Devil Bat's Daughter

Do not watch this movie expecting to see any monsters or vampires because all you'll get are some bats. Actually this film is more of an identity crisis drama and murder mystery rather than a horror movie. The best parts are the dream sequences which are reminiscent of surrealist experimental films (has David Lynch seen this?) and also LSD sequences from 60s films like HALLUCINATION GENERATION or BLONDE ON A BUM TRIP.

Okay, unless you're a fan of mystery and horror films, you likely find all the stuff from the 1930's and 1940's intolerable, but what's the point of putting that in a review? I AM a fan, and I liked this sequel (of sorts) to The Devil Bat. It has classic 1940's styling and 1941's Miss America in the lead role. I thought the flashbacks to the first film were handled well, and the storyline is plausible. The whodunit aspects and ending are relatively predictable, but not unsatisfying. Miss LaPlanche and Mr. Leary starred in the same year in The Strangler of the Swamp, which I liked a little more. I also liked the use of the newspaper's vampire headlines which provided a link to Bela Lugosi and a theme of the previous film.

While this film is nowhere near as good as the original, The Devil Bat (1940), it does have its own charm. This one is actually a mystery-horror and more towards mystery with little horror.

The flashbacks/clips of the original film really helped to make the Devil Bat's Daughter (1946) better - without them the film would fall almost flat I'm afraid. It made Bat's Daughter a lot more interesting with the flashbacks.

I enjoyed this film and I would recommend it to those that are fans of Bela Lugosi and the original film. It's not as good as the original but it is a film that is worth watching if you want to see the sequel.

5/10

MORD39 RATING: * out of ****

The original DEVIL BAT was arguably one of the most enjoyable low budgeted Poverty Row horrors of all. This unnecessary sequel is pretty awful, and not a film required to be seen by even the most diehard fan of 30's and 40's horror.

For starters, this follow-up asks us to believe that the demented Bela Lugosi character from the first film was actually innocent of all those bizarre murders! Now in the followup we have his daughter having nightmares over the whole thing.

This is a poorly acted "whodunit" attempt, but you'll figure out who the culprit is long before your eyelids surrender to the gentle calling of the Sandman. Pleasant dreams!

Devil Bat's Daughter (1946)

1/2 (out of 4)

Nina MacCarron (Rosemary LaPlanche) believes that she is evil just like her father who murdered several people after creating a bat to attack them. She begins seeing a psychiatrist (Nolan Leary) to try and make sense of whether she's going crazy or perhaps there is something evil around. This here is a sequel to THE DEVIL BAT, a fun Bela Lugosi picture but this thing here is just downright awful on just about every level. We'll get to the awful things in a bit but the most disappointing thing is how stupid it treats the viewers and fans of the original film. In that film Lugosi was a murderer but this sequel pretty much throws everything out and completely contradicts what the original film was about. Why on Earth they did this is anyone's guess but it really wouldn't shock me if the screenwriters of this thing never actually saw the picture. Being a PRC film you should expect a low-budget but I'd really be shocked if this thing took more than a couple days to shoot. The entire thing looks as if it was shot on just a couple sets and everything from the performances to the editing to the direction are downright horrid. The weird thing is that director Frank Wisbar and actress LaPlanche would fair much better together the same year with STRANGLER OF THE SWAMP, which proved they could deliver something of quality. I think this film perfectly shows how very little effort anyone was putting into it because the studio simply wanted a film to get into theaters and hopefully milk some horror fans. DEVIL BAT'S DAUGHTER was released the same year as SHE WOLF OF London, another horrid film dealing with a female monster.