A small village is being terrorised nightly by what the
townsfolk concede to be a vampire. There have been six mysterious deaths, each
victim bearing the same two puncture marks on their necks and blood clot close
to the wound. It is only the village detective who does not believe the
superstitions of the townspeople, but as further deaths occur with a lack of
any clues indicating a human murderer, he begins to abandon rational thought,
even though the answer to all the riddles is within his circle of company.
It
seems that we’re getting to the point in this box set of 50 ‘classic’ horror
movies where the movies are really getting short and admittedly somewhat
pointless. The Vampire Bat plays to a
number of generic horror movie clichés and ‘functions’ as theorist Vladimir
Propp calls them and, as such, it’s a flick that fuses a few of the clichés
together to create a semi-entertaining and quasi-thrilling story. For spoiler
reasons, I can’t really go into deeper detail as to what recognisable patterns
are used without completely giving away the ‘twist’, but I will say that whilst
it is a bit obvious and very loosely creative on the part of the writers, it
still makes for a compelling film.
A small village is being terrorised nightly
by what the townsfolk concede to be a vampire. There have been six mysterious
deaths, each victim bearing the same two puncture marks on their necks and
blood clot close to the wound. It is only the village detective who does not
believe the superstitions of the townspeople, but as further deaths occur with
a lack of any clues indicating a human murderer, he begins to abandon rational
thought, even though the answer to all the riddles is within his circle of
company.
This movie actually has a fair bit of potential. If it was in today’s
writers’ hands, then this full potential might have been entirely realised
rather than cut short and safe resulting in a movie that only runs for an hour.
As I said before, it’s made up of a number of recognisable clichés or patterns
that feature in a lot of horror movies, particularly in those of the vampire
and murder mystery subgenres. Although we know why and where most of these
characters and their actions fit within the genre, the fusion of multiple
horror categories or subgenres give the movie just enough of a twist and
compelling mystery as to hold an audience. We’ve got the superstitious
townsfolk with the flaming torches and mob mentality, we’ve got the rational
and slightly cynical detective, we’ve got the doctor, we’ve got the beautiful
heroine, the bustling and bumbling old dame character, and finally the mentally
off, simple village oddball. All of these characters work together nicely to
create this story that runs along a recognisable track for quite a time before
it veers off and begins to travel through uncharted territories. I do think
that a modern writer would expand on these characters a little bit more, give
us more of a back story so that we might be able to develop more of a
relationship with them, and then this alone would further develop the story and
make the twist at the end a little more twisted and darkly surprising.
Ultimately this movie knew where it was going and what it was, but somehow
couldn’t quite make it to a place that was scarier and more thrilling.
Featuring solid performances from Lionel Atwill, Fay Wray, Melvyn Douglas,
George E Stone, Dwight Frye, Robert Frazer, Rita Carlyle, and Lionel Belmore, The Vampire Bat is a fine little movie
that doesn’t quite make the mark but is well on the right track. Filled with
action, mystery, romance, drama, and comedy, it’s entertaining and compelling,
but not really thrilling as a horror
movie.
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