Expected more

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Bela Lugosi's only starring role in a color film is a curious thriller that's notable primarily for the novelty that it is narrated by a corpse! Yes, the movie starts out in a morgue where we see a dead woman lying on a slab. She then begins to narrate the story of how she came to meet her end, which we see through a series of flashbacks. Lugosi is having such a great time with this, for reasons we'll probably never understand. He's certainly played better parts. Fellow genre legend George Zucco plays the whole thing straight, which is to his credit as a professional but doesn't exactly help with the limited comedy value the film has. Leading lady Molly Lamont is pretty over the top. Sometimes it's fun, sometimes it's grating. The rest of the cast includes Nat Pendleton, Douglas Fowley, Gladys Blake, Roland Varno, and Angelo Rossitto (Lugosi's midget sidekick). It's not a good movie. The script is peppered with corny dialogue and the actors range from bored to mugging for the camera. The comic relief from Pendleton and Blake works better than the thriller elements. The sets are cheap and the color really just works against the film. Had it been in black & white, there might have been a little more atmosphere to work with. Also, the cuts between the flashbacks are choppy with obtrusive Theremin music that doesn't achieve what I think it was supposed to achieve. It's worth a look for fans of Lugosi and Zucco, or just those who enjoy bad B movies. Everyone else will be bored out of their minds.

Lugosi is accompanied by his assistant from 'Spooks …', for doing a similar role, that of a magician, though, here, also a crook; his part is essentially a cameo. An out-fashioned comedy from '47, with amusing roles from Pendleton as the private cop and bodyguard, and Gladys Blake as the piquant _soubrette; Fowley plays a reporter. The lowbrow comedy may be goofy, but the directing is dismaying, absurdly clumsy and inefficient. The coarse style subverts what should of been a bourgeois drama; 'The Bat' has been filmed in an insouciant style, yet, despite the play's mediocrity and the director's lack of feel, there was a basic craft, which lacks here. The topic (the menace, the threat, the attempt to push someone into insanity, to make someone to loose his mind) had already been well used in bourgeois dramas like 'Gaslight'; here, it becomes the pretext for a goofy farce, in which a bodyguard and a _soubrette offer lowbrow comedy.A physician receives a lady who threatens him, then arrives his cousin, who also alludes to compromising facts. Earlier, the physician had examined his daughter in law, with a weird exchange about his feelings for her, suggesting a sulfurous, unholy passion.All is filmed as a farce. There are secret passages in the house (which has been once an asylum), the topography is explained a bit in a dialogue between the guest and his host.The plot is more serious than its perhaps unwillingly, but resignedly absurd treatment, which spoofs the play it has been based on.The movie keeps the structure of a stage-play, but turns the plot into a farce.

A dead woman dies of fright and she narrates how she got there from beyond the grave.I suppose it would be best to just cut to the chase and say that this film's singular defining feature is that it was Bela Lugosi's only colour outing. It's not the greatest angle a movie has ever had but at least it's something. And to be fair, the fact it's in colour is most certainly the best thing about this one. The story-line is pretty terrible even for a poverty row bargain basement flick. In fact, I found the plot fairly incomprehensible at times. I'm honestly not sure if it was because it was genuinely senseless or if it was simply a case of it being so tedious and unengaging that my mind kept drifting off. My gut feeling is that it was most probably a combination of both factors. What we do have in any case is one of those poverty row efforts that is set entirely in one house. We have a cast of characters of whom you will certainly have encountered if you have trawled through other movies of this type before – an extremely dumb cop, a very intrusive journalist couple, a shady scientist and…Bela Lugosi. He is his usual self but he does have the most interesting role here – including a dwarf sidekick – however, in truth his character ultimately doesn't add up to an awful lot.It almost feels like the film-makers put in even less effort than normal with this one on the basis that the colour-factor would see them through. It does remain unique for this reason but, really, that's all it's got.

This film doesn't know whether to take itself seriously as a low low budget skid row mystery or as a Three Stooges film short. The comedy is low brow, slow paced and gets old rather quickly. Be prepared to give more than the usual "willing suspension of disbelief" to get thru the Holland tunnel sized holes in the plot. The largest hole is the pivotal role of Rene. If you have a DVD reacquaint yourself with the "woman" who appears early on in the film in a mock attempt to "blackmail" George Zucco-then compare "her" to Rene when exposed at the end of the film. Are we really to believe that this actor was in drag in the earlier appearance? Heck no. And that is only one of the staggering bits of ineptness rampant in this film. The annoying reporter and his dimwit girlfriend only add more frustration to this mess. Notice how everybody talks about it but nobody ever calls the police-excepting when the reporter says, "In the morning when the police get here..." Don't know why the police don't come out at night-maybe they have banker's hours? A real turkey. Not even so-bad-it's good! Skip it.