By Thomas Gladysz.

Released by Undercrank Productions, The Bat stands as a high point in the ‘old dark house’ genre / sub-genre.”

In the first decades of the 20th century, film was finding its way. Then, the various genres were being defined — and redefined, with the release of just about every major film. Recently, two significant early genre films – each a precursor to films and film styles which followed – have been released on home video.

By far, the most significant of the two is The Bat (1926). Released by Undercrank Productions, this silent gem stands as a high point in the “old dark house” genre / sub-genre. The only other early film that ranks alongside it, notably, is the iconic talkie released just a few years later, The Old Dark House (1932), directed by James Whale and starring Boris Karloff.

More often than not, the stories that define this mystery-suspense sub-genre center on a small group of strangers in a confined setting, such as a large house or mansion. To it add atmospherics like a dark and stormy night, things that go bump in the night, dim and dusty interiors, secret passageways, and a madman, criminal, or creature on the loose. In the case of The Bat, there is a mysterious master criminal known as “The Bat” who likes to announce his crimes ahead of time.

Undercrank Productions/UCLA Film & Television Archive

The Bat was based on a popular 1920 play of the same name by Mary Roberts Rinehart and Avery Hopwood. The stage play, in turn, was based on Rinehart’s own 1908 novel, The Circular Staircase, which had already been filmed once before in 1915. (There was also a TV adaption in 1956 starring Judith Anderson, and the 1959 film starring Vincent Price.)

Directed by Roland West, The Bat stars Jack Pickford, Louise Fazenda and Jewel Carmen. Pickford was the younger brother of superstar Mary Pickford. Always in the shadow of his famous sister, Jack was tragic figure in early Hollywood whose career declined due to alcohol, drugs and depression. He was married to actress Olive Thomas, who died tragically after ingesting her husband’s syphilis medication.

Co-star Fazenda made her first films in 1913. She was best known as a character actor in silent movies, especially comedies. In 1927, Fazenda married Hal B. Wallis, a producer at Warner Brothers. The last of Fazenda’s nearly 300 movie appearances was in 1939. Jewel Carmen was married to director Roland West. Prior to The Bat, Carmen appeared in a number of important productions including a small role in D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance (1916), as well as starring roles in A Tale of Two Cities (1917) and Les Misérables (1917). The Bat was her last film, though not her final appearance in the public eye. In 1935, Carmen was involved in the investigation into the fabled death of actress Thelma Todd, with whom her husband was having an affair.

Though the cast is one of the film’s interesting elements, the success of The Bat as a production owes much to its director, Roland West, a too little appreciated figure in film history whose visual style and interest in the dark side of human nature anticipate film noir. West’s credits include The Unknown Purple (1923), an invisible man story; The Monster (1925) with Lon Chaney; the early talkie, Alibi (1929) – a gangster film which garnered West an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture; and Corsair (1931), another pre-code crime drama which turned-out to be West’s last film.

West, an innovative visual stylist, remade The Bat as a sound film, The Bat Whispers, in 1930. Notably, this third film version was one of the first widescreen films, having been shot in 65mm. And notably as well, West’s Bat films influenced Bob Kane in the creation of his iconic Batman character. In his autobiography, Kane insisted he only drew inspiration from The Bat Whispers – though it is difficult to disentangle one film from the other when it comes to lineage. As one reviewer recently put it, without The Bat there would be no Batman.

Complimenting West’s genius for light and shadow, the production crew on The Bat included striking art direction by William Cameron Menzies and bravura camera work by Arthur Edeson and his young assistant, Gregg Toland. Menzies would go on to design Gone with the Wind, among other classic films. Edeson would shoot Frankenstein, The Maltese Falcon, and Casablanca. Toland is credited with Citizen Cane and other masterpieces. If you know film history, you get the picture.

Like many early films, The Bat was once thought lost. It resurfaced in 1987 in the form of a deteriorating nitrate print. Undercrank Productions, a label specializing in hard-to-see silents deserving of a larger audience, has released the film in a meticulous 2K digital restoration drawn from 35mm film elements preserved by the UCLA Film & Television Archive. The film is accompanied by an excellent new musical score by Ben Model which adds to the film’s overall sense of thrill and suspense. And laughs, as comedic moments in The Bat help relieve the film’s dramatic tensions. Aside from a very few remaining visual imperfections, The Bat looks and sounds terrorific.

Included on the Undercrank release is a good, though brief documentary on the life and career of the director, Roland West: Cinematic Man of Mystery (2024). It is narrated by film historian Steve Massa. And, there’s A Fraternity Mixup (1926), a silly dark and stormy night comedy short in which a bunch of co-eds run around in their pajamas with everything played for laughs. At one point, a scared co-ed exclaims, “maybe it wasn’t Lon Chaney but I wasn’t taking any chances.” The Undercrank release of The Bat is a must have or anyone interested in silent film, thrillers, and early horror. Within the context of film history, it helped establish a tradition.

Compared to The Bat, Malcolm St. Clair’s The Canary Murder Case (1929) is a lesser film. Nevertheless, it has historical significance, a bit of Jazz Age panache, and at the time of its release, it made its mark as both a popular and acclaimed work.

Released in early 2024 by Kino Lorber Studio Classics as part of its one-disc, three-film “Philo Vance Collection”, The Canary Murder Case is at last receiving its first proper release on home video. First and foremost, this Kino Blu-ray offers a new 4K restoration, which looks and sounds really good; accompanying the film is an audio commentary by novelist Kim Newman and journalist Barry Forshaw.

The Canary Murder Case is based on the 1927 novel of the same name by S.S. Van Dine, the pseudonym of critic Willard Huntington Wright. The book, a locked room mystery, was a publishing phenomenon during what is now considered the golden age of American detective fiction. In 2023, it was rereleased as part of the Library of Congress Crime Classics series.

Philo Vance is the detective at the center of the series. He was described as a “modern detective” – in that he was both urban and urbane, all of which was somewhat counterpoint to the sometime staid English murder mysteries then in vogue. The other two films on the Kino Lorber disc, each early entries in what became a long-running book, film, stage and radio franchise, are The Greene Murder Case (1929) and The Benson Murder Case (1930).

This first film version of The Canary Murder Case was directed by Malcolm St. Clair, with its screenplay by Van Dine and others. William Powell stars in the role of Vance, with Louise Brooks co-starred as “The Canary”. The legendary actress looks fabulous dressed as a showgirl, thanks to Travis Banton’s feathery designs. The always charming Jean Arthur (in a sadly negligible role), the singular character actor Gustav von Seyffertitz, James Hall, and Louis John Bartels appear in other principal parts – though it is froggy-voiced Eugene Pallette as police sergeant Heath who nearly steals the show.

This Paramount production was initially shot as a silent. After production wrapped, the studio decided to convert their completed but not yet released silents into “talkies”, and the cast of the film was recalled to dub their scenes. Director Frank Tuttle was brought onboard to handle the sound retakes.

By this time, however, Brooks had departed for Germany to begin work on Pandora’s Box. Having largely fulfilled her studio contract, and having been denied an expected raise, Brooks refused to return to Hollywood. In response, Paramount hired Margaret Livingston (a look-alike actress with look-alike bobbed hair) to dub Brooks’ dialogue and reshoot some of her scenes. To obscure the doubling, Livingston was seen only in profile or from behind.

In most American markets, The Canary Murder Case was released as an 80-minute talkie, and as a slightly shorter silent in theaters not yet “wired for sound.” (Notably, Herman J. Mankiewicz wrote the inter-titles for the silent version.) A few publications, such as The Film Daily, reviewed both formats.

As it was based on a bestselling and much-discussed book, there was great anticipation around the release of The Canary Murder Case. The New York Times stated, “It is on the whole the best talking-mystery production that has been seen, which does not imply that it is without failings. It is quite obvious that Louise Brooks, who impersonates Margaret Odell, alias the Canary, does not speak her lines. Why the producers should have permitted them to be uttered as they are is a mystery far deeper than the story of this picture.”

As can be gleamed from the many reviews of the time, the silent version of The Canary Murder Case was likely the better film. The New York World went so far as to state that it was “an example of a good movie plot gone wrong as the result of spoken dialogue.” Regrettably, the silent version is considered a lost film, and all that remains today is the sound version.

Along with its significance as an early genre film, The Canary Murder Case is, in part, remembered today because of Brooks’ refusal to return to the production – an act of defiance which effectively stifled her career. And though she would go on to appear in just a handful of lesser sound films in the 1930s, The Canary Murder Case marked Brooks’ last starring role in an American film.

In the commentary which accompanies The Canary Murder Case, it’s remarked that there is something about genre films that make them more watchable than some of the prestige films of their time. It’s true. And it’s true in the case for these two early genre films, especially The Bat.

Thomas Gladysz founded the pioneering, now 30-year-old Louise Brooks Society website in 1995. He is the author of numerous articles on early film, as well as five books. His latest, The Street of Forgotten Men: From Story to Screen and Beyond, tells the story behind the 1925 Herbert Brenon classic and includes forewords by preservationist Robert Byrne and historian Kevin Brownlow.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *