Michael O'Keefe Exactly what you would expect it to be. Not totally a scare fest, but a well scripted thriller about a master criminal known as the "Bat" that lurks about a creepy mansion owned by mystery writer Cornelia van Gorder (Agnes Moorehead). It helps that the viewer has full functioning imagination. Spooky enough to make your skin crawl. Vincent Price plays Dr. Malcolm Wells and is just one character to suspect of being the "Bat", an apt thief, robber and killer.Director Crane Wilbur keeps you guessing till the final moments. The sly evil doer will not be your first guess. Of course, Mr. Price commands each scene he is in. And the novelist's secretary is played by Darla Hood, a childhood star of the Little Rascals series of shorts. THE BAT is an over-looked thriller.Also in the cast: Gavin Gordon, John Bryant, Elaine Edwards, Riza Royce, John Sutton and Lenita Lane.

jkadmire Mary Roberts Rinehart is my all-time favorite author, and having read the book, most of my complaints have to do with the mish-mash of characters. The maid's name is LIDDIE (Lydia), not Lizzie, which grated on my nerves, and she and Cornelia have a complex, platonic, of course, relationship which isn't shown, but is significant in the book. Most of the humor between these two was eradicated from the movie. Darla Hood was dreadful in her part, and the two romances were cut entirely. The back-story was left out completely, so way too many characters just showed up, with no obvious relationship to each other or the plot. Agnes Morehead does as well as possible in her role, and Vincent Price is always superb. I found it surprising that "Cornelia" is presented as a "cougar". Cornelia, in the book, would never have worn the revealing night clothes, and her hair wasn't worn in a braid down to her butt. It's a different era. The characters' problems with daily details of life in the country is also ignored, but are a plot imperative and a lot of fun, so the feel of the era is destroyed. It was jarring to see early 1950s fashion in a period piece. Part of Cornelia's charm is her "elderly", rich, out-of-her-comfort zone, with a spine of steel, reaction to the weird happenings.Spoiler Alert: The "Bat" is a human criminal. He didn't have steel claws, and didn't slash throats, or do monstrous experiments on bats. This movie is a mixture of crime novel and early 1950s horror movie, which is an uncomfortable union. I'm sure the producer, director, and the actors tried hard to make a success of this bastardized version of a good book. I've never made a movie, but think in more talented hands, it would have been a major hit.

d_m_s Horrible crappy little low budget film. A female crime writer rents a mansion with a suspicious history to write a new novel. Meanwhile, said mansion owner steals a million dollars from his own bank and is murdered by Vincent Price for the money. He just has to find it, as it is hidden somewhere in the house. Meanwhile (again), a thief and murderer named The Bat is on the prowl in and around the mansion, also after the money. The story was pretty bland, the acting in some parts was so terrible it was weird (mainly the police detective) and I got too bored to watch to the end.

mark.waltz Just the idea of horror icon Vincent Price and future witch Agnes Moorehead playing together is enough to create a few chuckles, and here, they take their acting skills to a new level of grand guignole as the Miss Marple like Moorehead (a predecessor to Angela Lansbury's "Murder She Wrote" character) finds her cozy abode filled with terror with the presence of the mysterious killer, "The Bat". Stranded in a storm-surrounded home only with her companion (Lenita Lane), Moorehead fears the presence of an intruder especially when Lane witnesses the steel-clawed hands pushing its way into the front door. The premise has Price murdering the home's owner and the villain's search for loot stolen from the bank under the guise of securities and converted into cash. Two young women (one of them Darla Hood, no less!) make the mistake of coming to stay with Moorehead and terror rises.Camp drama from the gaslight theater era of when melodramas like this traveled around to country theaters in both America and England, there is no shortage of frights, even though it has the most obvious plot in the hundreds of these pot-boilers. Moorehead is fun, and it is great to see her playing a rare lead on screen. This isn't up there with the Edgar Allen Poe films which Price was getting ready to lick his lips over (and wring his hands, of course), but it is one of the better "B" horror films of the late 50's, entertaining and at times nail biting. There's also some amazingly violent sequences with one of the characters most brutally dispatched of in a manner that in retrospective is truly horrific. Of course, there's plenty of red herrings and other assorted suspects, and the conclusion is so out of left field that you might roll your eyes so far back that they never return to the front of your head.