Image copyright © by Marcus Trahan

The Bat

(1959)

Agnes Moorhead, Vincent Price? We like them both, so why not give it a try? This happens to be the third version of a 1920 stage play co-written by Avery Hopwood and Mary Roberts Rinehart. And it is stagy, lots of static scenes in confined sets. I even wondered if it was originally made in 3D, because several times the steel-clawed hand of the crazed killer known as the Bat stretches out toward the audience. But I can’t find any evidence that it was. And it’s really pretty silly. I’m not a big fan of Bad Cinema, though from time to time it’s fun to watch a bad one. But it has to be bad in a particular way. This was just boring and not well made. We packed it in at about the halfway point.