The Vampire Bat

The Vampire Bat

"Mayor, who would you believe? Me, the pub buddy or that science guy?"

When I picked this movie, I was expecting a creepy horror fest full of flying vampires and women in weird nightgowns. It didn't quite turn out that way but I must say I was not disappointed. As other fans of this movie will suggest, treating this like a murder mystery or thriller is the best approach to appreciating its creativity. Well, here's my review of The Vampire Bat.

Here's the gist of the story. A small town is living in fear because there just might be a vampire roaming the streets at night. I mean, how else do you explain the blood-drained bodies scattered across town? It also turns out that the town also has a rather large population of bats in its sprawling wilderness and thus, the sucky-blood theory gains ground. As it does amongst a superstitious bunch ruled by fear of the unknown. Now throw in the local misfit, Herman Gleib. He's the guy with bats in his shed; he skulks about with hunched shoulders promoting the goodness that is ... bat stroking. You can how this could be a really bad time to be the local bat breeder. Then there is the inspector, Karl Brettschneider, who plays up the self-assured logical man refusing to credit superstitions. Oh no, there will be no witch burning on his shift! Now add the easily-impressionable mayor and town doctor and you've got the making of a story. Everyone is trying to track down the blood-thirsty killer and Gleib is looking more and more suspicious. Is he at fault or, like the inspector suggests, are there other sinister forces at play?

Alright, so what did I learn from this movie? As I said earlier, this was a good movie and I won't be nitpicking this movie too much. However, I will note one rather important lesson. Apparently - no matter what century you end up in - chances are, the weird little emo kid is always going to be blamed for everything. Sadly, Gleib is probably too weird to gain full membership of the emo club itself.

While I may poke fun at various aspects of the movie, I must also admit that I really did enjoy it. First there were the constant references to science as the way to go. Is it a sad indication of our times that I am always surprised to find the science vs. hocus-pocus jumbo arguments in old movies? I mean, alright, so in modern movies people will say "Oh rubbish that can never happen. This is the so-and-so century". But how often do people forcefully advocate logic, reason and decent science as the basis for investigating a supernatural phenomenon? I was rooting for Inspector Brettschneider throughout the movie; there was a man who pish-poshed a lot of silly ideas. In fact, at one point in the movie I was honestly wondering why he was not mayor of the town. Current Mayor Schoen's campaign slogan was probably "I'm with the mob mentality, where is my pitchfork". As it is, the number of times you catch him falling for the crazy sentiments of the local town folk is pretty frightening. The perfect example is the frenzied search for Gleib - did they really need dogs for that 'hunt'?

Secondly, the direction style was quite refreshing as well. It has to be old movie style where everything unfolds rather similar to a play. And so, most of the trivial details that build up suspense or character is not told outright. These little bits are thrown in during conversation or brought up at unexpected times. Case in point is Gleib's bat stroking gesture which, while a great tribute Bond villains, did not help his I am just a tree-hugger defense. After all, that's what everyone remembered later on when they grabbed the torches, dogs and pitchforks.