A half-dozen genres are merrily mixed together in \u201cThe Bat,\u201d the wild and often zany 1926 silent feature based on a Broadway play written by Mary Roberts Rinehard and Avery Hopwood, which in turn was based on Rinehart\u2019s novel \u201cThe Circular Staircase\u201d (1908).
\n<\/p>\n
The convoluted plot involves an acrobatic jewel thief who self-identifies as \u201cThe Bat\u201d \u2013 complete with a bat-shaped calling card and a bat costume that he wears while conducting his crimes. The Bat witnesses a bank robbery and follows the crook to a mansion being rented by the writer Cordelia Gardner (played by Emily Fitzroy in a supreme aristocratic style). The mansion quickly becomes overpopulated by a mix of suspicious and screwy characters who are terrorized by The Bat.<\/p>\n
At the time of its release, director Roland West was the main selling point for the film. Today, however, West is mostly remembered for being a suspect in the mysterious 1935 death of Thelma Todd. Instead, most contemporary interest might be focused on production designer William Cameron Menzies (of \u201cGone With the Wind\u201d fame), cinematographer Arthur Edeson (of \u201cFrankenstein\u201d and \u201cCasablanca\u201d notability) and Edeson\u2019s uncredited assistant Gregg Toland (do we really need to cite his credits?).<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Bat\u201d has been in the public domain for years and can easily be found online, but there\u2019s a new DVD\/Blu-ray release from Ben Model\u2019s Undercrank Productions that presents the film in a new 2K digital restoration from 35mm elements preserved by the UCLA Film & Television Archive. This version is the most visually impressive looking available, and the film\u2019s Expressionist style never looked better. Plus, it comes with an original score composed and performed by the indefatigable Model that perfectly mirrors the film\u2019s eccentric charms.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A half-dozen genres are merrily mixed together in \u201cThe Bat,\u201d the wild and often zany 1926 silent feature based on a Broadway play written by Mary Roberts Rinehard and Avery Hopwood, which in turn was based on Rinehart\u2019s novel \u201cThe Circular Staircase\u201d (1908).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":45337,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,1369],"tags":[1766,3511,944,3510],"class_list":["post-45336","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-halloween-horror-month","category-retro-cinema","tag-ben-model","tag-roland-west","tag-silent-film","tag-the-bat"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45336","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45336"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45336\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45339,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45336\/revisions\/45339"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45337"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}