While this film never exactly approaches the awfulness of PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE, this is a supremely cheesy and terrible film,....that somehow STILL is highly entertaining and fun! The story itself is a bit derivative--after all, we've seen so many films featuring Bela Lugosi as a vengeful and evil scientist. But, this time there is a very odd twist indeed! Here he is a doctor who develops cosmetics--and while that doesn't SOUND scary, it indeed is! You see, he hates his employers and secretly is planning on killing them and their families for becoming rich based on all his research. So, using his cosmetics skills, he develops a weird aftershave that causes an evil mutated "devil bat" to bite their throats and kill them! It seems that Lugosi not only is a whiz with making toiletries, but can take an ordinary prop bat and make it grow into a huge and totally fake-looking killer bat! In fact, the bat might just be one of the worst props I have ever seen--looking about as deadly as a Pomeranian! And, the incredibly silly and completely un-bat-like scream it makes is downright hilarious. Plus, I would love to find out exactly where this film was supposedly set, as in this weird place, the cops sit back and let reporters do all the work and take all the risks! You see, when a nice reporter and his completely annoying and obnoxious partner come to town to report on some strange murders, the chief of police tells them to investigate and you don't see the police at all until the very end of the movie--even though five people were killed! Talk about low-key police work! This is definitely a film you watch more as a source of laughter than anything else! Shakespeare, this definitely ain't!!
Review of The Devil Bat
