Review: The Bat

The Bat by Mary Roberts Rinehart
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I read this because I heard it may have had something to do with the genesis of Batman. Comic-book creator Bob Kane said in his 1989 autobiography Batman and Me that the villain of the 1930 film "The Bat Whispers" was an inspiration for his character Batman. If there is a thread of connection to this book, it is frail and gossamer indeed. this bat is inept and gun-slinging while being a criminal and not crime fighter. still an amusing read of a plucky and aged socialite cum crime fighter if you set aside racist and classist stereotypes. It obviously would make an entertaining movie if done like a Clue. and, what is the "evil's four hundred" she speaks of?

This 1926 book is actually a novelization of Rinehart's successful 1920 pay of the story. It feels amplified too much from a small idea. Three films were made based on the original Broadway play.

The first film, also called "The Bat", was released as a silent film on March 14, 1926 by United Artists, was produced and directed by Roland West, and written by West and Julien Josephson. Director Roland West remade his film four years later in 1930 as "The Bat Whispers", also by United Artists, and starring Chester Morris and Una Merkel. A third film by Crane Wilbur was released by Allied Artists in 1959 as "The Bat", starring Vincent Price and Agnes Moorehead. There are also a few TV adaptations. I first remember seeing the Vincent Price version as part of Wolfman Mac's Chiller Drive-In in a spoof that included speeded up parts and skits. Re-watching the original film now I can see how the third movie is furthest from the book and surely the play. This is a case where the movie is better than the book, IMO. The elitism and racist stereotypes of the book are dispensed giving us two plucky, determined women as well as a villain that is more advanced and threatening. The book's Bat is actually a crude, blunt instrument and a rather minor, ineffectual characters. Where the book Bat has only a mask and relies on a gun and breaks windows, the 1959 Bat had deadly talons and a glass cutter. If anything, the 1959 fusion of science and technology into an alter ego has some kinship with Batman. In the book, Rinehart seems to awkwardly advance the plot by interjecting a God's eye view rather than clues for the reader to decipher. In the 1959 movie, this is done in an effective cut-to-the-chase move and the whole thing is really an effective, well-structured, well-paced period film that I recommend over the book.

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