FilmNRSci-Fi Horror Classic Monsters Monster & Creature

The Devil Bat1940

Name: The Devil Bat
Genre: Sci-Fi Horror, Classic Monsters, Monster & Creature
Released: 1940-12-13
Rating: 5.6

“He's Trained His Brood of Blood-Hungry Bats to Kill on Command!”

Directed by Jean Yarbrough

5.6

Crypt Score

Blended from 3 sources

IMDb 5.4Rotten Tomatoes 60%TMDB 5.3

✍ Review

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Year

1940

Runtime

68 min

The premise

Dr. Paul Carruthers is frustrated because he thinks his employers, Mary Heath and Henry Morton, have cheated him out of the company's profits. He decides to get revenge by altering bats to grow twice their normal size and training them to attack when they smell a perfume of his own making. He mixes the perfume into a lotion, which he offers as a gift to Mary and Henry. When they turn up dead, a newspaper reporter decides to investigate.

Horror Vault's take

A brilliant but embittered chemist believes his employers have robbed him of his rightful fortune, and he channels that grievance into a diabolical scheme involving genetically enlarged bats trained to kill. His trap is as elegant as it is sinister — a specially crafted lotion offered as a seemingly generous gift. When bodies start piling up in a small town, a tenacious newspaper reporter begins pulling at the threads. Bela Lugosi brings his signature menace to this pulpy, fast-moving creature feature from Hollywood's golden age of horror.

Content: Mild Violence, Animal Imagery (Giant Bats)