By
Hank Reineke
The folks who might best recall Crane Wilbur as the dashing
paramour of Pearl White in the silent chapter serial The Perils of Pauline (1914) are now long gone. Though he continued to accept occasional film
and stage roles, by the early 1930s, Wilbur turned to screenwriting and
directing. He had already garnered
plenty of experience with the former, having produced a score of scenarios for
two and four reel silents from 1915-1925. Though he’s likely best remembered for his scripts on such sound “crime
and punishment” noirs as He Walked by
Night (1948), Wilbur also dabbled in horror-mysteries, turning out scripts for
a trio of Vincent Price vehicles (House
of Wax (1953), The Mad Magician
(1954) and The Bat (1959).
Truth be told, The
Bat is not considered one of Crane’s (nor Price’s) best films, but there’s still
plenty to like about - assuming creaky manor murder mysteries are your
thing. The film setting is a sprawling
mansion that houses a secret, and within that familiar scenario all traditional
mystery tropes are present. There’s
thunder and lightning, shutters battered by ghostly winds, shadowy staircases,
secret rooms, suits of armor toppling for unexplained reasons, and – of course –
victims dispassionately dispatched by “The Bat,” a mysterious figure cloaked in
black. “The Bat,” we learn, is
rightfully feared. There are reports he already
mercilessly murdered two women, both having their “throats ripped open with
steel claws.”
To no cinemagoer’s surprise, Chief of Detectives
Lieutenant Andy Anderson (Gavin Gordon) suspects the person masquerading as “The
Bat” is the otherwise affable Dr. Malcolm Wells (Vincent Price). His suspicions are not unreasonable: Dr.
Wells works with live bats in his humble home laboratory in which he –
inexplicably – secrets a neon-lit portraiture of a bat in full wingspread behind
a window curtain. We also learn, quite
early in the film, that while Price appears malleable he’s nonetheless a man capable
of violence.
During a remote cabin visit with his friend John Fleming,
a bank president, Wells is asked what ends he might agree to for a half-million
dollar reward. “Anything short of
murder,” Wells replies. When Fleming –
rather stupidly - confesses to embezzling 350,000 bonds of his bank’s negotiable
securities, Price is shocked by his friend’s frank admission. Dr. Wells initially appears a man of honor, steadfastly
refusing to be a half-partner in the scheme. Disappointed with his friend’s lukewarm response to a criminal
partnership, the duplicitous banker has no choice but kill Dr. Wells – who now
knows too much. But Price, getting the upper-hand,
manages to shoot Fleming dead. He disposes
of Fleming’s body in a forest fire set to cover evidence of the struggle and murder.
Though the police are still unaware of Fleming’s murder,
they are investigating the reports the bank has been swindled of one million
dollars. Both the police and the mysterious “The Bat” appear to have focused their
interests in getting their hands on the purloined assets. They are not the only interested parties. John Fleming’s nephew Mark (John Bryant) is set
to inherit his Uncle’s riches due to his relative having perished in the
“forest fire.” Bryant believes the
stolen funds might be secretly stashed somewhere in the Oaks, the old mansion leased
by his Uncle to the famed mystery novelist Cornelia van Gorder (Agnes
Moorehead). Bryant has access to the builder’s original blueprints to the
mansion. He plans to use them to search
out a secret room and the stolen assets.
Moorehead’s life as a mystery writer is neither solitary nor
contemplative. It’s actually a pretty
busy place, with police coming and going and with house guests and intruders’
alike murdered. She shares her home with
busy-bee, nervous housekeeper Lizzie Allen (Lenita Lane) and a stone-faced chauffeur-butler
Warner (John Sutton). Sutton’s face, if
not his name, should be familiar to Vincent Price fans. The two actors shared screen credit in such
productions as The Tower of London
(1939), The Invisible Man Returns
(1940), and The Return of the Fly
(1959).
The scenario of The
Bat was lifted from Mary Roberts Rinehart’s 1908 novel The Circular Staircase, already made as a five-reel silent film as
early as 1915. In 1920 the novel was adapted
for a successful and long-running Broadway stage play retitled The Bat. The popularity of the stage play begat three subsequent film versions (a
nine-reel silent version (1926) and two sound versions: The Bat Whispers (1930) and The
Bat (1959).
Though a redoubtable mystery, if you’re unable to sort
out the identity of “The Bat” within the pictures first twenty minutes… Well, I
suggest you skip a career in police or detective work. That’s not to say Wilbur’s eighty-minute
running time version lags or lacks surprises. But the film is a bit insular: ninety-five percent of the film – which
began production on April 27, 1959 – was shot economically and stagey in
interior settings. In the final analysis
Wilbur delivers a workmanlike, familiar mystery that’s just intriguing enough
to hold one’s interest… but, alas, it’s no classic.
There was some effort made to freshen the old property. While the film was in production C.J. Tevlin
of Liberty Pictures told the Los Angeles
Mirror that Wilbur was determined to bring a “horror” element to the
“classic murder mystery.” To that end, the filmmakers were going introduce live
bats into the existing scenario: “Two dozen bats have been collected and put
into cages at Allied Artists studio for use in the picture. Augie Lohman, head of the special effects
department, hired Indian boys to capture the bats from caves near his Tehachapi
ranch. The bats have 13-inch
wingspreads, with bodies considerably larger than a mouse, and vicious,
needle-like teeth.” Sure, it all sounded
cool. So it’s disappointing when only two
smallish bats appear on screen, one so tightly gripped it’s barely allowed a single
flutter.
If nothing else, such early production ballyhoo recognized
horror films were hot, inexpensive commercial commodities, its spooky tropes
certain to bring in audiences. 1959 was,
in a sense, a career-defining year for Vincent Price. He was seen on the big screen in no fewer
than five feature films, three of which were horror/sci-fi offerings regarded today
as minor cult-classics: House on Haunted
Hill, The Tingler and The Return of Fly. In comparison to that celebrated trio, The Bat serves only weak tea, though
Price’s role as Dr. Wells further solidified his reputation as the preeminent star
of contemporary horror pictures.
Of course for all of its trappings, The Bat is not a horror
film. In fact there’s little denying
there were more cobwebs in the script than on the walls. Upon the film’s release, critical reaction to
the picture was mixed, ranging from muted praise to mild dismissal. One review noted, fairly, “Despite
author-director Crane Wilbur’s “modernization” of the screenplay […] “The Bat”
creaks with age, and all the ails and aches of its stereotyped plot
convolutions are manifold.”
It is what it is. Film
Detective has given us what I believe is the nicest transfer of The Bat that I’ve seen, and I’ve seen
plenty: the film has long been in public domain status. More often than not, you could find the film
on one of those cheaply-produced mystery/horror/suspense budget multi-pack
releases relegated to chain-store discount bins. This Film Detective “Special Edition,” is
just that – very special. Offering The
Bat in a 1.85:1 aspect radio and dts monaural sound, the company has chosen
to spruce up their already elegant presentation with a number of intriguing bonus
features.
For starters, we’re treated to the twenty-three minute
featurette The Case for Crane Wilbur,
written and produced by Daniel Griffith for Ballyhoo Pictures, with narration
by C. Courtney Joyner. The documentary
compactly traces Wilbur’s career on the stage through his debut as a film actor
in 1910 and examines his second career as screenwriter and director.
The set also includes an informative audio commentary
courtesy of film noir scholar Jason A. Ney. Ney is also the author of the sixteen-page booklet included in the
set. His essay, The Case of the Forgotten Author: The Literary Conundrum of Mary
Roberts Rinehart, studies the work of this now mostly forgotten but wildly
successful mystery novelist whose novel and play inspired the many iterations
of The Bat.
One of the most generous additions to this set – and one
I’m particularly enthralled with - is the inclusion of no fewer than nine –
yes, nine - archival radio broadcasts
featuring Vincent Price. These
recordings, sourced from such vintage radio programs as Suspense, Escape, Theatre of Romance, Hollywood Star Time and the CBS
Radio Workshop, were taken from the original broadcasts 1943 through 1956. This collection of programs alone make this
set a required purchase for fans of the actor who might not have yet examined –
or dimly recall - Price’s radio work.
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