By Hank Reineke
The
Vampire Bat (1933) was a staple of TV late-night movie programming
well into the 1980s. Too often the
running time of this maltreated film was irreverently trimmed or stretched to
accommodate commercial breaks or better fit into a predetermined time
slot. With black-and-white films almost
completely banished from the schedules of local television affiliates by 1987, TV Guide disrespectfully dismissed The Vampire Bat as a “Dated, slow-motion
chiller.†That’s an unfair appraisal. But with the MTV generation in the ascendant
and Fangoria gleefully splashing the lurid
and blood-red exploits of such slice-and-dice horror icons as Michael Meyers,
Jason Voorhees, and Freddy Krueger on its covers, it’s somewhat understandable why
the other-worldly atmospherics of The
Vampire Bat were perceived as little more than a celluloid curio – an
antiquated footnote in the annals of classic horror.
The
Vampire Bat is hardly original. The film was, no doubt, conceived as an
exploitative hybrid of Universal’s Dracula
and Frankenstein twin blockbusters of 1931. (Though not a Universal production, several
scenes of The Vampire Bat were
purportedly shot on that studio’s back lot). Though this Pre-Code film starts as a mostly routine
mystery sprinkled with doses of suggested vampirism, there’s also a mad doctor who
secretly labors in mad devotion to “lift the veil†separating God from man. The doctor has artificially created living,
pulsating tissue requiring human blood for sustenance. Sadly, low rent Majestic Pictures wasn’t able
to engage the services of Universal’s Kenneth Strickfadden. So the mad doctor’s bare-bones laboratory features
none of the splendid electrical gimmickry or flashing circuits that monster
kids love so well.
Though director Frank R. Strayer might not have achieved auteur status, he was no mere
craftsman. He had been involved (most
often in a directorial capacity) in well over one hundred film projects dating
back to the silent era. His greatest
notoriety was likely being the principal helmsman of the wildly popular Blondie series for Columbia in the late
1930s/early 1940s. Though no gloomy
visionary as Universal’s James Whale, Strayer could nonetheless effectively conjure
similarly eerie, ethereal atmospheres to the low-budget mystery and horror film
productions he was assigned. The
scenario and screenplay for The Vampire
Bat was scribed by Edward T. Lowe. Lowe too was a true pioneer of the Hollywood film industry. He had also worked in the silents, hanging on
long enough to contribute scripts to such popular mystery franchises of the
1940s as the Bulldog Drummond, Charlie Chan, and Sherlock Holmes series.
For a modestly-budgeted production without major studio
backing, it must be said the cast of The
Vampire Bat is exceptional. For all
intent and purposes, this is essentially an “actor’s film,†as Strayer –
curiously - offers little on-screen moments of murderous mayhem. Our hero is the affable Melvyn Douglas, a future
two-time Academy winner whose career would endure for more than a half-century. In Ninotchka
(1939), Douglas would famously sway screen siren Greta Garbo from the
schemes of such Soviet puppet masters as Bela Lugosi. Leading lady Fay Wray, who would earn her
bona fides as the big screen’s preeminent “Scream Queen†of the 1930s with a
five film run in 1932-1933 (Doctor X,
The Most Dangerous Game, The Vampire Bat, Mystery of the Wax Museum and, of course, King Kong), finds herself again the target of a mad doctor’s evil
machinations. Sadly, the comely actress
isn’t given much to do in The Vampire Bat
except have a teasing flirtation with the dashing Douglas and await her
inevitable final reel rescue from the mad fiend.