The Devil Bat (1940)

Dir: Jean Yarbrough

Truly ridiculous, no-budget vehicle for Bela Lugosi to camp it up as a mad scientist with a grudge. The first scene (footage that gets looped several times later on, to pad out running time) involves Lugosi in his lab, strapping on a pair of crazy goggles and laughing maniacally for about ten minutes as he makes lights flash and turns a normal size bat into a giant rubber monstrosity. He then palms off an "experimental shaving lotion" to a bunch of people he wants to kill. This, when applied to "the tender parts of their neck", attracts the Devil Bat's attention. Cue lots of poorly lit shots of the most laughably fake bat I've ever seen being launched violently at the actors by angry stage-hands. The plot is virtually non-existent and the above few sentences pretty much sum up the entire thing (although the action is frequently intercut by footage of spinning newspaper headlines, repeating exactly what's just been said in the previous scene, in case you dozed off and missed it). It's almost worth watching, just for when the police eventually catch Lugosi and ask him how he created the Devil Bat, only to be told ominously "you wouldn't understand the true nature of scientific discovery"! I mean, duh! A lot of films from this era are rightly regarded as classics, but "The Devil Bat" is not one of them. Only should be viewed by people who are still labouring under the misapprehension that Ed Wood made the worst films ever. EL BOMBA!