Overrated

One of my all time favorites.

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

A masked criminal who dresses like a giant bat terrorizes the guests at an old house rented by a mystery writer.This film amazing visuals, very much in a "German expressionism" style, with sets that call to mind other great silent films, including "Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" and "Metropolis". Director Roland West was a silent film master, and this may be the finest production he was ever involved with.Just as "The Man Who Laughs" inspired the Joker, one cannot help but assume this was the inspiration for Batman. A man in a bat suit who comes out at night and glides along the rooftops? There are a great many differences, of course, but the similarities are just too strong to ignore.This film is a must-see. Although remade with sound as "The Bat Whispers" (1930) and later remade again with Vincent Price, this original is well worth tracking down. (If nowhere else, it is free from the Internet Archive.)

Bat, The (1926) ** 1/2 (out of 4) A murdering bank robber known as The Bat might be hiding out in an old dark house, which just happens to have several guests staying in it. These guests are delighted to learn that The Bat might have left $200,000 somewhere in the house. This is one I had been wanting to watch for quite sometime but having now seen it I must call it rather disappointing even though there's still plenty here to enjoy. The "old dark house" theme would become a dime a dozen within four years so one has to remember that the genre pretty much started here and future films copied everything from this one. I will admit that this film looks terrific but the story itself is one I've never really been impressed with. West's direction is very good throughout and he makes for a very good looking film. His direction is best noted during the opening third of the movie, which I believe is the best part. These opening sequences flow at a good pace but then quickly fall apart in the middle sequence, which I found quite tiresome. Even worse is that we've got all sorts of characters being introduced and after a while I was having a hard time remembering who was who. Then, again, the film picks up in the final third and delivers a pretty nice ending, although some might have issues with who The Bat turns out to be. Louise Fazenda, Eddie Gribbon, George Beranger and Jack Pickford all offer up nice performances but the story doesn't leave them with too much.

The German expressionist cinema had a huge influence on Hollywood in the twenties as seen in "The Bat". The stylized sets of William Cameron Menzies, the elongated doors, furniture making the people look small. All of it makes "The Bat" a beautiful looking production.Gideon Bell has been notified by "The Bat" that he will be robbed of his famed Favre Emeralds and if he notifies the police he will be killed. The film opens with the police standing by ready to act. Of course "The Bat" has killed Bell, stolen the emeralds and left a note to say he is going to the country before the police realize anything is going on.In the country Miss Cornelia Van Gorder (Emily Fitzroy), her niece (Jewel Carmen) and a zany housekeeper (Louise Fazenda) are leasing an estate but are being forced out because of a disputed will.It turns into an "Old Dark House" style thriller with "the Bat" holding people captive and terrorizing them. I found it exciting and "the Bat" was a real surprise. People who have seen the 1960 Vincent Price film will know what's going on but they are very different films and I think this one is better.Jack Pickford is pretty ordinary as Brookes Bailey, a bank clerk, who is being unjustly accused of embezzling bank funds.Jewel Carmen played the niece, Dale. This was her last film. She was married to Roland West, the director and in the next decade was to be involved in the Thelma Todd murder.

An enjoyable farce in the style of "Grand Guignol", which only masquerades as a mystery but in its heart is early horror.Director Roland West was already famous by the time he did this film, having worked with Lon Chaney and other stars, but it stands in many ways as his most significant work. Many people nowadays only know him for his connection to the murder of Thelma Todd. But we can see here his desire to raise the state of the art of suspense cinema, with photography by no less than Arthur Edeson and Gregg Toland. In fact trick photography is evident in a great many of the scenes here, and used to great effect especially in the area of shadows and forced perspective shots.Jack Pickford and Louise Fazenda star as guests in a huge castle which may also be the home to the mysterious "Bat", a masked thief who intimidates his victims with letters prior to dispossessing them of all their jewels. A whole host of detectives descend on the scene when it is learned that the Bat is in the house.None of the performances are particularly memorable. What people will walk away from -- with this and with the innovative sound version, "The Bat Whispers" -- is the sense of charm and fun that these early film-makers associated with murder and horror. This film famously was the inspiration for the "Bat Man" character, who is basically the Bat turned good (the Bat even has a secret hideout in the Gothic mansion in this film just like in those stories). The fact that the character had to be turned into a hero to continue into the 20th Century might just say something about how much more seriously we take crime at this point in our society. Presumably 1920s audiences were expected to sympathize to some extent with the Bat -- after all, all his victims were ridiculously wealthy people who could probably afford to part with a few diamonds.All in all a solid film, a good example of entertainment driven 1920s cinema and the possibilities that were there for suspense even before dialog and camera movement became vogue.