One of those films that can be found on almost every collection of public domain chillers, The Vampire Bat is a creaky and crazy little film that is only worth watching if you're a fan of the likes of Lionel Atwill, Fay Wray, and Dwight Frye. That's certainly why I finally made some time for it.
People in a small village are dying, and the corpses usually have puncture wounds on the neck and a lot less blood than expected. This has the villagers afraid, of course, and they're desperate to find the killer. The prime suspect is Hermann (Frye), a slightly odd individual who has some pet bats. Karl Brettschneider (Melvyn Douglas) is a local policeman who doesn't want to jump to conclusions, and he may make some headway by enlisting the help of Dr. von Niemann (Atwill).
Written by Edward T. Lowe Jr., The Vampire Bat is a bit of amusing nonsense. It clocks in at just over an hour in length, has a mystery with a quite bizarre and ridiculous resolution at the heart of it, and spends too much time with a selection of quirky supporting characters to maintain any kind of tension or mild horror. Those supporting characters are enjoyable, mind you, and that's what helps to make this bearable.
Director Frank R. Strayer is probably best-known for a number of other movies (he directed half of the movies in the once-beloved Blondie series), but this title may stand up as one of the highlights of his filmography. Say what you like about the central ideas, and the execution of the material, it has a surprisingly stacked cast and tries to be equal parts chilling and chucklesome. It's too dates nowadays to really succeed in either way, but the good intentions are clear throughout.
Douglas is a good enough, slightly bland, potential hero, but he's overshadowed by so many others in the cast. Atwill is a delight in his role, Frye really leans into the fact that he was cast in this because of what remains his most famous role in a Universal horror classic, and Wray is just utterly lovely at all times. George E. Stone provides more fun, as a nervy and suspicious villager, Maude Eburne is very entertaining as the hypochondriac Gussie Schnappmann, and Robert Frazer is a man named Borst who turns out to be quite a key figure.
While I wouldn't recommend this to many people, it's short enough to be relatively painless for those who make room for it in their schedule. I still think that it's a much lesser film from this era though, and has only retained a presence alongside the classic horrors of the time due to the title and a few key cast members. I'll be kind to it, considering the time it was made, but I still can't bring myself to call it a good film.
4/10
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