The Devil Bat (1940)

Directed by Jean Yarborough. Starring Béla Lugosi, Dave O’Brien, Guy Usher, Suzanna Kaaren, Yolande Mallott, Edward Mortimer, Donald Kerr.

Lugosi’s stylish theatricality enhances this marginal horror cheapie. He’s a mad chemist who develops a lotion that attracts enlarged “devil bat” attacks, which he uses on the employers who screwed him out of his fair share of profits. Too much talk in dull news office sets, too little batty-bat action. A surprise hit for poverty row studio PRC (no connection to the People’s Republic of China). Its 1946 sequel, Devil Bat’s Daughter, possesses only the thinnest of connections to the first flick.

38/100