When It Flies --- Someone Dies


Where Bela Lugosi Gives Shaving Lotion A Bad Name

Thank you, Bob Furmanek, for making your gorgeous 35mm print available to Kino for this Blu-ray transfer. What rapture comes of an intact PRC logo! It's time we recognize how lowest budget could be redeemed just by casting Bela --- he and Erich von Stroheim may have been alone at rescue of hopeless enterprise. Even Karloff was no match for Lugosi where it came to salvage work like this. I think it was BL's total commitment that made the difference; so far as he was concerned, a week on Devil Bat was as time spent doing Ninotchka with Garbo. Devil Bat was just a shorter drive from home. I admire Lugosi not playing down even to debasing material. Not that Devil Batis that. He's on camera lots, which is as much as we could ask of any Lugosi starrer, frustration with later stuff deriving from fact he's not there enough, or heaven forbid, he doesn't speak, as with The Black Sleep. How necessary was Devil Bat being made cheap? Observe the ad at left, a New Orleans first-run, with seats selling for literal nickels and dimes. Bela's Devil Bat home is one I'd covet, all sliding panels and bubbling beakers in his mad lab. What a rig like that could do for my basement, with maybe killer bats to ward off peddlers and solicitors. When prospective victims say Good Night, BL replies Goodbye to meaningful effect, a deathless refrain throughout Devil Bat. Question is who'll be doused with shaving lotion that draws DB to vulnerable throats, a device increasingly merry as 68 minutes roll and it gets apparent that Bela will be a final victim of his own machinations. Creations had consistent way of turning on creators in cheapies. Lead lady Suzanne Kaaren later retired to crumbling edifice of husband Sidney Blackmer's family mansion in Salisbury, NC, where we went to visit in 1980, myself armed with Devil Bat stills and lobby cards. She remembered the show fondly and spoke well of Lugosi. At that time, Devil Bat was PD-copied to miserable effect for what TV runs there were; great to access it finally on Blu-Ray.

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