Devil Bat's Daughter

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

German director Frank Wisbar was a rising star in his own country before he was forced to flee the Nazis and emigrated to the U.S. Whatever talent he had apparently disappeared on the way over here. Most of the films he made in the U.S. were cheapo horror junk for PRC Pictures, which was pretty much at the bottom end of the Hollywood food chain. The only good thing that can be said for this picture is that it's not as lousy as the film it is a sequel to, 1940's "The Devil Bat"--and, since that was one of the absolute worst films ever made, is not saying much. The story is about a woman (former Miss America Rosemary LaPlanche, who is basically the only good thing in the movie) who believes herself to be possessed by the spirit of her dead father. The film is treated more like a mystery than as a horror film, but what "mystery" there is is painfully obvious. The film didn't do much for the career of Rosemary La Planche, Frank Wisbar or anybody else who had anything to do with it, and for good reason--it stinks.

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.

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.

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.