Waltz of the Bat

In WALTZ OF THE BAT there's a half-hearted attempt to dress up desultory XXX sex scenes with a dollop of lame-brained comedy. Result is a tedious porn exercise.

Only thing funny here is the asinine booklet notes included in the After Hours Cinema DVD 4-pack. Yet another would-be film historian attempts to find solipsistic significance where there is none. He's a Sarno/Wishman buff but beyond some acquaintance with a sliver of exploitation films he's woefully ignorant of cinema; his endless discussion of THE LAST BATH (one of 3 non-IMDb titles in the pack) fails to note that the movie is a lame riff on the Ambrose Bierce classic AN OCCURRENCE AT OWL CREEK BRIDGE, memorably filmed by Robert Enrico. He also rambles on boringly about the experimental nature of Frisco-based cinema compared to L.A. & N.Y. (completely misleading) and includes the local Seattle production THE LAST BATH as an S.F. film (wrong!).

The Bat is a mustachioed kook with a cape and cane who accosts girls on the streets of San Francisco (where are Malden & Douglas when you need them), making them his instant sex slaves. Both he and the rest of the cast address the camera directly with silly "confidential" asides, among which we find out The Bat is 140 years old but has only till midnight to avoid the clutches of his arch-enemy The Bee. She is a similarly poverty-budget superhero who gave him his powers in the first place in Vienna in 1881.

Silly and tedious sex scenes ensue with relatively unattractive women (for the era) and random guys. Only recognizable critter was Taylor Horne, playing one of a pair of Indians fitted out with wigs and a feather in their hair to have a boring threesome with the Bee whilst she searches for Bat's whereabouts. Silliest gimmick is her failure to communicate with the grunting "savages", so she effectively starts talking to them "in bee".

The clown playing The Bat looks and acts like Jon Lovitz, who I presume came up with his own maniacal laugh without having seen this garbage. The Bee is mainly worried about her cheapo headdress and antennae while evincing zero interest in her sex scenes. The classical music score (heavy on Strauss) climaxes with the 1812 Overture as non-existent special effects cue The Bat disappearing at midnight, leaving only a $50 bill behind. This recurring U.S. Grant motif apparently pertains to the day-rate paid to the talent on the one-day wonder. AHC DVD version runs 67 torturous minutes, nearly 20 minutes longer than the IMDb notation referring to an Alpha Blue mangled print.

This drek is credited to Steve Brown aka Rick Beaty, a Frisco-based filmmaker who later did some quality films including DIXIE. Again, the historian overlooked this screen credit at the top of the film. He was too busy staring at his navel.