HorrorScience Fiction

The Devil Bat

- He's Trained His Brood of Blood-Hungry Bats to Kill on Command!

Dr. Paul Carruthers is frustrated because he thinks his employers, Mary Heath and Henry Morton, have cheated him out of the company's profits. He decides to get revenge by altering bats to grow twice their normal size and training them to attack when they smell a perfume of his own making. He mixes the perfume into a lotion, which he offers as a gift to Mary and Henry. When they turn up dead, a newspaper reporter decides to investigate.

Release Date : 1940-12-13

Language :English

Adult : false

Status : Released

Production Company : PRC

Production Country : United States of America

Alternative Titles :

Cast

Character Name : Dr. Paul Carruthers

Original Name : Bela Lugosi

Gender : Male

Character Name : Mary Heath

Original Name : Suzanne Kaaren

Gender : Female

Character Name : Johnny Layton

Original Name : Dave O'Brien

Gender : Male

Character Name : Henry Morton

Original Name : Guy Usher

Gender : Male

Character Name : Maxine

Original Name : Yolande Donlan

Gender : Female

Character Name : 'One-Shot' McGuire

Original Name : Donald Kerr

Gender : Male

Character Name : Martin Heath

Original Name : Edmund Mortimer

Gender : Male

Character Name : Don Morton

Original Name : Gene O'Donnell

Gender : Male

Character Name : Tommy Heath

Original Name : Alan Baldwin

Gender : Male

Character Name : Roy Heath

Original Name : John Ellis

Gender : Male

Character Name : Joe McGinty

Original Name : Arthur Q. Bryan

Gender : Male

Character Name : Chief Wilkins

Original Name : Hal Price

Gender : Male

Character Name : Prof. Percival Garland Raines

Original Name : John Davidson

Gender : Male

Character Name : Coroner (scenes deleted)

Original Name : Billy Griffith

Gender : Male

Character Name : Walter King

Original Name : Wally Rairden

Gender : Male

Reviews

John Chard

@John Chard

2024-05-16

Imbecile, Bombastic, Ignoramus. The Devil Bat is directed by Jean Yarbrough and written by George Bricker and John T. Neville. It stars Bela Lugosi, Suzanne Kaaren, Dave O’Brien, Donald Kerr and Gary Usher. The Heathville Horror! Straight out of Poverty Row is this PRC production that’s as bonkers as it is fun. Plot sees Lugosi as a fed up cosmetic chemist who decides that the company he provides his inventions for have not done right by him financially. So in his secret laboratory at home he breeds big killer bats, bats that he rears to kill anyone wearing the scent of aftershave lotion that he has handed out to the targets of his ire. As the bodies begin to mount up and the press whip up a devil bat on the loose storm, journalists Henry Layden (O’Brien) and “One Shot McGuire” close in on the source of the town’s terror. The low budget is often evident, be it props and sets that shouldn’t move etc, but at just over an hour in length this gets in and does its job with a sort of carefree abandon that is to be admired. Lugosi is having fun shifting from borderline mania to crafty dastard with a sense of humour, and of course there are big scary bats that shriek before homing in for the girl. Result! The flaws are obvious throughout, not least that Lugosi ends up playing second fiddle to the journalists’ blend of bravado and buffoonery, but as time fillers go, and as Lugosi’s Poverty Row Horrors go, this is impossible to dislike and not have a good time with. 6/10

CinemaSerf

@Geronimo1967

2024-12-26

OK, so almost all of the peril comes from a man out of shot careering about with a plastic bat on the end of a fishing rod, but somehow this daft sci-fi hokum makes a point. It's all about the rather shrewd scientist "Carruthers" (Bela Lugosi) who feels slighted by his pals who made a load of long-term cash from an invention that he took the quick buck from. By way of exacting his cunning revenge, he has devised a formula that purports to be an after shave but is actually toxically attractive to a giant bat. Suffice to say, nobody survives their encounter for long and so soon both the police and the press are trying to get to the bottom of things as the corpses pile up. The rest of this is all standard drive-in fayre, but I did rather like the swipe it took at the pomposity of scientists who simply make things up when they don't know the facts. Of course, it's basic from start to finish but Lugosi keeps this adequately cast little beastie caper running along smoothy for quite an entertaining hour.