Customer Reviews

Devil Bat's Daughter [VHS]

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

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.

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.

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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.

The Image Entertainment DVD uses a very old National Telefilm Associates 16mm television syndication print. This results in only a fair image quality and a poor, and often distorted, audio track.

Devil Bat's Daughter is one hour and seven minutes and was released in theaters on April 15, 1946. This was the sequel to the movie the Devil Bat set ten years in the future. The movie is about Nina MacCarron, the daughter of Dr. Paul Carruthers, who is being used by Dr. Clifton Morris. Dr. Clifton Morris wants to get rid of his wife so he can inherit her money. Dr. Clifton Morris drugs Nina into believing she is the murder and it is up to Ted Masters, Nina's boyfriend, to prove her innocent and that is the basically the movie in a nutshell. There are some inconsistencies in this movie. First the original movie Heathville, Illinois and in this movie the setting is Wardsley, New York. Another thing is Dr. Paul Carruthers's death. In the Devil Bat, it is clearly scene at the end of the movie that he was killed by one of his own bats. In the Devil Bat's Daughter it is said that he was found dead and it was assumed that one of his bats killed him. Also none of the characters from the original movie return to the sequel. The story, sound, and plot were not that great and the ending was predictable. The Devil Bat's Daughter get a D-.

Feature Start
Chapter Index
1. Main Title/Who's That Girl
2. The Head Shrink
3. Hidden Agenda
4. Father Knows Best
5. Terminal Leave
6. Smells Fishy
7. Bat's in the Belfry
8. The Paper Chase
9. The Missing Link
10. Indecent Exposuer

When we watch a sequel, we expect it to follow the original, not only in time, but also in the continuity of the story. For instance, in Universal's "Frankenstein" series, there was a common thread linking each film with its predecessor. The "Rocky" series is the same, each movie builds on the other. Now, imagine a sequel where the original is barely mentioned, and the plot of the original blatantly contradicted. Thus you have "The Devil Bat's Daughter."

The plot goes like this: a young woman is found unconscious alongside a road in Westchester County, New York. Seems she had taken a cab from the train station to the abandoned house of Dr. Paul Carruthers (of original Devil Bat fame). The sheriff takes her to the local practitioner, who, in turn takes her to wealthy shrink Dr. Clifton Morris. Both doctors learn she is actually the daughter of Dr. Carruthers. Meanwhile, our heroine, Nina (Rosemary LaPlanche) is haunted by visions of bats (must run in the family). These hallucinations inspire Dr. Morris to use Nina as a pawn to bump off his wealthy wife, Ellen, in order that he should inherit and marry his girlfriend. These plans are complicated when Ellen's son, Ted, returns home from the army and falls in love with Nina. This takes him all of ten minutes, it seems; and when Ellen is murdered, seemingly by Nina, Ted refuses to believe it and seeks to clear the love of his life. Part of this vindication rests on Ted finding the papers and notes of the late Dr. Carruthers (shades of the diary of Dr. Frankenstein), which detail his experiments in electrically charged growth. Ted eventually finds the papers in the possession of the evil Dr. Morris, who is killed in a gunfight with the sheriff and Ted.

Now, here's the cheat: it turns out Dr. Carruthers was actually a good man whose experiments got a little out of hand. He wasn't a murderer after all! Obviously, anyone who saw the original, "The Devil Bat," surely knew he wasn't letting those giant bats out for air. Also, the locale has changed. The original was set near Chicago, while the sequel finds us in upstate New York. It seems the director, Frank Wisbar (who also produced), was given a title by the company and took only a cursory look at the original, preferring instead to concoct a psychological thriller, which were all the rage, especially after the success of Hitchcock's "Spellbound." We know our heroine is having one of her episodes when the film becomes unfocused and wavy.

I could forgive Wisbar everything if only he hadn't made such a dull film. PRC films depend on action; they hardly have time for character development, which a psychological thriller demands. In addition, one needs good actors to make us believe. That's far from the case her. LaPlanche's histrionics can only be deemed "passable" at best, and that is if one is being generous. Remember, this was not her first film. Michael Hale, as the evil Dr. Morris is so monotone, that the only thing we are sure he can cure is insomnia.

All in all, this is a film only for those die-hard psychotronic collectors. It's a shame the Mystery Science Theater crew didn't discover this one - our enjoyment would have been that much more.

A great PRC release from 1946. Fun to watch. The audio quality however is really bad, even for PRC movies.

This atrocious Poverty Row "thriller" fails in so many departments, it is difficult to grant it even a single star, even for fans of Povert Row flicks like myself. Lets start with the rather dull direction of Frank Wisbar. His conventional direction and lack of pacing makes this film seem much longer than its short hour. The camera work, even on a modest budget, is uninspired. As for the script, one might ask "What script?". There is not a single moment in the picture where any semblance of a coherent story is noticed. The screenwriter obvious assumed not many folks would remember the "classic" DEVIL BAT well enough to culp the silly and maddening ending of this "sequel". Are we to suddenly believe the Bela Lugosi character commited NO crimes which we saw with our own eyes in DEVIL BAT?? Utter nonsense from start to finish. As for the technical aspects of this DVD, we are treated to a really poor source material. The opening credits looked and sounded so bad, I had hoped the rest of the film would have more to offer (or keep my attention). The soundtracks at times sounds so abrasive and worn, I was forced to turn down the noise. What does this DVD have going for it? Well, its hard for me to resist the charms of the late Rosemary LaPlanche (who unfortunately died in 1979 at an early age). LaPlanche was not a particularly gifted actress (that doesn't matter with THIS tripe), but her visual appeal was something to be reckoned with, even outside of the confines of Poverty Row filmmaking. I therefore give the abyssmal DEVIL BAT'S DAUGHTER one star for its true star Rosemary LaPlanche.