The Devil Bat

OK, so almost all of the peril comes from a man out of shot careering about with a plastic bat on the end of a fishing rod, but somehow this daft sci-fi hokum makes a point. It's all about the rather shrewd scientist "Carruthers" (Bela Lugosi) who feels slighted by his pals who made a load of long-term cash from an invention that he took the quick buck from. By way of exacting his cunning revenge, he has devised a formula that purports to be an after shave but is actually toxically attractive to a giant bat. Suffice to say, nobody survives their encounter for long and so soon both the police and the press are trying to get to the bottom of things as the corpses pile up. The rest of this is all standard drive-in fayre, but I did rather like the swipe it took at the pomposity of scientists who simply make things up when they don't know the facts. Of course, it's basic from start to finish but Lugosi keeps this adequately cast little beastie caper running along smoothy for quite an entertaining hour.