VividSimon Simply Perfect

InformationRap This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Guillelmina The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Kinley This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

Michael O'Keefe Exactly what you would expect it to be. Not totally a scare fest, but a well scripted thriller about a master criminal known as the "Bat" that lurks about a creepy mansion owned by mystery writer Cornelia van Gorder (Agnes Moorehead). It helps that the viewer has full functioning imagination. Spooky enough to make your skin crawl. Vincent Price plays Dr. Malcolm Wells and is just one character to suspect of being the "Bat", an apt thief, robber and killer.Director Crane Wilbur keeps you guessing till the final moments. The sly evil doer will not be your first guess. Of course, Mr. Price commands each scene he is in. And the novelist's secretary is played by Darla Hood, a childhood star of the Little Rascals series of shorts. THE BAT is an over-looked thriller.Also in the cast: Gavin Gordon, John Bryant, Elaine Edwards, Riza Royce, John Sutton and Lenita Lane.

dougdoepke A masked killer called The Bat picks off people in a gloomy old mansion. Does it have something to do with a load of stolen money or does it track back over decades of related murders.Price gets top billing, but his time on screen rapidly dwindles. I get the feeling there might be a backstory to this 1959 production. It's really Agnes Moorehead as the headstrong old dowager who carries the film and not Price. In fact, Moorehead's character is the chief force combating the evil Bat. In that sense, the screenplay breaks with gender convention in an unexpected way. So who's The Bat. Whoever it is, he's one weird killer, what with a sock for a suffocating mask and fingernails in bad need of a manicure. It's rather hard to get a handle on the whodunit since the narrative segments gather in rather awkward fashion. The first part sets up a good crime plot making me think the rest would be a Price showcase. But the rest meanders in unpredictable fashion. In fact, unless I missed something, the masked culprit is given no motive for the series of murders that have occurred over time. I just can't help feeling the screenplay got lost in the wake of last minute revisions.Anyway, it's an interesting cast with Moorehead and Price. I kept hoping they would have a big clash since each can be so boldly formidable. And, oh yes, there's former Little Rascal Darla Hood as a 28-year old teenager and even looking the part. Too bad she passed away, relatively young.All in all, it's an unpredictable movie, but without much logic to tie the sometimes effective segments together.

Leofwine_draca This creaky old remake of the 1926 film of the same name has dated more than the original – thanks to an uninspiring script, poor acting from most of the cast and a plot line so clichéd it stinks. This tepid thriller rekindles the old 'haunted house' mystery yarn, as various uninteresting guests assemble in a shadow-filled old building and are bumped off one by one by a sinister killer. The major turn-off point for me was the appalling acting of the cast members in this one, particularly Agnes Moorehead's grating crime writer and the other shrieking females assembled in the house. You get the impression that nobody's heart was really in this, and if they can't take the film seriously, how can the viewer? The only cast member of interest is Vincent Price, appearing thanks to his new-found status as a horror star in the likes of THE TINGLER, but Price's screen time is sadly limited and he fulfils the role of a red herring rather than being at the centre of the film's plot.If the idea of middle-aged women running about in low-cut night dresses and finding secret passages and bodies is up your street, then by all means check this one out. But the murder mystery aspect of the film is sadly limited, with only three possible suspects to choose from, and two of those are red herrings, one bumped off before the end. The film's running time is a scant eighty minutes but it feels much, much longer. The only interesting bits – other than those with the excellent Price – are where we see the Bat stalking through the house and bumping off a couple of victims. With his hat and clawed hands, this character was an obvious influence on the appearance of Freddy Krueger in the NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET films, and it's a shame he wasn't put to better use in a better movie altogether. As it stands, THE BAT is a real bore and one of those half-hearted remakes that just aren't worth anybody's time.

Cristi_Ciopron Crane Wilbur's 'The Bat' is an unusual comedy ('don't you hear that awful noise out there?'), and I enjoyed its unwillingness to attempt the conventional suspense, and its dry, light style recalls sometimes that of Feuillade, if you wish, and of Hitchcock's TV, but mostly, increasingly, massively that of Ed Wood, unwilling to guide or patronize its public, it attempts something very different, with perhaps one of the most unflattering portrayals of a cereal killer ever, and the sense that all these events don't really matter that much, almost an Ed Wood soap opera …. The impression is that each actor did pretty much what he or she felt like; some of them were having fun, certainly the lead actress. As the movie nears its denouement, with that clueless, absurd cop, it becomes obvious that this is Ed Wood taken to the hilt. Possibly the 1st mystery movie where I guessed whodunit; and the whole subplot about the chauffeur was mere Ed Wood.