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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
For a working definition of Hollywood obscurity, you couldn't do much better than the career of Frank Wisbar, a gifted German filmmaker who found himself, like his fellow émigré Edgar G. Ulmer, under contract at Producers Releasing Corporation, the most desperately poor of the Poverty Row studios of the 1940s. Typical of his hopeless assignments, Devil Bat's Daughter, released in 1946, was the totally unnecessary sequel to one of PRC's few successes, the 1940 Devil Bat with Bela Lugosi; this time, it's Rosemary La Planche--Miss America of 1941!--who falls under suspicion in a series of mysterious killings... has she inherited her father's homicidal instincts? Made during Hollywood's first flirtation with Freudian psychology, the picture is replete with soft-focus dream sequences (with some unconvincing bat effects lifted from the first film) and vague--extremely vague--implications of incest. It's virtually thrill-free, but Wisbar doesn't shrink from his duty, doing his damnedest to come up with creative camera angles and some way of imparting emotion to his waxworks cast. Like many of the Ulmer films of the period, Devil Bat's Daughter bears a strangely touching testimony to the strength of the human spirit--in spite of everything, Wisbar carries on. --Dave Kehr
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Nice trash in bad shape,
By A Customer
This review is from: Devil Bat's Daughter (DVD)
William K. Everson featured this movie, together with the superior Strangler of the Swamp, in his excellent book about classic horror films. But it isn't really exciting - no rediscovered treasure from the B movie backlot. Image's version differs from the vhs tape offered by SONY in recent years, but at least the soundtrack hasn't much to offer, while the print is worn and very dark. While I would recommend Strangler of the Swamp, issued together with this one, as being a real attraction for genre fans, this one is too silly and slow of pace. One point for Alexander Steinert's heavy-handed score, and one more for Rosemary LaPlanche.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
At least the cover art is nice...,
By cookieman108 "cookieman108®" (Inside the jar...) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Devil Bat's Daughter (DVD)
Directed by Frank Wisbar, who also did the much better Strangler of the Swamp (1946), The Devil Bat's Daughter (1946) is supposed to be a sequel to the Bela Lugosi/PRC poverty row cheapie, Devil Bat (1940). And no, Lugosi does not make an appearance in this film...Rosemary La Planche (Miss America 1941) plays Nina MacCarron, daughter to Dr. Paul Carruthers, the character Lugosi played in the original movie. She's come to the small town where all the nasty business with her father occurred a few years ago, and is plagued with nightmares and fainting spells with regards to her father and his work with giant bats (go see the original for a full rundown on that story). After a fainting spell that results in a comatose state, Nina is taken to the police office, where a local doctor decides her malady is out of his league and calls on a new resident to the town, Dr. Clifton Morris (Michael Hale), a big city psychiatrist, to see if he can help. Nina is moved to a local hospital, and Dr. Morris is able to bring her out of her stupor, but visions of bats plague continue to plague her, causing her to flee the hospital to Dr. Morris' home. Despite Dr. Morris' objections, Mrs. Morris (Molly Lamont) talks him into letting Nina stay with them. I probably would have objected a bit more strenuously, as the thought of having some unknown nutcase staying in my house would really put me at unease, but Nina is a really hot babe, so I might be conflicted...anyway, Mrs. Morris' son, Ted Masters (John James) comes home after ending his military service, and shortly becomes smitten with his mother and stepfather's looney new houseguest. Gee, I didn't see that coming...Dr. Morris continues to try and help Nina deal with her reoccurring nightmares, but it soon becomes apparent that Dr. Morris has ulterior motives. Oh, I don't mean he has taken a romantic interest in her or anything like that, but he does turn out to be a fairly scheming cad, and his plans include discovering the location of her fathers lost research papers, containing advanced ideas that may have great commercial value.
The film evolves into a mystery as a couple of murders occur, and Nina becomes suspect, with the thinking that she may have inherited her father's homicidal instincts (you see, due to the nature of his work with bats and murders involved, some thought he was a vampire). There is no real mystery as to who the killer is, especially not with the limited number of characters available. As far as being a sequel to the previous PRC release, Devil Bat, The Devil Bat's Daughter has the only the most tenuous threads to connect it to its' predecessor. Nina's blurry dream sequences do show scenes from that film, but I am unsure how she could dream these things, as she wasn't in the original film to witness the events. Oh well...as the movie winds down, the predictability factor comes on strong, and no great surprises are had. Anyone expecting anything that made the Devil Bat worth watching to bleed into this movie will be sadly disappointed. I will say there is a story here, and it does follow through, even though it takes a number of liberties with the facts presented in the original movie. The picture quality on this release is pretty rough at points, but watchable. The audio is very poor, with the music suffering noise distortion a number of times throughout. No special features here, but at least there are chapter stops. There seems to be some effort put into the movie, but the source material was just too lame to begin with, and, as I read on another review, this seems to have been more a vehicle for PRC to showcase the very attractive Rosemary La Planche than anything else, and I would tend to agree with that. Probably not worth the time, unless you've got a freaky completist compulsion like me. The most interesting thing of this release is the artwork on the box, which, is pretty nice. Cookieman108
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Is this a movie?,
By
This review is from: Devil Bat's Daughter (DVD)
You watch something like "Devil Bat's Daughter' and you expect maybe a handheld bat puppet or some creature on visible wires--but in this bottom-of-the-barrel effort from PRC, there's nothing. No bat, no special effects, no nothing. You wonder what audiences back in the early 40s made of this zero horror film filler that definitely played the bottom of a double bill? The camera goes fuzzy when you're supposed to be terrified. It looks like the cast and crew had one small room in which to film. Nothing happens. I think the story line revolves around the heroine terrified that she might be a vampire. But--she never even suggests why she would think this since all she does is faint a lot. Rosemary LaPlanche as the bedeviled daughter is much better than expected and she conveys the sense that if given a chance, she coulda been a contendah! The only pluses you can give this penny-budgeted effort is for the title and for the art work on the box. Since I brought the DVD for $4.50 at BestBuy, I don't feel like I really lost anything--except 54 minutes to watch this grade-z cheapie.
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