Dr. Paul Carruthers is frustrated because he thinks his employers, Mary Heath and Henry Morton, have cheated him out of the company's profits. He decides to get revenge by altering bats to grow twice their normal size and training them to attack when they smell a perfume of his own making. He mixes the perfume into a lotion, which he offers as a gift to Mary and Henry. When they turn up dead, a newspaper reporter decides to investigate.
Acting
Lugosi's hypnotic glare outclasses everything around him.
Practical Effects
Gloriously fake rubber bats on visible strings.
Production
Monogram Pictures' legendary cheapness becomes its own aesthetic.
Director
Jean Yarbrough
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
This was one of nine films Lugosi made for Monogram Pictures in the early 1940s, a period he reportedly called his 'Monogram hell.'
The 'devil bat' special effects were reused in 1946's 'Scared to Death,' making this one of cinema's most undignified bat cameos.
US
