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

‘All Heathville loved Dr Paul Carruthers… the doctor found time to conduct certain private experiments — weird, terrifying experiments.’ The Devil Bat (1940) has the right star in horror icon Bela Lugosi.

‘All Heathville loved Dr Paul Carruthers… the doctor found time to conduct certain private experiments — weird, terrifying experiments.’

Director Jean Yarborough’s 1940 black-and-white American horror movie The Devil Bat has the right star in horror icon Bela Lugosi, who does his excellent 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 effectively dumped him, and then dissed him by offering him a mere $5,000 bonus.

His employers are the smug and of course very wealthy Heath family in the small town of Heathville, marked for death! Death by bats!

Bela Lugosi as Dr Paul Carruthers.

It is notable as the first horror film produced by young Poverty Row studio Producers Releasing Corporation (PRC), stepping in to the gap when the major studios abandoned chillers in 1937 and 1938.

Troubled star Lugosi was trying to begin a career comeback when he signed a contract on 19 October 1940 with PRC boss Sigmund Neufeld. Shooting began a week later, and the film was released on December 13, 1940. Fast work!

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. He then gives the strangely strong-smelling lotion to his enemies as a test product to slap on their faces.

Dave O’Brien plays the hotshot prying news reporter Johnny Layton, sent by his Chicago Register editor (Arthur Q Bryan) to cover the story and help the police solve the murders, along with his bumbling photographer One-Shot McGuire (Donald Kerr), who is more interested in filming the alluring young maid Maxine ‘Frenchie’ (Yolande Donlan).

Bela Lugosi as Dr Paul Carruthers.

Johnny Layton eventually works out that Carruthers is the killer, puts the aftershave perfume on himself and finally douses it on Carruthers too, leading to a bat attack.

Admittedly the comic team of Dave O’Brien and especially comedy relief Donald Kerr are downsides as the ‘heroes’, and Suzanne Kaaren isn’t much good in a dull turn as Mary Heath, soon the last surviving member of her family. To be fair, all of them there are doing what’s asked of them, and the film isn’t about them anyway. Actually, when Bela Lugosi, isn’t on screen, which isn’t too much, the film is pretty dreary and even starts to fall apart, though it can still be funny with its daft dialogue and peculiar acting turns.

With its awesomely daft plot, useless and endlessly repeated special effects and rotten acting, The Devil Bat is cheap but succulently cheerful, and entertaining. Apparently hanging from a large over-size coat hanger in Carruthers’s lab, the devil bat itself is hilariously pathetic, especially at the times of flight and its kills.

It proved popular enough for a sequel (Devil Bat’s Daughter [1946]) – though alas without Lugosi or any other cast member – and a 1946 semi-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 Devil Bat fell into public domain and has been released in countless poorly edited videos and DVDs, so it is available freely. But it has been restored twice, in 1990 and in 2008. when a computer-colorized version was also created. In 2013, it was released on Blu-ray by Kino Lorber.

The devil bat in Dr Carruthers’s laboratory.

The restored version is in lovely mint condition, looking surprisingly smart in the black-and-white cinematography by Arthur Martinelli. Even Carruthers’s lab and sliding doors and secret passages look good in the sets designed by Paul Palmentola.

The young Yolande Donlan, playing Maxine ‘Frenchie’ the alluring maid in her third movie, is billed as Yolande Mallott.

Yolande Donlan died on December 30 2014, aged 94.

The cast

The cast are Bela Lugosi as Dr Paul Carruthers, Suzanne Kaaren as Mary Heath, Dave O’Brien as Johnny Layton, Guy Usher as Henry Morton, Yolande Mallott as Maxine, Donald Kerr as One-Shot McGuire, Edward Mortimer as Martin Heath, Gene O’Donnell as Don Morton, Alan Baldwin as Tommy Heath, John Ellis as Roy Heath, Arthur Q Bryan as Joe McGinty, Hal Price as Chief Wilkins, John Davidson as Professor Raines, Billy Griffith as Coroner, and Wally Rairdon as Walter King.

The Devil Bat is directed by Jean Yarborough, runs 68 minutes, is made by Producers Releasing Corporation, is distributed by Producers Releasing Corporation, is written by John Thomas Neville, based on original story by George Bricker, is produced by Jack Gallagher, Sigmund Neufeld and Guy V Thayer, is shot in black-and-white by Arthur Martinelli, is scored by David Chudnow (musical director), and designed by Paul Palmentola.

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 3,735

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