Dr. Paul Carruthers is seen by the inhabitants of the small Illinois village of Heathville as a kindly doctor, one who wouldn't so much as hurt a fly. However, in his secluded home, which also functions as his research laboratory, Carruthers has been conducting experiments with bats, devising a way to increase their size by exposing them to large amounts of electromagnetism. He's also come up with a special type of shaving lotion, the scent of which the bats happen to absolutely loathe, and plans to use the combination to exact horrific revenge on the founders of Martin Heath Cosmetics, whom he works for. His work is what made the company the wealthy enterprise what it is, but Carruthers himself made the mistake of asking for money up front rather than joining the enterprise, receiving a mere $10,000 while his employers became extremely rich. Feeling like he was cheated, Carruthers manipulates members of the Heath and Morton families into dabbing the lotion on themselves and then letting his enormous "Devil Bat" loose into the night, after which it zeroes in on the scent and claws the wearer to death. After the first killing, that of Roy Heath, Chicago reporter Johnny Layton and his photographer, "One-Shot" McGuire, are sent to Heathville to find a story. As they investigate, they learn of several bizarre clues, including claw marks on the neck, a strange, faint odor on the body, and some hairs that are similar to those of a mouse. That night, while keeping a vigil at the Heath estate, Layton and McGuire, along with Roy's sister, Mary, see her other brother, Tommy, get killed by the enormous bat. The following night, Don Morton, the son of Henry Morton, falls victim to the Devil Bat as well, and Layton discovers that the shaving lotion Don had used the night he died has the same smell as the odor detected on the other victims. Tracing the lotion to Carruthers, and learning of the raw deal he got when the Heath and Morton families became rich, Layton grows to suspect the good doctor, who will not be satisfied until he kills everyone who could pose a threat to him, including Layton, Police Chief Wilkins, and Mary.
An interesting thing that Lugosi brings to the part of Carruthers is how he surreptitiously tells the Devil Bat's intended victims that he knows of their impending doom: when they part ways, they always say, "Good night," or, "See you," he says a rather serious, "Goodbye." This is one of several ways in which the facade of innocence he creates for himself when he's in the company of others occasionally cracks, with a major one being when he gets Don Morton to dabbing himself with the lotion. As Morton talks about the company's amazing net prophets for the year, telling him that he's just a dreamer, Carruthers says, "Well, I do dream. Dreams that you could never guess." Morton then tells him that he's been working too hard on his formula and Carruthers snaps back, "Formula! That's but child's play for a great scientist. Your brain is to feeble to conceive what I've accomplished in the realm of science," and when Morton inquires as to what this discovery he's hinting at is, he says, "When you find out, Henry, it'll be too late for you." Morton tells him he can't believe that he can control someone's destiny and Carruthers, really losing himself in his hatred, says, "I've already proved it... three times." Finally getting ahold of himself, he appears to concede that he has been working too hard and needs to go home and rest, but instead, knowing that Morton no doubt suspects and who he was talking to on the phone when he momentarily left, he beats him to the Heath household and lets loose the new Devil Bat out of the trunk of his car. Acting as though he came over by chance and learned that Morton had called Heath with a clue to the murderer right then and there, Carruthers examines Morton's body after his death, just as he did with Roy's. And despite his apparent affection for Mary Heath, he's not above trying to arrange for her death as well, by putting the lotion in her perfume bottle and then letting the Devil Bat loose. Little does he know that said attempt failed, and he's tricked into being led over to the Heath household to check up on her, while Layton spies around his lab. After heading back, Carruthers, anticipating trouble, lets the Devil Bat loose and is then visited by Layton, who asks to borrow more of the shaving lotion. Carruthers, of course, allows him to do so, and despite feigning disbelief at his theory that the attacks are due to the scent of the lotion, agrees to go with him to see if it works. This proves to be a big mistake, as Layton takes the opportunity to splash Carruthers with the lotion, and though he tries to have him taken in by the police, Carruthers runs for it and, while attempting to trick Mary into coming with him, is finally killed by his own creation.
Despite this setback, Layton happens upon a major clue when he finds the shaving lotion in Don Morton's bathroom and finds that its scent is the same one that's been on the Devil Bat's victims. He also learns that the lotion was concocted by Carruthers, and when he digs up the fact that he didn't receive nearly as much money as his successful employers did through his new, special cold cream, the good doctor becomes a prime suspect in Layton's eyes. When Carruthers, however, doesn't deny that he concocted the lotion, and adds that the murder victims were wearing it because they were trying it out before marketing it, Layton seems to think he was wrong about the doctor... that is until McGuire is attacked by the bat after using Carruthers' lotion. The two of them are vindicated after Layton kills the bat, confirming its existence, and when the second one kills Don Morton, he feels that Mary may be next. Indeed, when the Devil Bat tries to get into her bedroom and it's revealed that someone apparently put a new perfume in one of the bottles on her dresser, Layton is now sure Carruthers is behind everything. To make sure, he has the Heaths call the doctor over to check up on Mary, while he goes to the lab and looks around. His suspicions are confirmed when Carruthers shows back up and Layton watches him let the Devil Bat loose to keep it from being discovered. That's when he talks the doctor into helping him with his hunch that the bat is attracted to the smell of the shaving lotion and, once he has him alone, he splashes him with the lotion and holds him at gunpoint to make sure he doesn't get away. He has no intention of letting the Devil Bat kill him, as he'd rather have him executed for his crimes, but when he tries to shoot the bat, the doctor attacks him and the two of them struggle. Carruthers manages to escape him but the Devil Bat zeroes in on him and kills him, with Layton telling Mary that he was behind it all.
There's virtually nothing to say about the Devil Bat's first three victims, as there's really nothing to them. Roy (John Ellis) and Tommy Heath (Alan Baldwin) come off as nothing more than a couple of happy-go-lucky young men, with the latter being sent to deliver the check for $5,000 to Dr. Carruthers personally. Unbeknownst to Roy, such an action seals his doom, as Carruthers, seeing this as insult from Martin Heath and Henry Morton, tricks him to putting the lotion on his neck, making him a target for the Devil Bat, which kills him just as he arrives home later that night. Not too long afterward, Tommy is called over to Carruthers' place and is tricked into putting the lotion on his neck as well. He's a little more into it than Roy was, mentioning how the smell will make customers think they're getting their money's worth and says that it feels great on the neck. Adding that it's almost good enough to be used as cologne, he sprinkles some on Carruthers himself, who recoils from it and explains that he hates the scent of perfume (because of this, when he lets the Devil Bat loose, he has to remove his coat). When Tommy returns home and finds Layton, McGuire, and Mary keeping a vigil, waiting for the animal that's believed to have killed Roy to reappear, he dismisses what they're doing and advises Mary to go to bed, as he plans to. He doesn't make it in the house, though, before the Devil Bat swoops in and kills him. Don Morton (Gene O'Donnell) is a character who, you'd think, would be more significant in the story, considering how he and Mary are something of a couple but she tells him that she's looked him as more of a brother than a lover, but it doesn't go any further than that. Moreover, we don't even see his death; it's merely hinted at by a shot of him putting the lotion on in his bathroom, a dissolve of the Devil Bat being let loose, and a newspaper clipping about his fate.
While we're talking about the characters, I'd like to mention how Mary Heath is the only one who seems upset about having lost two brothers and the man she thought of as a brother; everyone seems awfully cheery and almost flippant about it. When Tommy Heath is visiting and talking with Dr. Carruthers, he comes off as very happy and free-spirited, and feels the same when he arrives back home and talks to Johnny Layton about how he thinks the idea of an animal being behind Roy's death is ridiculous, an odd way to act, considering that his brother was killed only a few nights before. After he leaves them, advising Mary to go to bed rather than stay up and join them in their vigil, Layton comments that Tommy doesn't seem to like that he's there and Mary says, "We're all very upset." Well, he doesn't seem that upset, save for maybe an expression on his face as he walks away, which is hard to see. And it's not just him: in the later scene where Carruthers is talking with Henry Morton, Morton doesn't seem at all down and upset about having lost his son to the Devil Bat not too long before. In fact, he comes off as more pleased about how well the company is doing than anything else, going as far as to Carruthers to get a grip on himself when he starts to get a little high-strung about his work and how he didn't get the money that he and Heath did. His demeanor only changes when Carruthers hints at that he's been behind the Devil Bat killings. Finally, after Morton is killed right outside of the Heath household, Heath himself doesn't that broken up about it, either. I'm sure there are a number of other films made around this time where people don't act the way they should about losing family and friends and I'm just not thinking of them, but it really stuck out here.
The Devil Bat was produced by Producers Releasing Corporation, formerly Producers Distributing Corporation, a Poverty Row studio that, by all accounts, was even smaller than Monogram Pictures (and had a much shorter life, disbanding in 1947 after beginning not too long before The Devil Bat, whereas Monogram, which began in 1931, lasted until 1953). They were so small that they never spent more than $100,000 on a movie and usually shot them within less than a week, which is abundantly clear when you watch this film. Even the best prints don't look all that polished or glossy, and the cinematography and direction are nothing special. The same goes for the art direction and the sets, all of which are rather small and confined, consisting mainly of offices, motel rooms, and the grounds of the Heath estate, which is where all of the Devil Bat's attacks take place. The only sets that are kind of substantial are the interiors of the Heath household, which themselves aren't as big as what you'd see in a film produced by a major studio and were likely only possible through rented studio space on larger film lots, which the bigger Poverty Row companies, like PRC, were able to afford. And the set that you would expect to be somewhat memorable, Dr. Carruthers' laboratory, is pretty typical, with a big main room full of lab equipment like beakers and test tubes, a small hallway behind a bookcase that leads to a chamber where he keeps the Devil Bat, unleashing it by opening a large window up on the roof, and another room where he exposes the bat to the energy that increases its size, which is full of the classic, Frankenstein-esque electrical equipment you expect to see in old mad doctor films like this (that said, though, the image of that big bat hanging in the middle of the room does look kind of cool, don't you think?) Given the tiny nature of the company, this lab never had a chance to compete with those in movies produced by Universal and other big studios. Even so, The Devil Bat proved to be one of PRC's biggest moneymakers, so much so that, near the end of their run, the produced a film called Devil Bat's Daughter, which I have not seen at this point (I've heard that it's one of those "in-name only" sequels, though).
There's a very abundant cheese factor to this film, not the least of which has to do with some of the choices in the editing and segues. For instance, when the movie begins following the credits, we get this foreword that tells us of how Dr. Carruthers was a well-respected member of the Heathville community and how nobody suspected what he was up to in his laboratory, as if we couldn't figure that out from everything we see once the story gets underway (by the way, look at the countryside behind the foreword; this is supposed to take place in Illinois but that's most definitely California). Moreover, when Johnny Layton and One-Shot McGuire first arrive in Heathville, the filmmakers felt the need to put in a location caption, even though the story began in Heathville and the town had already been given an establishing shot. The best ones, though, are these melodramatic close-ups of newspaper clippings covering the Devil Bat's reign of terror, complete with the shadow of a bat passing over them now and again. It's so schlocky, with the shadow of the puppeteer's hand becoming briefly visible in one moment, that you just have to laugh.
Getting to the Devil Bat itself, everything about this thing is impossible to take seriously, least of all how it's actually executed. Again, it's a micro-budget movie from the 40's, so you have to give it some leniency, but when you see Bela Lugosi interacting with this oversized, stiff bat prop that only barely moves, mostly when he tests to see if it still despises the scent of the lotion, despite its increased size, you can't help but smirk. The bat doesn't fare much better when it's flying, as it's so awkward in the way it streaks through the air, awkwardly flopping its wings every which way and often coming off like it's unable to keep itself straight, as it tends to tilt to the side and fly with its wings in a slanted, almost vertical position. When it comes down on its victims, it either swoops lifelessly above them, clearing on puppet strings, and its actual attacks look less like they're being mauled and more like they're struggling with a rigid prop, which is what you're seeing. Granted, I've seen much worse fake bats in movies, particularly in a number of them that were, ironically, made long after this film, but the bats that you see in Dracula, nearly a decade before this, looked a lot better in their few appearances than this heavily-featured Devil Bat. That said, though, the Devil Bat actually looks better than the normal-sized bats that Dr. Carruthers also keeps in that room and which fly out of the window along with their larger counterpart. Moreover, it would have really been a travesty if the fake Devil Bat Layton and McGuire set up looked better than the "real" one but, fortunately, that's not the case.
When watching old horror and science fiction films like this, you have to let a lot of things slide when it comes to the science involved, but the "science" in The Devil Bat, if you can call it that, is likely to leave you dumbfounded. According to this movie, a creature's size can be increased by stimulating certain glands through electrical impulses. Yeah. Call me crazy but I find it easier to buy giant monsters and mutants created through radioactive contamination, or even the, admittedly, dicey nature of the teleportation process in The Fly, than this. What's more, since both the first Devil Bat and its successor started out as the bats indigenous to America, the process apparently changes their species, given how they become big fruit bats. And then, there's something that even Carruthers himself is incredulous about: after the first Devil Bat is killed and its existence verified, this stuffy professor, who had been skeptical beforehand and had revealed Layton and McGuire's photograph as the hoax that it was, concludes that the bat is the lone survivor of a prehistoric species that existed back in the Neolithic period. So after examining the thing, he couldn't tell that it was simply an oversized modern day bat, or at least be amazed at how much it looks like an Asian fruit bat? Upon hearing him present his conclusion over the radio, Carruthers scoffs and says, "Imbecile. Bombastic ignoramus!"
Truth be told, its cheese factor aside, the Devil Bat is, ironically, one of the movie's least impressive aspects, as its attack scenes are few and far between and come off as extremely hokey, rather than thrilling and exciting. The real entertainment value here has to do with the actors, particularly Bela Lugosi's performance as the insane, revenge-crazed doctor (as I said earlier, his very presence, along with his iconic voice, memorable character tics, and all-in performance really help elevate the movie, even if just a little bit), as well as Dave O'Brien's charisma as Johnny Layton, the bumbling antics of Donald Kerr as One-Shot McGuire, and Arthur Q. Bryan's entertaining scenes as the irascible Joe McGinty. They, along with the film's all-around enjoyably schlocky nature, are what keep you from turning it off, which is good, as there's no mood, atmosphere, or thrills whatsoever. The ending has nothing to it, either, consisting of Layton getting Carruthers to wait up for the Devil Bat with him, splashing him with the lotion, the two of them getting into a struggle while Chief Wilkins fires at the circling Devil Bat, Carruthers managing to slip away afterward, and finally getting attacked and killed by his own Devil Bat while trying to entice Mary Heath to come to his lab, with the bat getting gunned down afterward when it gets after Mary.
The music, by David Chudnow, is very lackluster and forgettable, with the only somewhat memorable part being the main theme, which has harsh, shrieking notes interspersed within a saxophone motif that goes, "Dun-dun-dun, dun-dun," and leads into said motif speeding up in a sly, sort of sneaking manner. Otherwise, this music leaves no impression whatsoever and is one of the dime-a-dozen, generic scores you tended to hear into little, low-budget movies made during this period. There's one instance where the music doesn't even fit the film: during the struggle between Carruthers and Layton during the climax, the music is slow and "blah," when it should be playing up to the energy of their fight.
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