The Bat

The Bat
Blu-ray
Undercrank Productions
1926 / 86 min
Starring Emily Fitzroy, Jack Pickford, Louise Fazenda
Written by Roland West
Photographed by Arthur Edeson and Gregg Toland
Directed by Roland West

Films produced in the silent era were triumphs of artistic ingenuity—though they lacked even the rudimentary tools of contemporary filmmaking, no Steadicam or drone could replicate the raw power and beauty of a film like The General, Battleship Potemkin, or even a frivolous potboiler like Roland West’s The Bat, an exotic spook show unrestrained in its creative choices yet absolutely precise in its execution. The Bat is a fine art project that just happens to be a horror movie.

Adapted from the stage play based on the 1905 novel by Mary Roberts Rinehart, the story is simple yet durable enough to withstand decades of remakes—Vincent Price and Agnes Moorehead starred in a 1959 version and West himself revisited the same material in a 1930 talkie starring Chester Morris. Though that sound version has its own dazzling sequences, the director’s first go-round is far more expressive. With sets and special effects designed by William Cameron Menzies, and majestically gloomy cinematography by Arthur Edeson and Gregg Toland, the film resembles a lavish art history book come to life: look, there’s a cityscape by Kirchner, over there, a staircase by Armin Landeck.

The Connecticut-born Menzies had a European bent and his fascination with expressionism (and Fritz Lang) is immediately apparent in his imposing designs for the Gotham-like city under attack by a thief known as The Bat, a shadowy figure who gets his fun by announcing his crimes in advance.

A strange Mabuse-like millionaire by the name of Gideon Bell is his latest victim; Bell is rich enough to enjoy the police protection surrounding his lofty home but even that fortress is no match for the acrobatic villain in the bat-wing cape who lures Bell to his own bedroom window and strangles him. The fiend leaves a note for the cops, confessing to the crime and hinting heavily at his next stop: the stately manor of the banker Courtleigh Fleming—his recent death is still a mystery and his home just happens to harbor a secret room with a hidden treasure.

Emily Fitzroy is Cornelia Van Gorder, a successful writer of crime fiction (sometimes the refined Rinehart actually wrote about what she knew), and she’s rented the estate to concentrate on her work; the morbid atmosphere may inspire another best-seller. She shares the home with her extremely excitable maid, Lizzie Allen, played by Louise Fazenda, whose dizzy dame act made her such a memorable White Queen in 1933’s Alice in Wonderland.

The two women are already primed for a visit from The Bat, and if the house itself, with its towering ceilings and Escher-like staircases, isn’t intimidating enough, there are already signs—strange noises, and of course, shadows at the windows—that forecast a bumpy night. Van Gorder’s niece, Dale Ogden, played by the baby-faced Jewel Carmen, is a buoyant presence, she brings a welcome jazz-age sensibility to the bleak atmosphere, and Fazenda’s rampant anxiety attacks (she makes Una O’Connor seem comatose) are, if not particularly funny, at least diverting.

The remarkable Rinehart managed to lift her family out of debt with her trend-setting thrillers (she’s responsible for “the butler did it” trope) while maintaining the back-breaking duties society expected of women in 1906. She peppers the plot with plenty of red herrings; Dale’s fiancé Brooks Bailey, played by Jack Pickford, is the main suspect in Fleming’s murder, he’s gone undercover to prove his innocence, but the two most prominent snakes in the grass  are Arthur Houseman as Richard Fleming, Courtleigh’s greedy nephew, and Robert McKim as the devious Dr. Wells, each man with a different motive. They’re all in the cross-hairs of Detective Moletti (Tullio Carminati). Eddie Gribbon provides additional comic relief as the bug-eyed Detective Anderson—but is he a little too comical? It’s a thinly veiled mystery but it’s resolved in very satisfying fashion.

One mystery that remains unsolved is the tragic death of Thelma Todd, Roland West’s paramour who died under the most suspicious of circumstances. There were more red herrings haunting the Todd mystery than even The Bat with some of the malcontents including West himself, his wife Jewel Carmen (that kewpie doll was no sugarplum) and even celebrity gangster Lucky Luciano to stir the pot.

A short documentary about that sad, sordid affair, Roland West: Cinematic Man of Mystery, is part of a new release of The Bat from Undercrank Productions, a boutique company determined to save silent films that have fallen into disrepair.

Silent film accompanist Ben Model engineered the beautiful new 2K digital restoration and composed a new score for West’s film (the elements have been preserved by UCLA Film & Television Archive). Undercrank has included a couple of extras, the West documentary and A Fraternity Mix-Up, a 1926 comedy set in an especially rambunctious college dorm. You can read all about Mr. Model and his heroic efforts here.