THE VAMPIRE BAT

US, 1933, 65 minutes, Black and white.
Lionel Atwill, Fay Wray, Melvyn Douglas, Maud Eburne, George E.Stone, Dwight Frye.
Directed by Frank R.Strayer.

There was a huge popularity for vampire films in the 1930s, fostered, especially, by the version of Dracula with Bella Lugosi. Variations on the theme then abounded.

The setting of this film is the present although it opts for a European setting. There have been several deaths in the village. The police in charge, portrayed by young Melvyn Douglas (30 and 46 years before his two Best Supporting Actor Oscars) is sceptical about mysterious bats, let alone vampires. However, the mayor and the other leaders of the village are far more superstitious.

They asked for the advice of the local doctor, a lunatic man, much respected, played in his superior style by Lionel Atwill. He has his own laboratory and the young woman working there is played by Fay Wray, at the same time as King Kong. She and the police officer are in love. In the house, there is a rather hypochondriac old aunt Gussie who scurries in and out demanding medicine.

There are also some mysterious characters in the town, one played by Dwight Frye, who specialised in this type of role.

After a number of murders and threats, with the main suspect having an alibi away from the village, attention turns to Dwight Frye. However, this is a story about a mad doctor, who wants to create life, draws blood from various characters – and is overheard by his young assistant, building up to a confrontation. He intends to kill the police officer and drain his blood but, the officer not having taken the pills recommended by the doctor, is able to switch roles with the servants who comes to take away his body, confronting the doctor and the doctor then becoming a victim on his own laboratory bed.

Entertaining in its way – a similar kind of theme was found in Jean Yarborough’s 1940 thriller, Devil Bat, with Bella Lugosi himself as the sinister doctor.