So much average

Absolutely Fantastic

A waste of 90 minutes of my life

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

A masked criminal who dresses like a giant bat terrorizes the guests at an old house rented by a mystery writer.This film amazing visuals, very much in a "German expressionism" style, with sets that call to mind other great silent films, including "Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" and "Metropolis". Director Roland West was a silent film master, and this may be the finest production he was ever involved with.Just as "The Man Who Laughs" inspired the Joker, one cannot help but assume this was the inspiration for Batman. A man in a bat suit who comes out at night and glides along the rooftops? There are a great many differences, of course, but the similarities are just too strong to ignore.This film is a must-see. Although remade with sound as "The Bat Whispers" (1930) and later remade again with Vincent Price, this original is well worth tracking down. (If nowhere else, it is free from the Internet Archive.)

This is a film that could never be made today. The idea of a master criminal running about in a bat costume is pretty silly--and the outfit is actually rather cute. Oddly, today we cannot imagine such silliness in a criminal but we COULD in a crime fighter! However, there are many more silly moments in this film--so many that it's hard to take it all very seriously. The plot is also amazingly convoluted...so trying to figure it all out isn't particularly important.The film begins with a bank robbery. The trail to the robber goes to an old mansion and inside are some innocent folks. However, when people start appearing, the chaos begins. Heck, after a while it's all pretty funny, as detectives, private detectives, bloody strangers and gardeners who know nothing about gardening all show up unannounced. It's a typical whodunnit style film morphed with an old dark house movie and it never seems to take itself very seriously.While there are MANY logical errors throughout the film (too many), the whole thing is pretty entertaining and you can't help but marvel at the set and cinematography. The film certainly looks good--and it doesn't hurt that the print they recently unearthed is, for the most part, rather pristine.Overall, for silent movie fans, this is an excellent picture. For others, however, it may all just seem too silly and trite to make it worth seeing. My advice is that if you aren't a silent fan, try watching some other silents first--this one probably isn't good enough to make you a fan of the genre...and it's all a bit silly.

An enjoyable farce in the style of "Grand Guignol", which only masquerades as a mystery but in its heart is early horror.Director Roland West was already famous by the time he did this film, having worked with Lon Chaney and other stars, but it stands in many ways as his most significant work. Many people nowadays only know him for his connection to the murder of Thelma Todd. But we can see here his desire to raise the state of the art of suspense cinema, with photography by no less than Arthur Edeson and Gregg Toland. In fact trick photography is evident in a great many of the scenes here, and used to great effect especially in the area of shadows and forced perspective shots.Jack Pickford and Louise Fazenda star as guests in a huge castle which may also be the home to the mysterious "Bat", a masked thief who intimidates his victims with letters prior to dispossessing them of all their jewels. A whole host of detectives descend on the scene when it is learned that the Bat is in the house.None of the performances are particularly memorable. What people will walk away from -- with this and with the innovative sound version, "The Bat Whispers" -- is the sense of charm and fun that these early film-makers associated with murder and horror. This film famously was the inspiration for the "Bat Man" character, who is basically the Bat turned good (the Bat even has a secret hideout in the Gothic mansion in this film just like in those stories). The fact that the character had to be turned into a hero to continue into the 20th Century might just say something about how much more seriously we take crime at this point in our society. Presumably 1920s audiences were expected to sympathize to some extent with the Bat -- after all, all his victims were ridiculously wealthy people who could probably afford to part with a few diamonds.All in all a solid film, a good example of entertainment driven 1920s cinema and the possibilities that were there for suspense even before dialog and camera movement became vogue.

There certainly is a lot happening in this film. Trap doors. Secret passages. Staircases. A "Bat" man. A hysterical maid who screams and leaps and circles and points. She must have been totally worn out when this film ended. Having seen the later version, I kind of knew the ropes a little bit. The idea is to get people out of an old mansion in order to grab a bunch of money that was embezzled from a local bank. The title character harasses the inhabitants, but doesn't know he has a real foe in the tough, matronly, unflappable owner of the mansion. She holds her own no matter what transpires. We have lots of suspects and that bat costume is pretty good. We can see elements of the Batman character of the early comic books. For a silent film this is very high quality and wears very well.