Suzanne Kaaren, Dave O’Brien, Guy Usher) – Classic Movie Review 3735

Director Jean Yarbrough’s 1940 horror movie has the right star in horror icon Bela Lugosi, who does his over-ripe batty doctor act yet again as avenging scientist Dr Paul Carruthers, understandably bitter after being betrayed by his employers, who got rich on his work and dumped him.

In the story by George Bricker, Dr Carruthers gets his revenge by electrically enlarging bats and sending them to kill his employers’ family. He develops and hands out an aftershave lotion with a perfume that arouses his gigantic over-sized killer bats to attack anyone who wears it, having instilled in the bats a hatred for the perfume.

Dave O’Brien plays reporter Johnny Layton, who works out that Carruthers is the killer, puts the perfume on himself and douses it on Carruthers.

With its awesomely daft plot, useless special effects and rotten acting, The Devil Bat is cheap but succulently cheerful, and entertaining. It proved popular enough for a sequel (Devil Bat’s Daughter [1946]) – though alas without Lugosi  – and remake (The Flying Serpent).

Also in the cast are Suzanne Kaaren, Guy Usher, Donald Kerr, Hal Price, Edmund Mortimer, Gene O’Donnell, Alan Baldwin, Arthur Q Bryan, John Davidson, Billy Griffith, Wally Rairden and John Ellis.

The young Yolande Donlan, playing Maxine ‘Frenchie’ the maid in her third movie, was billed as Yolande Mallott. Yolande Donlan died on December 30 2014, aged 94.

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 3735

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