The fictitious village of Heathville (Deathville/Heathville, get it?) in the 1940 THE DEVIL BAT from Alpha Video may be in turmoil over killer bats but has nothing to worry about visually: the film will always be considered grade-Z-looking no matter who gets bitten, and that’s a good thing. Well, it is if you dig this sort of trash cinema, and trust me, if you do, this one’s up your alley.
Bela Lugosi plays this evil doctor/scientist who, with the help of his breeding bats and a potion that passes for after-shave lotion (don’t ask), succeeds in getting rid of some of his enemies. Two reporters (one of which is Dave O’Brien, the guy who co-stars in the cult classic REEFER MADNESS portraying the piano and weed enthusiast. "Faster! Faster!" Remember?) are on his case. It doesn’t take Einstein to figure out that they’ll eventually come out on top but not before enduring the wrath of Le Lugosi and his winged minions.
Except for Lugosi and perhaps O’Brien who did continue to prosper in TV mostly, the rest of the cast are what you call unknowns. Not only are they weak in their respective roles but they’re also laughable in most of their scenes. Take the two aforementioned reporters; unless the director wanted a poor man Abbott and Costello type of budding, nothing in their performances is worth writing home about. Fun in a bad way comes to mind immediately, sort of like the film as a whole. However, some scenes involving the flying bat do end up being effective in a papier-mâché way—all mixed with close-ups of a real life bat; or should we say a close-up, since it seems to always be the same shot.THE DEVIL BAT is definitely no lost cause once you get past the silly plot and FX. Oh it’s far from being the best awful flick out there (that would be TROLL 2, or better yet: THE LONELY LADY, reminisced on my other blog), but it’s clumsy enough to have a go at it either with a warp sense of humor or with a completely baked mind.
Until next post—Martin
