El demonio del mar

"The Sea Bat" is a thoroughly silly film--the sort of steamy adventure film you could have easily found back in the so-called 'Pre-Code' days. What I mean is that up until mid-1934, Hollywood did a lousy job of policing what was in movies and many of the films from about 1930-34 are amazingly steamy when you see them today. Sex, adultery, abortion, homosexual and the like were relatively common in movies and unlike the post-code era, they often went unpunished! This film implies a lot...sex, rape and more. And to fill that bill, they cast the blazing wild woman of the era, Raquel Torres...a Mexican actress who excelled at showing off skin and her ample good looks. Here you see her in LOTS of suggestive outfits, poses and situations...and often playing against the new preacher on the island, the Reverend Sims (Charles Bickford).

Torres plays Nina, a fiery young woman living on a fictional Caribbean island. When her boyfriend is torn apart by a shark, she becomes bitter and angry...and the new preacher decides to make her his pet project. Who will win in the end...the earthy and sex-crazed Nina or the godly preacher? Considering it's a Pre-Code film...the possibilities are endless...and most likely rather cynical!

The film is, not surprisingly, anything but subtle. Torres' character is more a caricature than a real woman and the dialog, at times, is a bit embarrassing...such as her father insisting that what she needed was a good horse whipping! He also refers to the locals as a group of 'slimy, drooling native'! So much for subtlety or political correctness! But that also is what makes the film oddly entertaining. What also helps is the surprisingly good cast including Boris Karloff, John Miljan, Gibson Gowland (of "Greed") and Mack Swain (a frequent foil in Chaplin films).

Overall, it's a film more entertaining than well made. Technically, it ain't great--with a silly script and too much stock footage. But, despite this, it IS fun.

After scoring well in Cecil B. DeMille's first talking picture Dynamite and opposite Greta Garbo in Anna Christie, Charles Bickford's career might well have taken a bath with Sea Bat. For those who don't know, The Sea Bat is a jumbo size stingray which can grow to the size of a great white shark. They're the terror of the sponge divers in the West Indies.

Into this tropic paradise otherwise than for the present of those giant creatures in the water comes Charles Bickford pretending to be a man of the cloth, but who is actually a Devil's Island escapee. If he were really a man of the cloth we would have had yet another version of Rain as Bickford fends off the amorous advances of Raquel Torres. But he's not a real minister and in fact has other things on his mind besides a little with nookie with Torres. He wants to get out of the area where he's been in disguise for a few years now.

Raquel Torres has made going after the giant stingray a personal crusade after her brother Nils Asther is killed during a sponge dive. With what she has to offer to the guy who gets the giant a lot of the men are ready and willing.

Bickford also has to worry about a pair of sponge fisherman who recognize him and want to claim the reward from the French. And it's not easy to keep up the pretense when folks are looking for you to preach a sermon or offer up some spiritual guidance like Raquel's father George Marion.

The Sea Bat which probably for its location shooting and special effects wizardry for its time in creating the giant stingray and its encounters with man was really something. It really hasn't aged well and now is one camp hoot.

I totally forgot this Wesley Ruggles' early masterpiece. Because, yes, for a thirties flick, the early talkies, this is a true tremendous piece of work. It may announce MOBY DICK, but of course at a lesser scale. I enjoyed this movie so much, and it is even more painful to realize that many other films of this kind will forever remain unknown, forgotten for good. This one, fortunately emerged from the darkness, from the depth - not of the sea - but from oblivion. Wesley Ruggles also directed CIMARRON, a gem of the western genre. The rest of his filmography remains mostly unknown, because there are so many silent features.

Wesley Ruggles began directing THE SEA BAT but Lionel Barrymore completed it. This would account for the contrast between the outdoor scenes, shot on Mexican locations, and the interiors, particularly a sponge-diving episode, filmed in the studio tank, and some dialog between Charles Bickford and Raquel Torres.

The exteriors bear all the hallmarks of Ruggles - in particular a long tracking shot following Torres through the ramshackle village to the dock, where the sponge fishing boat is about to leave with her brother Asther aboard. The hand of Ruggles is also evident in the scene of Torres fending off potential rape on the rocky seashore, the star pulling a knife and snarling defiance at John Miljan and cronies as spray soaks her flimsy blouse (revealing a pre-code absence of lingerie.)

On the other hand, one is inclined to lay at Barrymore's door an embarrassing voodoo sequence, with Torres performing an unconvincing dance, and also the scene where she tries to vamp Bickford as he stolidly studies the Bible.

The casting, as often in early sound films, mixes talents on the way up with once-eminent silent performers working out the end of their contracts; Charles Bickford and Boris Karloff among the former, Gibson Gowland (GREED), Nils Asther (WILD ORCHIDS)and Mack Swain (Keystone) the latter. George F. Marion parades another of his excruciating accents, a serious rival to his performance in ANNA Christie as Garbo's father.

Considerable effort has gone into creating the manta ray "bat",a towed semi-submersible on the order of "Bruce", the shark in JAWS. More whale than ray, it spouts, and overturns boats. This impressive piece of physical special effects, as usual with early studio productions, is uncredited.

Silly bit of hokum about the goings-on with people on a tropical island, including a woman who says she'll give herself (wink wink) to any man who can kill a giant stingray that killed her brother. Enter an escaped convict posing as a minister, who sees the woman writhing around during a voodoo ritual and promptly falls in lust with her. I'd imagine all those fishermen out risking their lives for booty (literally) aren't too happy about that. Raquel Torres plays the woman and, for those in desperate need of titillation, she's prancing about half-naked throughout and even has the 1930 equivalent of a wet t-shirt scene. Charles Bickford plays the convict and, judging by his hair and eyebrows, Louis B. Mayer's car must have been short two quarts of oil during the filming of this picture. Boris Karloff also appears in a minor role but nothing worth his fans getting excited about. The best parts of the picture are the water scenes and the "sea bat" itself, a nice bit of special effects for the time. Unfortunately there aren't enough of these scenes. I had no idea that stingrays were thought of as mysterious monsters less than a century ago or that sponge diving was a "weird industry." These are things I learned from watching this movie. It's worth a look if you have no prejudices against early talkies. Just don't expect anything impressive.