THE DEVIL BAT (1940) **1/2 Anti-capitalist morality tale and call to arms. No, really. They rip off Bela Lugosi in an after-shave deal, and then have the audacity to get all morally indignant when he sets mutated bats on 'em. Probably fed on genetically modified hemoglobin, that's my guess. It would have been a disaster if they ran the plot any other way-Bela is the only indispensible character, though you have to admire any script writer who names a reporter Johnny Layton. As always Bela has the finest lab in the business, and once again he's stringing bats from the rafters. It's not so much a formula as a strength of such magnitude that it must be played. I mean, let's face it, he's Dracula no matter what they call him, and that's a fine thing. Jean Yarbrough directs with the loving and humorous eye for the virtues of nonconformity that he would bring to "The Addams Family." So, the dully demented villagers run about in fitful concern and abject terror, and the moralists with a pen try to make sure that Bela somehow gets his in the end, after the entertainment. History is approved by the victors, but sometimes it's written by illusionists. Or lunatics or frustrated mad scientists, for that matter.
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