Bat, The (1959)

... aka: A Mansão do Morcego (The Bat's Mansion)

... aka: Das Biest (The Beast)

... aka: Garras del murciélago (Bat Claws)

... aka: Il mostro che uccide (The Monster That Kills)

... aka: Le masque (The Mask)

... aka: Ölüm Saçan Yarasa (The Deadly Bat)

... aka: Vampyren (The Vampire)

... aka: Yön pahat silmät (Evil Eyes of the Night)

Directed by:

Crane Wilbur

Mary Roberts Rinehart's The Circular Staircase was first published in six parts in All-Star Weekly magazine in 1907, with a novelization following in 1908. The book was popular, so a (now-missing) silent film adaptation was made by Edward LeSaint in 1915. Though the film received middling to poor reviews, Rinehart decided to expand her property by purchasing back the rights and adapting it into a three act stage play. Utilizing the services of co-writer Avery Hopwood, alterations were made to the book's plot and it was re-titled The Bat; taking its namesake from a newly-added villain created specifically for the play. Rinehart and her husband themselves personally financed the play, which ended up paying off when it debuted in 1920 and became a huge hit with both critics and audiences alike. In America, it ended its initial run as the second longest-running play in Broadway history. There were road company productions that traveled the U.S. and it even made it overseas to London, where it was also a success. When all was said and done, the play was estimated to have grossed (according to an ad seen below) around 10 million dollars.

Due to its popularity, it's no surprise then that there were numerous film versions. The first, The Bat, came in 1926 from director Roland West, which was a box office success and praised by critics of the day. Just four years later, West remade the film again under the title The Bat Whispers (1930). This version was extremely innovative for its time, not only for being one of the first talkies but also for its widescreen photography (not at all common back then) and use of multiple cameras, crane shots and dollies for fluidity. Technical influence aside, it also made an indelible impact on pop culture when Bob Kane took inspiration from it for a comic book character he was creating. You've probably heard of him before: Batman.

There wouldn't be another filmed adaptation until 1956 (not long after a 1953 revival of the play), this time for the CBS TV series Climax! Directed by Ralph Nelson (who'd go on to direct Sidney Poitier in the Oscar-winning Lilies of the Field in 1964 and later made EMBRYO with Rock Hudson) and starring starred Judith Anderson, Kathleen Crowley and a young Kevin McCarthy, this episode is currently m.i.a. and is likely gone forever, though it leads us right up this fourth official version of The Bat. The following year, the story was back on TV as part of The Dow Hour of Great Mysteries; this time starring Helen Hayes and Margaret "Wicked Witch of the West" Hamilton. Finally, it became the basis of the German TV movie Der Spinnenmörder / "The Spider Killer" (1978), which was incidentally that last credited adaptation of any of Rinehart's work.

Famous murder-mystery novelist Cornelia van Gorder (Agnes Moorehead) rents a huge, remote mansion called The Oaks for an entire summer so she can get some work done. The place is spooky enough to provide the perfect ambiance for a horror writer just the way it is... and that's not even factoring in the home's sordid recent history! Just a few months earlier, a serial killer called "The Bat" murdered some people there and then vanished. And he / she / it / whoever is still out there. While that doesn't deter Cornelia, it does freak out her staff. Local gossip about recent "Bat" sighting have driven the butler, cook, maids and nearly everyone else away. Well, everyone except for Cordelia's faithful assistant of twenty years, Lizzie Allen (Lenita Lane, the director's wife). Cornelia and Lizzie are tight. Very tight. So tight that this 1959 film has been known to raise a few eyebrows, but we'll take a deeper dive into that here in a bit.

While The Oaks is the ancestral home of bank president John Fleming (Harvey Stephens), who vowed never to lease the property ever again after the last batch of murders, Cornelia actually rented it from his nephew, Mark (John Bryant), who seems to be trying to take advantage of the fact that his uncle is vacationing deep in the woods with his physician friend, Dr. Malcolm Wells (Vincent Price). With the two men at a cabin with no phone, so far away it takes "a 20 mile canoe trip" to make it back to civilization and not slated to be back until the end of the summer, it figures there's a huge emergency at the bank in their absence...

Bank vice president Victor Bailey (Mike Steele) discovers that 350,000 dollars of bonds, plus other negotiable securities, totaling over a million dollars, have been swiped from the vault. Seeing how only he and Fleming have access, suspicion soon falls on him. However, the real culprit is Mr. Fleming, who's stolen the money and stashed it in a hidden room at The Oaks. His vacation has been an excuse to fake his own death and he's hoping his buddy Malcolm will help in exchange for half a million dollars. Instead, Malcolm decides to kill him and blame a (hilariously convenient!) forest fire that breaks out right in the middle of their conversation. Now he'll have dibs on all the money... granted he can find it.

Back at The Oaks, Cornelia and Lizzie are terrorized by The Bat, a "faceless" black-clad, fedora-wearing figure with a razor-sharp steel claw glove (sounds quite similar to a pretty popular 80s slasher movie figure we all know!) that he's already used to rip out several throats. When the two women barricade themselves inside a bedroom, he unleashes a live bat into the room while they sleep, which bites Lizzie. Dr. Wells, now back in town after John's "accidental" death, comes to the mansion to treat Lizzie and encourages the two women to leave while he's there. The best case scenario for him is to obviously get the women out of the house so he can try to locate that hidden room John told him about.

Meanwhile, Lt. Andy Anderson (Gavin Gordon) is busy at working investigating matters. He spies on Dr. Wells and not only catches sight of him experimenting on live bats but also discovers a giant bat replica hidden behind a curtain in his lab. He goes to question nephew Mark, who's recently done a whole renovation on his real estate office. Just where did he get the money to do that? This case isn't just work for Andy, but also personal. He's on the bank's board of directors and had his life savings invested in bank stock, so if the money doesn't turn up, he'll probably never get to retire.

Despite everything that's been going on, Cornelia is able to convince her chauffeur, Warner (John Sutton), to work double duty as butler, and finds another apparently desperate woman named Jane Patterson (Riza Royce) to fulfill maid duties, so she can have a few guests over for the weekend. The first is Dale Bailey (gorgeous Elaine Edwards), Vic's wife, who's out to prove her husband's innocence. The other is Judy Hollander (Darla Hood, of Little Rascals fame), a bank secretary who claims she has information that will implicate John and is set to testify in court to that effect. Why anyone thought it was a good idea to have a key witness stay in a house being stalked by a killer is anyone's guess. It's an even worse idea to continue to allow her to stay when one of the chief suspects is found dead behind a removable panel.

There's no real way to sugar coat it: A lot of things about this film are stupid... painfully stupid! Just the premise of a highly intelligent, well-known writer with means staying in this place and putting her life at risk - for NO reason whatsoever - is about as difficult to swallow as it gets. Sure she's drawn to mystery, but I doubt she's drawn to dying before she can even finish her latest novel. The fact she then has no issue also dragging a bunch of other innocent people into this mess and getting them killed is just icing on the cake. This also has some of the absolute worst policing you'll ever see in any film. The cops basically come and go, and spend most of their time posted outside, knowing full well the killer is either still inside the home, or at least has a way to get in without being detected. I could go on.

Considering this is based on a very old play, it's not at all surprising it feels really tame, stagy, hoary and outmoded, even by the standards of the the late 50s. While there are things they could have easily done to modernize the film, they chose not to for whatever reason, which is probably why it wasn't well-received by audiences of the day. The potential for reissues would pretty much die the following year. After all, something that seemed like it time warped in from the 1930s certainly wasn't going to be able to compete with genre films like Psycho, EYES WITHOUT A FACE, BLACK SUNDAY, Peeping Tom, Jigoku and the list goes on.

But dammit if this isn't enjoyable in spite of that! The cast seem to be having fun, it's humorous, boasts very handsome art direction, cinematography (by future Emmy and Oscar winner Joseph F. Biroc) and lighting (making especially good use of shadow) and is entertaining throughout. The killer's disguise is really cool and, even though the suspect who turns out to be The Bat was on my radar, I still wasn't 100% sure it was them until the final reveal, which was nice. This is also interesting in a few other unexpected ways...

The employer / employee relationship between Cornelia and Lizzie is much talked about for good reason. Neither lady is married, nor is there any mention of either of them ever having been married, neither lady appears interested in romance with men, and neither lady has kids, yet they make it a point to note they've “been together” for twenty years. And the two do everything together. They hug. They cuddle. They comfort each other. They put their arms around each other. They hold hands. They even sleep in the same bedroom, with Cornelia insisting it's for “mutual protection” lest anyone get the wrong idea! Make of that what you will, but it's clear that, in lieu of male company, these two ladies prefer each other.

Cornelia, who's independent, self-made and strong, comes off like a really forward-thinking character in general, which is partially in how she's written and partially in how she's played by Moorehead. It's also unique (and refreshing) for a horror film to put two middle-aged women front and center. Even Vincent Price himself had to take a back seat here in a strictly supporting role, which may explain why he didn't think much of the film (he'd previously been sole focus in the Wilbur-scripted House of Wax and THE MAD MAGICIAN). While I agree this is far from his best showing or character, he does at least get to shoot off some smarmy facial expressions that are pretty hilarious.

And good role or not, the participation of Price is one of the main reasons this has been kept in heavy circulation all of these years. Well, that and the fact this is one of the most popular public domain titles there is. Countless labels have released this on DVD, including Alpha, Anchor Bay, Echo Bridge, Film Detective, Mill Creek, Reel Media, The Roan Group, Shout! Factory, Sinister Cinema and VCI, and it's on pretty much every film archive and streaming site, which not only makes this one of the easiest horror films from this decade to find but also one of the most viewed. I can't tell you how many times in the past I've skipped right past this, so I'm glad to finally get it checked off my list.

★★1/2

L'étrangleur (1970)

... aka: Der Würger mit dem weißen Schal (The Strangler with the White Scarf)

... aka: L'étrangleur par Paul Vecchiali (The Strangler by Paul Vecchiali)

... aka: O Homem do Cachecol Branco (The Man in the White Scarf)

... aka: Strangler, The

Directed by:

Paul Vecchiali

I'm sure I've bitched about the term "giallo" plenty here already, but sometimes you really can't avoid bringing it up, especially nowadays! Once again, people who should really know better continue to try to stretch this small sub-category of film into an exaggerated relevance using invisible genre parameters. Michael Den Boer over at 10K Bullets begins their review, "The Strangler is a French thriller that is heavily influenced by the giallo genre..." (Uh actually, no, it wasn't. Please name a single 60s giallo that notably and heavily influenced this film. I'll wait.) Gary Tooze's piece on DVD Beaver claims "The giallo tag earns its keep in the later sections..." and then goes on to compare this to the films of Hitchcock, probably because he's unable to name a single actual giallo to compare this to. In her review over at Screen Anarchy, Olga Artemyeva seems a bit confused as she shoots off a few Bava titles (that are absolutely nothing like this film), claims that because this has a killer with a past trauma and a "meddling heroine" that it's "well within reason" to call it a giallo (ha, is that really all it takes these days?) and then curiously proceeds to backtrack her way out of the genre classification. Clayton Dillard's review at Slant is on the money in its first paragraph using Michael Powell's Peeping Tom and Claude Chabrol's The Champagne Murders as reference points, but even he cannot resist throwing out a "proto giallo" label later on.

So in case you're keeping score here, apparently this was made before giallo was an established thing yet somehow also was influenced by what would later be called a giallo and it's OK to call it a giallo even though it really isn't one and Hitchcock films that were made decades earlier are now retroactively also basically giallo. No wonder people get so confused!

As for how this all got started, in this instance at least, you can trace it back to misleading marketing. The folks over at Altered Innocence, who've done a very fine job remastering the film after a long period of dormancy, whipped up a shitty press package to go along with the release. It describes this as, "An unconventional French giallo released before the subgenre's popularity boom resulting from filmmakers like Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci..." I'll give them this much, it certainly IS unconventional... so unconventional it has almost nothing in common with the subgenre you're trying to stick it in. Guess we can now safely start referring to vampire and mummy films as zombie films since they all feature still-functioning undead things. Who cares about all the little details!

Is there anything to gain from all this nonsense? Not really, aside from acknowledging that plenty of folks (who probably want to appear film savvy or in-the-know) misuse "giallo" as an all-encompassing term to mean any suspense, mystery, drama, crime OR horror film involving a killer that was produced in Europe in the 60s, 70s or 80s. What they accomplish is the exact opposite as far as I'm concerned, but never mind that. Let's instead single out a few other reviewers who weren't taking the bait. Glenn Kenny at RogerEbert.com rejects the "lost giallo" label (probably because he's aware of the defining characteristics of a giallo), while Kathy Fennessy at Seattle Film Blog returns us to reality when she notes this is actually a "character piece" and "not a full-fledged giallo as some have claimed." Thank you, Glenn and Kathy.

I found a few amusing Letterboxd comments I'd also like to share that really encapsulate the amount of confusion caused when a certain film classification is stretched beyond its point of usefulness. Username Dorian Wright refers to this as a "melancholy anti-giallo" (so not a giallo then?), another chap called Michael says this is "an early giallo that deconstructs the genre before it had fully cohered" (kind of like the time travel implications behind this) and a third fella named M I L E S admits, "If it wasn't marketed as a proto-giallo, I may have liked it less" (which may explain why Altered Innocence marketed this the way they did to begin with).

As for the film itself, well, it's French and has been given the "art house" designation by many, which basically means it's going to be slow-moving, non-exploitative as not to potentially piss off moralistic critics who will refuse to take it seriously otherwise and enigmatic to the point where sophisticated cineastes with a refined palate (i.e. not me) will be extracting one of five hundred different meanings from it. Not that any of this is necessarily a bad thing to all viewers, but you should at least know what you're getting yourself into here and whether or not this is even gonna appeal to you.

We first meet Émile, a young boy from a presumably abusive home who's just been "punished" by his parents. He breaks open his piggy bank, sneaks out late at night and goes to a train station to buy some comics. His memorable little adventure is topped off when a well-dressed man borrows his white knit scarf long enough to strangle a crying woman who seems curiously unperturbed by the entire experience. Many years later, a serial killer who's already claimed five victims is prowling around the city strangling women with a white, tasseled knit scarf. He's intentionally choosing victims who are single, unhappy, depressed and suicidal. Could it possibly be a now 30-something Émile (Jacques Perrin)? Of course. As has already been pointed out, the killer's identity is never a mystery.

Given the unenviable task of apprehending the psycho, Inspector Simon Dangret (Julien Guiomar) goes on a local TV news program to try to set a trap. Claiming to be a reporter, he publicly announces his address and phone number in hopes the killer is listening and encourages him to get in touch. Someone unexpected hunts him down immediately after: A strange young college student named Anna Cardiff (Eva Simonet). Newly-single and depressed herself after another failed relationship, Anna is paranoid she may be next on the asphyxiation block and offers herself up as a potential decoy to help catch the killer. While the investigator passes on that, he does eventually enlist other services from her.

Émile, who works at a produce stand at an outdoor market when he isn't stalking victims, decides to call Simon and give him some insight into why he does what he does. He claims killing makes him feel nothing, he doesn't know why he does it and that he's always happy, whether he's killing someone or not. OK, so no real insight then. He then starts breaking into Simon's home and leaves him notes made out of magazine clippings. The two will later meet up in person, where the killer explains that he is "sick with happiness" to the point where he can't "bear seeing tragedy." He views the murders as mercy killings and most of his victims seem more than willing to go along with it. Knowing he's going to go meet the killer, Simon doesn't inform anyone nor does he bring a weapon with him and, after their conversation is over, the detective simply lets him walk away so he can go kill other women! Huh?!

Set pieces briefly showcase the victims but these bits are never played for suspense, thrills, scares or even black humor. Some will perhaps say there's some insight here into the human condition but to me it was basically just a parade of lonely, depressed, miserable woman. Torch singer Monique (Jacqueline Danno, a real-life singer and recording artist) treats us to a dreary sailor-themed musical number at a nightclub and is killed after trying to drown herself in the river. Posing as a scarf salesman, Émile manages to weasel his way into the home of lonely, washed up former movie star Hélène (Hélène Surgère), who won't be making a comeback anytime soon. Upset about choosing money over her art, ballerina Florence (real-life ballerina Katja Cavagnac) is the next victim. Each seem resigned to their fate and Émile even claims he has something of a sixth sense in picking up on this before he kills them.

Instead of showing an actual strangulation or attack, the glassy-eyed, submissive victims instead freeze like they're posing for a still photo as the killer loosely drapes the scarf around their neck. Though this is clearly purposefully done and probably has some sort of significance, it mostly just reminded me a laughably pretentious perfume commercial. I ended up just assuming this wasn't a realistic depiction of the murders and instead the emotionally-detached killer's own perception of them. The film ditches this approach altogether toward the end when Émile goes after a hooker and he's run off by the woman's streetwalker sisters. Some viewers have tried to extract feminist meaning from this, but I'm not so sure I agree. All of the female characters who are educated and have careers are shown to be miserable, resigned, weak, suicidal and helpless, while the women who service men's sexual needs are shown to be happy, spunky, strong and independent. That doesn't feel very feminist to me, and this is coming from someone who 100% thinks one can be both a feminist and a sex worker. It's really about the contrast here.

As the killings are going on, a man known only as "The Jackal" (Paul Barge), who should have instead been called "The Vulture," is stalking Émile and using the murders as an excuse to pick the corpses clean of all valuables. That not only upsets the killer (who amusingly takes offense to being wrongly labeled a thief, though he's fine with being a killer) but is also harming the actual investigation. With the police force and the public both breathing down his neck, the main detective eventually quits his job, yet still stays involved with the case. Now that I think about it, they could have spared us the dozen or so boring police scenes had they just made the Simon character an actual reporter to begin with as opposed to a detective posing as one.

As with a number of other films that fall into the French High Art™ category, no one acts like a normal human being who does normal human being things here. A lot of the actions are perplexing, nonsensical and, frequently, downright stupid. The characters are cold, joyless, self-obsessed, humorless and terminally glum as they shuffle through their everyday lives like apathetic zombies. While this approach does provoke a little thought as to why the filmmaker chose to portray everyone like this, that doesn't make this dramatically inert film any less tedious to sit through. 

There are a couple of dream sequences thrown in, which are at least a little more intriguing than the primary story arc. In one, the killer envisions himself having a picnic with his victims while his late mother watches. In another, he's walking down the street and keeps seeing quick glimpses of an anarchic society filled with masked criminals and rampant beatings, murders, muggings, rapes, etc.  Sandra Julien, who'd later become a Euro sex film star (she headlined Jean Rollin's Shiver of the Vampires right after this), appears in this footage for about five seconds getting her clothes torn off by hooligans. In addition, there's a scene where a married (to a woman) closeted gay guy confesses to his friend that his wife sticking her finger up his ass no longer satisfies him, and another scene where a man attempts to extort money from Émile after he mistakes him for a gay prostitute, which I'm sure are relevant somehow.

This played at Cannes in 1970 but did not make much of an impact back then and does not appear to have been wide released outside of its home country. After its film festival run, it vanished for decades, did not appear on VHS or DVD anywhere and would not be resurrected again until over 40 years after the fact. In 2015, it was given a limited theatrical re-release in France. Two years later, it played at a Portuguese film festival. And, just last year, it turned up at the New York Film Festival and other select American film festivals. This was followed by its release on streaming platforms like The Criterion Channel and Shudder (where I viewed it). You may have more fun analyzing this than I did. I had much more fun analyzing the effects the initial press release had on subsequent reviews and audience reception.

★★