The Bat Whispers (Roland West, 1930)

Ch-ch-ch-changing back. That's right, I'm going back to the old format of posting about one movie at a time roughly every other week. Kicking off the new old format is this ingenious horror/comedy/crime thriller/old dark house mystery from Roland West, an accomplished visual stylist making a surprisingly graceful transition to sound. West gets around the stasis and clunkiness of early sound equipment by alternating silent scenes of action and fluid camerawork with dialogue scenes confined to rooms in the large house that is the film's primary setting. He also makes expressive use of miniature models of street scenes and the expansive grounds outside the country home.
The Bat Whispers opens with a daring jewel heist pulled off by an infamous criminal known only as The Bat. No one knows who he is, but he dresses like a bat and gets away with some pretty wild shit. The Bat is so confident in his thievery skills that he tells the wealthy man he's stealing the jewels from and the entire police department what night and time he'll be there. They're ready for him, but he gets away with it anyway and leaves a taunting note telling the police how stupid they are and that he's going to take a vacation in the country to celebrate and lay low for a while. The Bat proceeds to rob a bank on his way to the country and frames one of the clerks. Stone cold. The action moves to an old mansion in the country where the rest of the film takes place until its fourth-wall-busting finale.What follows is an often very funny, occasionally creepy whodunit (and why) involving a large cast of characters renting, working in, or visiting the mansion. Almost everyone has secret motives involving the bank robbery loot, including a doctor, a police detective, a private detective, the nephew of the homeowner, the woman renting the place for the summer while the owner is out of town (or is he out of town?), her niece, the woman's housekeeper, a gardener, and a caretaker. And, of course, The Bat.
West makes excellent use of light and shadow, dolly shots, and the layout of the house, providing in The Bat Whispers a much stronger visual experience than many early sound films. The Bat's all-black look and disturbingly whispery voice reminded me of the killers in Italian giallos from the '60s and '70s. I don't know if this movie was an influence on Bava, Argento, and their contemporaries, but The Bat is definitely a kindred spirit to the creep-voiced, black-clad slashers in their early work.

Director Roland West is not that well-known today, but in his prime, he was one of Hollywood's most famous directors and an Oscar nominee until scandal ended his career. West was one of the prime suspects in the mysterious death of Thelma Todd, a star of silent films and the owner of one of the most popular restaurants in Hollywood. The married West had a long and volatile affair with Todd, became one of her business partners in the restaurant, and even moved in next door to her. Though the coroner ruled Todd's death an accidental carbon monoxide poisoning with the possibility of suicide and the LAPD concurred, some police and many people who knew Todd felt that the accident was staged and that she was murdered. The rumors about West had him murdering Todd on his yacht and then placing her body in the running car in her garage, staging the scene as a carbon monoxide poisoning. A grand jury probe later found no evidence of murder or suicide. Hollywood rumors persisted, though, and West never worked again. He was not the only suspect. Todd's ex-husband angry at her affair with West, a friend she owed money to, and gangsters who had designs on a piece of her restaurant were also considered possible killers. The mystery endures, though accident is the most likely explanation.
If the rumors about West are true, then his yacht, the Joyita, may have been the most cursed yacht in Hollywood. West sold it the year after Todd's death, wanting nothing to do with its rumored reputation as the place where he killed Todd. A few years after West's death, the Joyita, its 16 crew members, and its nine passengers, disappeared in the South Pacific. A few weeks later, the yacht was found drifting in the ocean and listing heavily. The life rafts, cargo, and passengers and crew were gone, never to be found. The yacht was repaired, but its two subsequent owners both ran it aground, heavily damaging it, and it was finally abandoned. This is the most yacht content I've ever provided on this horror movie blog. Until next time, friends.

1/13/2018: Bad blood

Toxic Zombies aka Bloodeaters (Charles McCrann, 1980)
This month, I'll be talking about two regional low-budget horror indies with the word "blood" in the title that are both 90 minutes long, amateurish but charming, a little poorly paced, and an unusual spin on familiar horror subjects. First up is a rural Pennsylvania twist on the zombie movie from Pittsburgh filmmaker Charles McCrann. Deep inside a hard-to-reach area of federally protected wilderness, a group of marijuana growers are camped out and almost done harvesting their crop when they're surprised by two DEA agents. The agents kill one of the pot growers, but the growers gain the upper hand and shoot and kill both agents. The agents' disappearance brings a fed to the office of the head of the parks department, who is convinced to spray the area with chemicals in an effort to lure the growers out of hiding. The growers get covered in the stuff, which turns them into murderous zombies. Cue much outdoors zombie mayhem. The film drags in the second half, but there are moments of suspense, humor, and fun, and I have a lot of affection for regional independent filmmaking even when the results are dicey.
Director McCrann was a career-motivated guy who graduated from Princeton and Yale and spent most of his life working in finance, but he was also a film buff and horror fanatic who wanted to make a movie, so, at the age of 34, he got his buddies together and did it. Influenced by George Romero, McCrann used Romero regular John Amplas in a supporting role, and his and his friends' labor of love ended up finding distribution on the drive-in and grindhouse circuits. McCrann never made another film. He eventually became senior vice president of a large financial services conglomerate in New York City and was tragically killed in the 9/11 terrorist attack while working in his office at the World Trade Center.

Blood Cult (Christopher Lewis, 1985)
Our next regional indie was filmed in Tulsa, Oklahoma, using local theater actors, but director Lewis had connections to Hollywood. The son of Hollywood actor Loretta Young, Lewis grew up in Los Angeles, went to USC film school, and is the nephew of Ricardo Montalban and the older brother of a founding member of Moby Grape. Weird. He worked as a screenwriter of TV movies, a disc jockey, and a news anchorman, the latter job bringing him to Tulsa, where he started a video production company with his wife Linda. They marketed this production as the first horror movie to be shot on Betamax video and intended for the straight-to-video market, which isn't true, but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt that they believed it. No matter the claim, the film has a weird documentary/home movie look that made me feel like I was spying on real people. The story of a series of murders at sorority houses on a small college campus, Blood Cult begins as a slasher film before turning into a police procedural about Satanic cults. Like Bloodeaters, the pacing drags in the second half, the ending is a bit confusing, the acting ranges from good to atrocious, and the low-budget regional feel has a lot of charm. I can't wholly recommend this movie, but it holds a certain curiosity for fans of '80s horror, shot-on-video films, or regional indies.