Devil Bat's Daughter

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!

The title seems to suggest that "Devil Bat's Daughter" is a sequel of sorts to the original "Devil Bat" (1940). However, there are too many inconsistencies to establish the continuity needed for a sequel. "Devil Bat" fans will notice right off the bat (couldn't resist) that in the six years after the first movie was made, the locale changed from Heathville (apparently somewhere in Illinois and near Chicago) to Wardsley, New York, outside New York City. The characters are all of course different, and so is the home of the mad doctor, Paul Carruthers, which now has a basement. The 1946 film also goes lightly over the facts concerning the doc's predictable demise, noting that he was found dead, the apparent victim of one of his large bats. However, in the first film he is plainly killed by the devil bat in view of the sheriff, the heroine and the star reporter. Actually "Devil Bat's Daughter" is little more than a rather obvious vehicle for a 1941 Miss America named Rosemary La Planche. The film lacks any of the mystery of the first, and simply winds its way to the predictable end.

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.

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.

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.