Le démon de la mer

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.

"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.

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.

I suppose people turned out to see an early talkie which not only had lots of outdoor footage but also underwater photography. THE SEA BAT is a good film but I think it would have been better had they made it about 5 years earlier as a silent as the characterisations and plot complications come directly from the silent days. The giant manta ray (a Sea Bat) is making life rough for the sponge divers on the island of Portuga (where everyone claims to be of Spanish descent but talks with French accents). This would have been enough for a plot but throw in a minister (Charles Bickford) who won't preach any sermons and stumbles through a funeral service picking passages from the Bible at random. It is not revealing too much to say that this fellow is an eccaped convict who stole a ministers outfit to get off Devil's Island. Now about this being a silent style film? Well the idea that a former pirate who broke jail and is hiding behind a ministers collar reforming just because he reads a few verses from the Old Testament is something you'd expect from D.W. Griffith, circa 1920, yet that is just what happens. Also the scene where the latest victim of the Manta (Nils Asther, best remembered from OUR DANCING DAUGHTERS, 1928) is brought back to port is staged exactly as if this were a silent film. The cast is a joy to see. Watch for Gibson Gowland (GREED) as a Cockney seaman, former Charlie Chaplin comic foil Mack Swain as a bartender, and look fast for a still-unknown Boris Karloff in 3 scenes as a sailor referred to as "The Corsican". The damsel in distress is Raquel Torres, best remembered from F.W. Murnau's docu-drama WHITE SHADOWS IN THE SOUTH SEAS (1928). The scenes of the giant manta are well done and convincing.

Half-Maugham, half-Melville and all hooey, this tropical potboiler is chock full of sin and salvation, with a giant sting ray tossed in as -- I kid you not -- a romantic deus ex machina.

The setting is a West Indies island where a bunch of grimy sponge divers lust after barefoot temptress Raquel Torres, who only has eyes for the beautiful (and, with his thick Swedish accent, virtually unintelligible) Nils Asther. But when he dies in the clutches of the title monster villain, she turns her back on God and offers herself as reward to the man who destroys the beast. It's a decision she quickly comes to regret, and as the body count increases, the guilt-ridden Raquel flails her arms and pounds her breasts with the frenzy of a silent movie diva.

As if this plot weren't febrile enough, Torres begins falling for newly arrived man of the cloth Charles Bickford, who does his damnedest to resist her overtures since he's actually an escaped convict from Devil's Island.

This awesomely wacky nonsense was concocted by the radical left-wing screenwriter John Howard Lawson without a hint of the political agitprop that infused his later screen work. The film, however, is not without interest: the camera work by Ira Morgan is sensuous and inventive (particularly when underwater) and the cast of scurvy Island rats is populated with such compelling character types as John Miljan (in a departure from his usual urban smoothie), Boris Karloff (as the glowering Corsican), and silent film veterans Gibson Gowland and Mack Swain.