I’ve reviewed a fair amount of old black and white films on this site and if you’re to take a quick glance through you’d be forgiven for thinking that I generally don’t like them. However, even though I rate them low I do like a lot of them personally but I rate them more on how what they deserve relative to other films and what I think the vast majority of people will like. Another reason why I’ve rated so many badly is I simply have a lot more to say about films I don’t like or films that aren’t any good than films I do like. The Bat is probably the oldest film I’ve reviewed so far, being made in 1926, and I just had to write a review because of how good it was and completely against the grain of pathetic, half-assed mystery/horror films it is. It’s not a “so-bad-it’s-good” film. It’s just an overall truly excellent film.

The opening of the film consists of a request that the viewing audience keep the identity of ‘The Bat’ a secret so as to not hinder the enjoyment of the film by future audiences. Then we come across a clearly artificial but gothically ornate cityscape. A banker is in his office, he’s wearing a black cape with a really big over-the-top collar. He is attacked by a man dressed as a bat who then disappears into the darkness.

The rest of the film then takes place in the mansion house of dead banker Courleigh Fleming. His elderly sister now occupies the house and is always accompanied by her comic maid. They’ve both heard the stories of The Bat and the maid reads in the papers that the police believe The Bat’s true identity is either that of a doctor, a lawyer or a merchant. She gets scared and decides to leave out traps for to catch The Bat and we watch her as she throws a bear trap out her window and then drags it in a again by the chain as if fishing for him. They then hear bangs in the house and discover that some-one has snuck in.

They don’t live alone in the house, Courleigh Fleming’s daughter also lives there and looks to get her secret boyfriend, Brooks Bailey, employed as a gardener. It appears that Brooks Bailey was a cashier at her father’s bank and when a lot of money was stolen he was prime suspect so he ran away afraid. They now believe that the money is in the house so they are going to search for it to try and clear his name. Meanwhile, the niece’s greedy brother also has his eye on finding the money and believes that he knows of a secret room that it’s hidden in. Dr. Wells, a family friend and partner of the nephew’s is also in on it but tricks the elderly aunt and maid into believing that he is on their side. Murder occurs and it’s apparent that The Bat is in the house looking for the gold as well, there may also be others lurking in the shadows of the mansion. Detective Moletti from the police arrives to try and catch The Bat and find the murderer from amongst the group of people and also to get under his feet the aunt has hired “super-sleuth” Detective Anderson, a cowardly and stupid man. In amongst this lot we also have a very creepy looking Japanese butler and a man who stumbles in from the garden unable to remember anything.

The story is rather simple. Lots of people thrown into a big mansion looking for a secret room all for different reasons. Some are trying to find a murderer, some looking for the money to satisfy their own greed, others so they can get married and then there are those just going along out of curiosity, It was superbly made and brilliantly written. All the characters were had their own motives but they were all being thrown together so they were trying to keep each other at arms length. Trying to discover who was The Bat and trying to make sure they’re not accused of being The Bat. All the while the race is on to find the money. It’s billed by Ciao as a horror which isn’t the case it’s a classic film-noir mystery film but it does have it’s darker elements. A masked criminal is on the loose. They get odd phone-calls from different ends of the house and people are murdered from the darkness and indeed there is a haunted ballroom in the film. However, the film is notably for it’s comedy. The maid is our main comic character she’s cartoon-ish in the way she acts. She’s afraid of everything and what’s the old aunt to leave so she can get out of the house. Her greatest line pretty much sums up her eccentric personality:

“For twenty years I’ve stood by you through Socialism, Theosophism and Rheumatism -- but I draw the line at Spookism!”

Detective Anderson is another source of comedy. He is the inadequate detective who tries to act as if he knows everything; an early Harry Crumb.

It’s fantastic because it’s constantly exciting with all this. It’s a silent film so all the dialogue comes up as writing on the screen interrupting the live-action so as a result dialogue is kept quite minimal and you follow what’s going on a lot more by action than words than you normally would. However, this film is made in such a way as this is not a problem you never loose interest as more and more interesting facts are unveiled in amongst betrayals and twists and turns. A film that constantly keeps you guessing and it's true that watching it ignorant of the identity of The Bat is a bonus as you'll not be able to guess who it is. I wasn't and I'm usually pretty good at guessing who.

The directing was just brilliant, the cinematography was way ahead of it’s time. There’s one excellent scene where a character is walking up a dark stairway which is illuminated by a slice of light coming from the top of the stairs. An outstretched arm positions itself neatly in this slice of light and stylized text appears diagonally across the screen parallel to the light and the stairs and are part of the actual scene rather than being at the bottom of the screen or shown on a screen in between. Everyone thought the dynamic subtitles for Night Watch and Day Watch where quite innovative but here we are in 19256 with just the same thing. (I’ll try and include a pic of what I’m talking about as I’m not sure I described it well.) The cityscape and the out-side set of the house didn’t look 100% real but they still looked for attractive and dark and added an atmosphere to the film and would have a great effect on the great things that were to come from this film. Lighting was noticeable other than just here. The film makes extensive use of silhouettes in classic film noir style and Roland West, the director, was something of a pioneer in this area.

What makes them film most important is that this film is the inspiration for Batman. Bob Kane the creator of Batman cites The Bat Whispers as his inspiration but The Bat Whispers was a remake of this film by the same director Roland West. If you watch this film, here it all is in it’s original form. The Bat dresses up in a black suit and cape with pointy ears at the top of his mask. He climbs up and down walls with a grappling rope and when he leaves notes he leaves them on a card the shape of the bat logo made famous by batman. We even have the bat signal that was later used by the police to contact batman when they needed him. The only difference is that here batman is a villain and not the caped crusader and saviour of Gotham City. Gotham City can be seen here too in it’s embryo stage, the bankers giant office similar to the ones in Tim Burton’s films and the cityscape similar to Burton’s too.

If it were not for this film imagine how different popular culture would be today? Batman has had a massive effect after all.

Last but not least the soundtrack to this film was one hell of a score. With no sound it’s just from beginning to end dark music Ed Wood style. It’s like they’ve got a whole lot of Opera Phantoms together to just jam in their miserable moody way for an hour and half. It never repeated itself and even when it seemed like it wouldn’t be what you’d expect for a particular scene it always worked. You could listen to the music to this film on it’s own it was that good.

I can’t recommend this film highly enough, it’s a classic and an all over brilliant film. A film that we have a lot to thank for. I read that it was considered lost for many years and thank God they found it again.

Take a look at the pictures and you'll see the first ever bat signal

The DVD is very cheap. It's £1.90 on Amazon but you can find this going on compilation DVDs for around a pound. My disc has four other films on it and I'm not sure what I paid for it but it was very cheap. What's more, this film is totally free to watch legally on-line as it is now in the public domain. I've pasted the link to the first part as put on youtube and from there you can find the whole film in 9 parts. I

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OU10KI1ouGw&eurl=http://video.google.co.uk/videosearch?q=The+Bat+1926&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&client=fi

The quality of the link is pretty much the exact same as the quality of that DVD so you're not loosing anything.