by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2013 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved
Alas, despite a cast that at least on paper would seem
superior — Vincent Price and Agnes Moorehead as the leads and Gavin Gordon as
Lt. Anderson, the cop who turns out to be the Bat at the end — the 1959 version
of The Bat simply wasn’t as good a
movie, largely because it was both written and directed by Crane Wilbur. Crane
Wilbur was one of the key people who helped “type” Vincent Price as a horror
star and brought him out of the rut of second-tier character parts he’d been
playing before his breakthrough movie, House of Wax (1953). Though André de Toth directed House
of Wax, Wilbur wrote it and made some
rather wretched changes from the original he was remaking, Mystery of
the Wax Museum (1933) — notably eliminating
the reporter character played in 1933 by Glenda Farrell — but came up with a
script that was at least entertaining, mainly because Price (as he was to do
over and over and over again
later) covered for the script’s inadequacies by adding a layer of camp to his
performance, a winking acknowledgment to the audience: “I know you think this is preposterous and you don’t take a
moment of it seriously — and I don’t either!” Though a far inferior film to its illustrious
predecessor, House of Wax scored
through the novelty of its 3-D (I saw it that way in 1971 and was mightily
impressed), de Toth’s tight and suspenseful direction (even though he was
missing one eye and therefore couldn’t see the 3-D effect himself) and Price’s
performance.
Alas, The Bat was a
cheapo movie whose producers, Allied Artists (née Monogram) not only didn’t shoot it in 3-D but
couldn’t even afford color. Moorehead plays Van Gorder — in this version she’s
a Jessica Fletcher-style mystery writer and Lizzie Allen (Lenita Lane) is the
secretary to whom she dictates her novels (apparently, at least according to
Mary Roberts Rinehart’s Wikipedia page, this gimmick was in the original play but
was ignored in the 1926 film) — and Price is Dr. Wells, this time given the
first name “Malcolm” and a much more substantial part. In the 1959 Bat we’re told almost from the outset that banker John
Fleming (Harvey Stephens) — a lot
of the characters’ first names were simplified in this one; his son became Mark
(John Bryant) and the unjustly suspected bank clerk was Victor Bailey (Mike
Steele), with Dale (Elaine Edwards) playing his wife — embezzled $1 million
(ah, inflation!), because after the establishing scenes at “The Oaks” (instead
of the town, it’s the house that has the arboreal name) we suddenly and
abruptly cut to a scene in Colorado, where Fleming Sr. and Dr. Wells are in a
vacation cabin together. The banker tells Dr. Wells he stole $1 million and
will give the not-so-good doctor half the fortune in exchange for his help
concealing it, including finding a dead body that can be sent home in a sealed
casket so it can be buried as John Fleming and he’ll be declared dead so the
police won’t look for him and he can get away with his ill-gotten gains. Of
course, being played by Vincent Price, Dr. Wells simply kills John Fleming,
sends his body home in the sealed casket and decides to help himself to all the money — only he soon deduces that it’s hidden somewhere
in The Oaks and so he has to show up at the old house and find it.
If the 1926 Bat was a lot of running around an old-dark-house set
enlivened by the extraordinary style with which the tale is told, the 1959 Bat was a lot of running around an old-dark-house set
dully staged by a director with absolutely no visual sense whatsoever. Even the
Bat’s disguise is simply a black face covering and gloves with metal claws — a
far cry from the vivid, imaginative one Roland West and his crew came up with
in 1926. Nobody was going to be inspired to draw a legendary superhero comic by
the sadly tacky appearance of this
villain! Agnes Moorehead turns in a solidly professional performance with a
script that offers her neither the pathos of her roles for Orson Welles
(especially Mina Harker in the radio Dracula as well as Citizen Kane and her finest film, The Magnificent
Ambersons) nor the glorious opportunities
for scenery-chewing, overacted villainy she got as the mother-in-law literally from hell on the TV series Bewitched. Vincent Price just looks bored; like Moorehead, he’s
dealing with a mediocre script that offers him neither the chance to act with
seriousness and dramatic distinction nor the opportunity to do the delicious
camp act he used to make the silly scripts he got from William Castle (and,
later, Roger Corman) entertaining. He’s also unattractively photographed by the
usually reliable Joseph Biroc — his face is baggy (he actually looked younger in the Corman Poe series, made later) and his movements are so slow he almost seems to be
acting under water. There are other versions of The Bat available, including Roland West’s 1930 sound remake
The Bat Whispers and a 1960 TV
adaptation (also available on archive.org, which The Bat Whispers alas is not).
