How sad is this?

As Good As It Gets

Absolutely the worst movie.

Absolutely brilliant

...And so does this film, which never quite transcends its shortcomings despite a very solid performance by Lionel Atwill as the outwardly gracious but secretly diabolical Dr. von Niemann. It's one of the best performances of the underrated Atwill's career, in fact, but that's not enough to distinguish "The Vampire Bat" from the usual Poverty Row fare. (In addition to Atwill you get Fay Wray and Melvyn Douglas, Dwight Frye doing his Renfield schtick and the noisy, tiresome antics of Maude Eburne as Aunt Gussie.) These productions always looked and sounded like what they were: low-rent. I recall that the writers of the old VHS review guides considered this film one of the rare triumphs from Hollywood's lesser-tier studios, but objectively speaking it's just not that good. See it if you're a 1930s/'40s horror completist.

A small town is suffering a rash of deaths that appear to be the work of a vampire ... wounds on the neck, blood drained, etc. Local cop Melvyn Douglas is skeptical, but the townsfolk are convinced and eccentric, bat-loving weirdo Dwight Frye is blamed. How is seemingly benevolent doctor Lionel Atwill connected. An enjoyable, brief little programmer with an impressive cast (Fay Wray is also here as a love interest for Douglas).

I have no idea what I have just seen.Some people decided that there must be a vampire killing people while another guy thinks it's a person.They spend most of this very short movie accusing the obvious suspect of being the vampire and it gets boring after a couple minutes.While I watched this, I had to rewind a dozen times and I still couldn't tell you who the vampire was or who lived and who died.It's just your basic "doctors with guns" movie.Not much story and even less action.But I must admit that it's better than I expected and I have seen much worse.I have seen so many bad movies that I feel like giving two stars means it was good.It wasn't.

Tod Browning was probably very pleased if he ever saw this movie, as the plot is so similar to his London After Midnight (1927), and later remake The Mark Of The Vampire (1935)he would have been very complimented at such stealing! A top notch cast including Melvyn Douglas, Fay Wray, Lionel Atwill and Dwight Frye try hard to make The Vampire Bat believable, and it has some nice atmospheric touches and ghoulish moments; but it also has a totally ludicrous solution to the mystery and Maude Eburne, who makes Una O'Connor look like someone you'd love to spend an evening with! The story concerns a series of vampire-like murders in the German village of Kleinschloss. The local oddball Herman is a chief suspect due to his penchant for visiting victims the night before they were murdered and making pets from the local bat population. The locals, obviously having just moved from Ingoldstadt near the Frankenstein residence, pursue him to his death, which they hope will solve the problem. Kindly Dr. Otto Von Niemann (Lionel Atwill) even admits that it looks like Herman (Dwight Frye) could be the one responsible. The local police inspector (Douglas) finds himself beginning to agree. You know where this is going, don't you? Atwill can act this sort of stuff on his head, and he's always welcome and value for money. He really needed a better script, as it's not very clear exactly what he's trying to achieve. Frankenstein creates a man-monster, Von Niemann what looks like a bath sponge!The Vampire Bat never gels very well but it does have its moments, notably a medical blood draining session and some shadowy sequences with the murderer leaping across the rooftops near the beginning of the film. I won't go any further into the story other than to say it ends in a rather nasty case of...Epsom Salts! What is of interest is the cast. As well as the horror regulars mentioned above we also have Lionel Belmore (Frankenstein) Robert Frazer (White Zombie) and Rita Carlisle (Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde) to round things out and its always fun to watch such actors go through their usual routines. A minor entry then in the early 30s horror boom, not without compensation.