The Bat (1959) Review

The Bat (1959) Review

The slasher genre didn’t really begin until Psycho in 1960, but I would call The Bat a precursor of sorts, even though it’s generally categorized as a mystery. It’s the second film adaptation of the play of the same name from 1920, with the play based on the novel from 1908, so it’s a story that goes back a pretty long way. 

It starts off with a famous crime author and her maid going to a summer home she rents from a bank president, and a killer is on the loose in the town, known only as “the Bat”. The president of the bank is on a hunting trip with a local physician, played by Vincent Price, and he reveals he stole a million dollars from the bank and wants the physician to help him fake his own death, or he’ll kill him if he refuses. The physician ends up killing the bank president in a great scene of dialogue and suspense. Back at the house, the Bat sneaks in and stalks the author and her maid. The identity of the killer is not immediately obvious, and the whole movie is a whodunit: a tactic which some of the best slasher flicks would implement many years later. 

From early on, it seems like Vincent Price’s character is obviously the Bat, but then suspicion falls on another character, and the mystery is sustained quite effectively right up to the final minutes when the truth is revealed. The killer wears a mask, which is a common feature of slasher villains, though it’s just black and featureless, and he has a signature weapon: sharp hooks on the fingertips of his gloves (which look plastic), recalling Freddy Kruger’s bladed gardening glove. There’s even a moment when they realize the killer is still in the house, which became a pivotal point in a later slasher film When a Stranger Calls. 

The characters are entertaining enough, though most of them are women who are frequently screaming and acting terrified, which is pretty cliché. Unsurprisingly, much of the movie feels cliché, but that’s only because so many elements present here would be repeated in many other films to come. The death scenes are hilarious, with the Bat barely touching his victims and drawing no visible blood, but somehow still killing them instantly. And why is he called “the Bat”? Early in the film he releases a possibly rabid vampire bat into the bedroom where the women are sleeping, and it bites the maid. The vampire bat is a very obvious (and hilarious) rubber toy on a string, but then later there’s a scene where Vincent Price is handling real live bats, so it’s not like they didn’t have access to real bats. Hopefully it was to ensure none of them were harmed. 

The Bat is competently made and fairly suspenseful throughout. It’s in some very key moments that it becomes schlock, but is still entertaining nonetheless. It’s in the public domain, making it readily accessible, and worth a watch if you have any interest in proto-slasher films, or horror films from this era in general.