The Devil Bat

Imbecile, Bombastic, Ignoramus. The Devil Bat is directed by Jean Yarbrough and written by George Bricker and John T. Neville. It stars Bela Lugosi, Suzanne Kaaren, Dave O’Brien, Donald Kerr and Gary Usher. The Heathville Horror! Straight out of Poverty Row is this PRC production that’s as bonkers as it is fun. Plot sees Lugosi as a fed up cosmetic chemist who decides that the company he provides his inventions for have not done right by him financially. So in his secret laboratory at home he breeds big killer bats, bats that he rears to kill anyone wearing the scent of aftershave lotion…

OK, so almost all of the peril comes from a man out of shot careering about with a plastic bat on the end of a fishing rod, but somehow this daft sci-fi hokum makes a point. It's all about the rather shrewd scientist "Carruthers" (Bela Lugosi) who feels slighted by his pals who made a load of long-term cash from an invention that he took the quick buck from. By way of exacting his cunning revenge, he has devised a formula that purports to be an after shave but is actually toxically attractive to a giant bat. Suffice to say, nobody survives their encounter for long and so soon both the police…