joshfedderson I have to give credit here, the film makers of this movie did an excellent job of what they had back in the 40's. But then again, The Devil Bat was kind of cheesy and fake. I mean I enjoyed it hence the 7 rating I give it, but really, the bat looked to fake.The story is about an upset doctor, a company he works for is stealing his ideas and not paying him enough for them. So he feels cheated, and in an act of revenge he goes all mad scientists and creates a huge bat that is angered by a certain cologne. Using this cologne, the doctor targets the owners of the company and certain people that put on the cologne, his Frankenstein like bat then attacks the target, and kills them. I felt the story was alright, but it's one of those movies where the story seems to mashed together, to quickly written, it's as if the producers of the film wanted to just get it over with. I have to say the bat looked silly as it flew around attacking people, it didn't even look like a bat, just a flying puppet thing? Like I said the story was alright and it was enjoyable, I don't know any of the cast that was in it, but they did a good job. And in the end the Doctor I should say, get's a taste of his own medicine. An alright Horror movie, but could have been better. 7/10 for "The Devil Bat"

Red-Barracuda By the 1940's Hungarian actor Bela Lugosi was mainly seen in poverty row movies, such was the rapid fall he suffered in Hollywood. These cheap B-movies were mainly pretty bad but Lugosi always put in engaging performances no matter the quality of the material. I would definitely have to say that The Devil Bat ranks as one of the better of this particular bracket of films. It has Lugosi as a chemist who has been cheated out of money by some business partners. He uses electricity to create giant bats who are trained to attack and kill those who wear a specific after-shave he has developed, needless to say, he starts handing out free samples of this to those ex-partners he wants punished.This one is quite entertaining it has to be said. It has the benefit of a pretty decent monster that we see flying around at dusk and then swooping down to kill its unfortunate victims. It may not seem like much but seriously, for a poverty row creature feature, this is well above average. Lugosi is as ever good value as well. The plot-line is silly yet engaging enough with some quite memorable moments. It's still overall fairly average in general terms if I am being totally honest but for a poverty row movie it's definitely on the higher end of the scale. Certainly worth watching.

GL84 After a group of murders in a small village, the residents find them to be the result of a mad scientist's experiments in training an army of vampire bats to kill those who have wronged him in the past and they must race to stop him before they carry out all of their orders.This one here isn't that bad and does have it's good points. One of the biggest factors here is that it manages to offer up a really great atmosphere to it with the nice amount of scenes that really look quite impressive. This is mainly from the scenes in the laboratory to the shots from the village, this leaves a lot of really great scenes which are quite impressive showcasing the usual idea of mad science at that particular time filled with beakers, medical tubes and flasks filled with liquids. The bat attacks are overall pretty decent and can be quite fun, as the sight of watching the obviously fake creatures involved have a sense of dread that allows for some nice multiple attack scenes as these are actually shown latching onto victims like in the first couple out in the courtyard, a later sequence where it comes out of the forest to attack a lone victim and the experimentation attempting to find the creature out in the park is quite nice. There's also the fact that the finale here is really quite fun, featuring the great idea that there's actually a second one out there which brings about some rather fun and enjoyable action as there's the big final attacks on the countryside estates in the middle of the night as well as the aborted attempt which leads into the big reveal at the end which is really impressive. These here are the film's good points, even though the flaws here aren't that bad. The biggest one is that the film doesn't really have anything especially noteworthy. Nothing really sticks out as to what happened in the film. This one really lacks the ability to have a spectacular or memorable scene, and this is a real problem. Without something to really be looking for, it simply goes over the viewer and feels as though nothing noteworthy occurred. This passes over quite easily because of that, and it does have some really dull moments toward the end where they spend a long time doing nothing of real value as it's simply just talking about what should be done to deal with the creatures. This provides nothing of real interest or excitement and does take a lot longer than usual to get through, as the conversation doesn't end. These are the film's flaws.Today's Rating/PG: Mild Violence.

hte-trasme I just watched The Devil Bat for the first time since I was a child. I remembered Bela Lugosi, the central plot device of murder by means of an aftershave that attracts killer bats, and the fact that everyone in the movie seems to listen to exactly the same radio station at exactly the same time. All those elements are still there, and though the last one only occurs once, it still seems like an amusingly silly way of conveying exposition. But much less prevalent than the cinema cliché of panning, zooming, and spinning newspapers, which appear here constantly. Perhaps that's more appropriate than normal, though, since two of our main characters are reporters.The Devil Bat has been one of the more enduring of Lugosi's cheap "poverty row" horror/mystery roles, no doubt because it remains highly entertaining and watchable despite, or perhaps because of the fact that everything that happens in in the realm of high silliness with horror trappings. Lugosi is a scientist (which here apparently means both a physician and a perfume chemist) who cashed out early after making a perfume formula for a successful company, and now thinks the company's fortune should be his. So his solution is to murder the family who runs the company in a very convoluted fashion. The concept is, well, batty. And from an acting standpoint, you can't say Lugosi makes this character "believable." Nobody could make someone doing this believable. But is is very entertainingly creepy, which is exactly his job.Because we know from the start what he is doing, this can't be a traditional mystery. But it's well-paced enough that we still follow the other characters as they inevitably move towards finding the solution we already know. And we don't blame them for not guessing such an unlikely scenario. Reporter Johnny is our hero. He's a little hard to take seriously as he spends most of the film wearing a tie with a huge question-mark pattern on it. Perhaps he is secretly The Doctor.He gets fired after his photographer "One-Shot" fakes a news photo of the devil bat. But he rather unbelievably wants to keep working on the story despite no longer technically being a reporter since he as no one to report to. When they find out more about the case their boss rather shockingly wants to hire them back, despite the fact that at least one of them provably fabricated his earlier journalism.But it's all part of the comic relief, which is still fun working alongside the unintentional comic non-relief. And though the film is clearly quite low-budgeted, its hows that more in its flimsy castle set (of course, all doctor-scientist-perfumers live in castles) than in its devil bats.There's very little objectively "good" about this movie, but it's everything a fun B movie should be.