The Bat
Restored Edition DVD
Directed by Crane Wilbur
Starring Vincent Price, Agnes Moorehead, Lenita Lane, Darla Hood
Film Chest
Release date: November 12, 2013

In The Bat, the 1959 murder mystery from director Crane Wilbur, Vincent Price might have made top billing, but the iconic horror actor takes a back seat to Agnes Moorehead, who headlines here years before her famous turn as Endora on TV’s Bewitched (which is how my generation grew up knowing her). Moorehead stars as Cornelia Van Gorder, a popular murder-mystery novelist who rents a mansion called The Oaks, where she experiences terror and intrigue more intense than any of the stories that she’s written.

Cornelia arrives to The Oaks for the summer with a team of servants, but when word quickly spreads of a killer on the loose, dubbed “The Bat,” the frightened staff flees town, leaving behind just the writer and her longtime maid and confidant Lizzie Allen (Lenita Lane) at the mansion. Soon after, the masked killer, donning gloves with steel-clawed fingertips, breaks into the mansion and releases a bat, which bites Lizzie. Fearing rabies, the ladies phone a local doctor, Dr. Malcolm Wells (Vincent Price), who then becomes involved in trying to catch the killer.