This is a wonderful find. Roland West teams with star Chester Morris once again to give us "The Bat Whispers" a year after the same team gave us "Alibi", one of the very good films from 1929, and a Best Picture nominee from the 1928-1929 season.
West uses some of the same photographic techniques that were ground-breaking in "Alibi". The camera moves along so you see what the police see as they ride along in their squad cars, and now the camera also swoops up the sides of buildings and "flies into" rooms at a birds-eye (or bats-eye) view.
"The Bat" is a super-criminal. He taunts the police by telling them what he intends to do next and then performs his crime under their noses. He dresses and moves like Batman, has the Joker's indifference to human life and confidence in his own immortality, but unlike the Joker his motive is not chaos - it is unmitigated greed. In that way he is like a merging of Batman, the Joker, and Bank of America.
The rather complex plot involves a bank that has been robbed in which the suspect is a young teller who is in love with Una Merkel's character. Her aunt has rented an old dark house from the bank owner's son. However, someone is trying to frighten her into leaving. There are secret rooms and passageways, the mysterious activities of several guests involved, and the presence of Chester Morris as a police inspector who arrives on the scene. For some strange reason he is dressed as a middle-aged man here, and I could never figure out the reason for that one. The questions are - who is The Bat, is he at work here, is he working alone, and what is he after? The only negative is the maid in the old dark house. She is constantly screaming and yelping at every little noise. By the film's midpoint I was ready to dress up like The Bat and get rid of this annoying person myself. Alas, she survives until the end of the film without really adding anything. I get the fact that scary things are going on. I didn't need her 90 minute conniption fit to drive that point home.
If you love early talkies you have to see this one. It came before Batman and Universal's old dark house sound films, so it actually is more original than the modern viewer might give it credit.
West uses some of the same photographic techniques that were ground-breaking in "Alibi". The camera moves along so you see what the police see as they ride along in their squad cars, and now the camera also swoops up the sides of buildings and "flies into" rooms at a birds-eye (or bats-eye) view.
"The Bat" is a super-criminal. He taunts the police by telling them what he intends to do next and then performs his crime under their noses. He dresses and moves like Batman, has the Joker's indifference to human life and confidence in his own immortality, but unlike the Joker his motive is not chaos - it is unmitigated greed. In that way he is like a merging of Batman, the Joker, and Bank of America.
The rather complex plot involves a bank that has been robbed in which the suspect is a young teller who is in love with Una Merkel's character. Her aunt has rented an old dark house from the bank owner's son. However, someone is trying to frighten her into leaving. There are secret rooms and passageways, the mysterious activities of several guests involved, and the presence of Chester Morris as a police inspector who arrives on the scene. For some strange reason he is dressed as a middle-aged man here, and I could never figure out the reason for that one. The questions are - who is The Bat, is he at work here, is he working alone, and what is he after? The only negative is the maid in the old dark house. She is constantly screaming and yelping at every little noise. By the film's midpoint I was ready to dress up like The Bat and get rid of this annoying person myself. Alas, she survives until the end of the film without really adding anything. I get the fact that scary things are going on. I didn't need her 90 minute conniption fit to drive that point home.
If you love early talkies you have to see this one. It came before Batman and Universal's old dark house sound films, so it actually is more original than the modern viewer might give it credit.