The Bat (1926)
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The Bat Movie Review
The Bat is a 1926 silent mystery comedy film directed by Roland West and starring Jack Pickford. It’s a messy and silly, but undeniably entertaining and charming feature.
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“When you want to fool Auntie, dear,
don’t bring a gardener with manicured fingernails“
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A masked criminal who dresses like a giant bat terrorizes the guests at an old house rented by a mystery writer. This movie is usually discussed in the context of Batman as it clearly influenced the famed caped crusader a decade later. There is no doubt about it, there are some definite Batman influences in that mask and entire hooded figure with even some scenes on the roof being highly reminiscent of the Bat’s scenes on top of the roofs.
However, the movie is far from a superhero flick, but rather a regular mystery feature that is also rather comedic in approach, which was surprising to witness, but for me that humor worked as it managed to smooth the silliness apparent in many scenes by making fun of itself. That was great. The mystery overall wasn’t as intriguing as they thought it would be for the viewers judging by that opening spoiler alert-type message alone, but overall the movie is breezy and fun enough without being overly slow.
The main problem here is the character count. There were simply way too many characters for audiences to properly get invested in. All of these people have their motifs and all affect the plot in some way or another, but the movie would have been much better had they just focused on a couple of main characters. This way, they diluted even the central figures.
With that being said, Miss Cornelia is by far the highlight of The Bat along with the maid herself, who was simply hilarious trying to trap the villain with bear traps hilariously so. These comedic moments with this woman were the highlights here, and I wanted more comedy as evidently the movie operated best in that area.
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As for the whole plot, it’s fine with the final twist being just solid, but overall the thrills of the first half were lost in the dialogue-heavy second one. The same goes with the atmosphere and cinematography, both heavily utilizing on German Expressionist touches, but eventually the film lost them, and it’s a shame that the second half could not capitalize on all the strengths established in the first one.
