{"id":4090,"date":"2021-10-21T10:01:14","date_gmt":"2021-10-21T10:01:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/?p=4090"},"modified":"2023-01-22T22:15:16","modified_gmt":"2023-01-22T22:15:16","slug":"film-the-bat-1959","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/?p=4090","title":{"rendered":"FiLM REViEW: The Bat, 1959"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Hmmm!? We adore<\/em> Vincent Price, but alas, the appallingly colorised (I use the American spelling deliberately here) version of The Bat<\/em> we watched yesterday\/this morning – we both dropped off to it last night! – is pretty dire. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ll prob\u2019 check a few other versions (there are multiple versions on Amazon Prime alone, never mind other channels or sources!) to see if the original black and white fares any better. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Price, suavely menacing. Impossible not to love!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

One of the issues for me is how dated it all is. This can be a strength; we do love the era this was made and set in. But again, it does depend exactly how it\u2019s done, and what aspects of the era it focusses on. In this instance the prissy \u2018pointy-bra\u2019 brigade, the core female leads, are rather off-putting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most of the men are no better, leaping like wooden marionettes straight from the pages of 1950s Reader\u2019s Digest, all brill-creem, excessively good manners and overly earnest grins. Only the polite doc\u2019 Malcolm Wells (Price), apparently offering any real diabolical relief from the saccharine crowd. Or is he alone in being evil?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Vincent\u2019s Doc\u2019 does the dishes, avec fag and pinny!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The plot, such as it is, centres on Cornelia Van Gorder (Agnes Moorhead), a writer of horror fiction, who\u2019s staying at The Oaks, a classic horror-movie haunted house, with an appropriately grisly legendary past. In a connected plot line, the head of the local bank (and owner\/builder of The Oaks) has embezzled $1 million, which becomes the plot-driving \u2018McGuffin\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018I\u2019ve seen better performances\u2019, says Lt. Andersen (Gavin Gordonson, whose every bone and sinew is, apparently, made of wood), at one point, with far more unintended irony than he knows. Amen! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Suggest: shadows and light.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Reveal: the claw of evil has no face!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

This is based on a stage play, and boy does it ever have that very hokey \u2018stagey\u2019 feel. The acting is simultaneously theatrical and wooden. The only real point of interest is the issue of who, exactly<\/em>, is The Bat? Even when, at one point, we think we\u2019re finding out, we don\u2019t. Meanwhile Agnes searches for the loot\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I reckon this movie will be way better in original black and white. I tried to find it in that format, but all other versions on Amazon were pay to view (naughty!)*. And it is, ultimately, a pretty poorly put together assemblage of clich\u00e9s. But despite all of this, it has enough period charm to be an enjoyable watch. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this terribly \u2018auto-colorised\u2019 form, two stars. Assuming black and white will be better – say three stars? – I\u2019ll go with two and a half stars here, for now. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The striking Agnes Moorhead, leading lady.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

* I notice that of the four versions of this same movie I found just on Amazon\u2019s streaming video services<\/em>, only this terrible colorised (sic) version is free. That\u2019s pretty shocking, given the film is out of copyright and therefore freely available for download\/viewing. Anyone paying to watch this is being profiteered off, on the basis of their ignorance. But hey, that\u2019s everyday capitalism for you. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hmmm!? We adore Vincent Price, but alas, the appallingly colorised (I use the American spelling deliberately here) version of The Bat we watched yesterday\/this morning – we both dropped off to it last night! – is pretty dire. I\u2019ll prob\u2019 check a few other versions (there are multiple versions on Amazon Prime alone, never mind … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “FiLM REViEW: The Bat, 1959”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[15,74],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paGwUa-13Y","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4090"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4090"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4090\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8154,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4090\/revisions\/8154"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}