The dark night… The Bat (1926), with John Sweeney, Kennington Bioscope

It was the KB Halloween Edition and MC Michelle Facey was accompanied by a raven and genuinely spooky tales not just about our main feature but also the fate of Roland West’s yacht, Joyita, which, to cut a unsettling mystery short, became known as the Marie Celeste of the Southern Seas after all passengers and crew disappeared leaving only and empty vessel listing and carrying mute evidence of a desperate conflagration. None where ever seen again and the ship’s former owner, director of this film, also vanished from the industry after the mysterious death of his lover Thelma Todd in 1935.

 

Whoever the fool was who directed Babylon (2022), there’s more things in Heaven and Hollywood than dreamt of in your ridiculous screenplay. Anyway, as usual Madame Mystery, sorry, Facey, was on song – unlike her raven – illuminating the stories of cast and crew and West’s seminal film about a costumed anti-hero who dresses like a bat, swoops around like a bat and genuinely terrifies in the manner of a large flying rodent. This is as she says one of the great Old Dark House films along with The Cat and the Canary, The Final Warning and Seven Footprints to Satan. Trilling, comedic and genuinely intriguing, we don’t know who The Bat is until the end and, having been told not to reveal the secret by an intertitle at the start, we must keep our silence as with The Mousetrap.

 

We were watching Ben Model’s recent restoration of The Bat which included a 2k scan from the UCLA Film & Television Archive’s original 35mm materials and it looked splendid on the big screen and with John Sweeney accompanying. I have the Blu-ray to watch having been on of the project funders and this will also be available from Ben’s Undercrank Productions site – link at the bottom. I’ve never seen the film before and whilst it’s not quite as tightly presented as The Cat…, it’s certainly an entertaining romp with plenty a twisted dark turn. Possibly too many but what the heck, it’s Halloween!

 

Directed by Roland West who also adapted from the play by Mary Roberts Rinehart and Avery Hopwood which was first produced in 1920 to much success. Events kick off with a daring robbery by the seemingly superhuman Bat, who is so confident he has written to millionaire jewel-fancier, Gideon Bell announcing his intention of stealing his Favre Emeralds at midnight. Despite the presence of the police, The Bat succeeds by climbing up the outside of the elegant skyscraper and pulling Bell out the window taking his prize.

 

The Bat is audacious and even leaves a note on a kind of Bat-Post-It note announcing his intention to visit the country for his next crime… Bob Kane was influenced by the film in creating The Batman but the template is more like one of the Caped Crusader’s rogues’ gallery, Cat Woman, The Riddler or even The Joker who himself was influenced by The Man Who Laughs (1928). Talking of which, what a great Harley Quinn Olga Baclanova would have made… a proto Gaga!

Before his trip though The Bat drops in on Oakdale Bank to enhance his short-term liquidity only to find that another has got there first to steal $200,000 from the safe. He notes the number plate of the felon and, no honour amongst thieves, sets off in pursuit in his car, a mobile vehicle for the Bat. The subject of his pursuit arrives at a large darkened house and, climbing in through the basement proceeds to climb up the laundry shaft and then a hidden stairway to a secret lair of his own. There's a cat and mouse as well as a bat in this tale.

 

Sojin Kamiyama, Louise Fazenda and Emily Fitzroy

As it happens, this is the mansion of the recently deceased Courtleigh Fleming, the president of the very same Oakdale Bank, where a whole bevvy of suspicious suspects are in place. Chief suspect for this unauthorised withdrawal is Brooks Bailey played by Jack Pickford who frankly always looks guilty of something. Apparently West shot during the night hours which gave his players that extra edge and it certainly has a sleep-deprived mania generated by the cast drowned in the shadows of these huge sets designed by the great  William Cameron Menzies with help from Harvey Meyers.

Brooks is accompanied by Miss Dale Ogden (Jewel Carmen aka Florence Lavina Quick aka Mrs Roland West) who is the niece of Cornelia Van Gorder (the ace Emily Fitzroy) who is renting the property and Dale not only convinced that her Brooks is innocent, she wants to marry him too. She presents him as a new gardener even though he knows less than I do about horticulture as quickly exposed by Cornelia who is generally the smartest person in every room of the house. No competition in this respect is her nervy maid, Lizzie Allen (played by the excellent Louise Fazenda) who provides enough comic relief for two films if I’m honest but she’s such a reliable pivot for the crime and the grime.

 

After breaking contract with Fox in 1921, this was Jewel Carmen's last film

This is an ambitious story, and I’d love to see it on stage for there are still another six characters to introduce, all of whom have their suspicious edges – almost everyone is a suspect apart from Lizzy – especially the men, Dr. H. E. Wells (Robert McKim) and his black bag, the moody Detective Moletti (Tullio Carminati), Billy the Butler (Sojin Kamiyama) and “prevalent at the time” racist tropes… There’s Detective Anderson (Eddie Gribbon) with his two guns, is he as clueless as he seems? And what’s more suspicious than Fleming’s nephew, Richard (Arthur Housman) who wants to frighten Cornelia away so he can lease the mansion?

You’ll just have to watch and find out and ideally with a live audience and as skilled an accompanist as John Sweeney who treated us to some full-blooded flourishes and mystical melodies for this gently fretful but funny silent spooky treat!

 

Some new blood – creatively speaking – was unveiled for the first part of the programme which was accompanied by Le Giornate del Cinema Muto Masterclass alumnus Andra Bacila who is studying at the Royal Academy of Music and who we will hear a lot more from in future. She accompanied The Red Dance (1928) in Pordenone and here sprinkled musical illumination for three wonderful shorts starting with La course aux potirons (1908) concerning runaway pumpkins in Paris, an hilarious film I'd also seen in Italy.

Pete the Pup is petrified!

After this was some wonderful invention from Walter Lantz with the mixed live and animation featuring the director and his cartoon dog, Pete the Pup, in Pete's Haunted House (1926) followed by a stunning The Devilish Tenant (1909) from Georges Méliès which was a trick film honed to perfection. It was hand coloured which as Chris Bird reminded us, meant that every frame on every copy was coloured individually - remarkable and beautiful film to see.

The last film was courtesy of a lucky find on eBay and was a rare surviving copy of a Cecil Hepworth film from 1922, One Too Exciting Night, a spoof on Griffith's One Exciting Night, itself an Old Dark House Mystery. What we saw may well be the only surviving copy anywhere but that's how they roll at the Bioscope - the rare, the extraordinary and the exceptional. We are privileged and all for just a few quid!

Frighteningly good!

Louise Fazenda gives her all!

To buy the Blu-ray of Ben Model's restored The Bat, please follow this link to the Undercrank Productions website - it is a very worthy release including some delightful extras. Blessed are the Kickstarters!

There's more about the mystery of the good ship Joyita here, a fascinating tale from the Bow Creek to Anatahan maritime history site.

This "near-mint" copy of the first appearance of The Batman in March 1939 last sold for $1.7 million in auction, and is now valued at $2.2 million. So, it's not just classic film enthusiasts who should check their lofts for lost treasure... I know where one copy is but I'm not telling. 

More gorgeous screen shots from the Blu-ray!

Gotham, before the Bat Signal