Director Roland West was an early screen progenitor of the old dark house subgenre. "The Bat Whispers" is a talkie remake of his silent "The Bat" (1926), and he also made "The Monster" starring Lon Chaney. This is before James Whale made his trope namer "The Old Dark House" in 1932, although both "The Monster" and "The Bat" films are based on stage plays, and "The Bat" films, indirectly, and Whale's "The Old Dark House," directly, have literary origins, too. While West's "The Monster" is a clever horror comedy in its borrowings from Shakespeare, Lewis Carroll and Buster Keaton, having now seen some of the director's other work, I suspect the reason that film works is due to its theatrical origins and to the effective mugging of Chaney, because the rest of West's slight oeuvre that I've seen are unexceptional, including this one.
Paradoxically, two of his early talkies, this one and Best-Picture nominee "Alibi" (1929), are more daring in some of their camerawork and staging than his silent films "The Monster" and "The Bat." Right off the bat, so to speak, this one was filmed in both a 35mm and an experimental 65mm format, as well as another 35mm print for foreign release. Image Entertainment distributed a Milestone DVD of both domestic prints some years ago, so I was fortunate enough to compare the two prints, although the differences aren't substantial. While some of the same-planned shots were clearly filmed in different takes judging by slightly different prop and actor positions, or a bit different line reading, most scenes seem to have been filmed simultaneously by adjacent cameras. Predictably, the widescreen version tends to feature more distant perspectives, while the then-normal aspect ratio usually, but not always, has more intimate framing. The 65mm camera usually had the superior positions, at least as far as blocking, and this is sometimes alleviated in the 35mm version by a bit more cutting, such as shot reverse shots during conversations. Today, the 35mm print looks darker and sometimes even a bit out of focus, or at least softer in image, compared to the sharp 65mm copy. Nevertheless, I wouldn't say that either is undoubtedly better than the other, and the 35mm version is the one that most audiences saw in 1930 due to the expense required of theatres for additional equipment to project the other. Few other films, such as "The Big Trail" (1930), also experimented with this widescreen method before it quickly fell out of use.
Like the 1926 film, there's some nice lighting effects and use of miniatures, but here there's the addition of storm effects and a swooping camera on those miniatures, including one through a window, although the jump cuts employed to transition between miniatures and live actors are blatant. There are also shadows and a silhouette shot for the Bat, and a nice overhead shot of him peering through a glass roof at a bank robbery. "Alibi" similarly starts with some tour-de-force filmmaking around effective editing and staging to effectively announce the film's sound. Both also feature phantom-ride type shots of traffic from the front of police cars, and there's also a phantom-ride shot here from the front of a train.
While there are a few other impressive techniques employed throughout this one, including tracking shots and silhouettes and shadows standing out in low-key lighting, when "Alibi" and "The Bat Whispers" delve fully into their talkie sequences is when it becomes clear that West wasn't a great filmmaker, especially with a hack like his pal Chester Morris as the star. The actor's grimacing is so artificial that at best it induces laughter at the performance, as opposed to Chaney's self-parody in "The Monster" that seems to invite our laughing with him. Morris was awful in his Oscar-nominated role in "Alibi," and he's awful here. Nor does West do him any favors with the close-ups with black-out backgrounds on his obnoxious facial gyrations. In both silent and talkie versions, the play is all mystery plot and no characters--just caricatures. At least, the 1926 film didn't lend them voices or the undue attention given to a star like Morris. It's not just Morris's character that's ruined by the addition of sound, either. The comic relief becomes especially a nuisance because of it, including the scaredy-cat antics of the maid and the mouth clicking habit of the hired detective.
As opposed to the 1926 version, which implored the audience in an introductory title card not to spoil the bat reveal to others, this one waits until the fourth-wall-breaking epilogue to do likewise. More interesting than that, though, are two things that happened after the film. Its garage business takes on a different meaning coming from West, who, years later, became a murder suspect in the mysterious death in his garage of his mistress, actress Thelma Todd. And the eponymous Bat criminal would be credited by Bob Kane as an inspiration for the creation of the comic-book superhero Batman, although I think the silent version actually has more similarities to the Dark Knight, including a sort of bat signal. But, this one does bare a faint resemblance to Christian Bale's iteration with that whispering.
Paradoxically, two of his early talkies, this one and Best-Picture nominee "Alibi" (1929), are more daring in some of their camerawork and staging than his silent films "The Monster" and "The Bat." Right off the bat, so to speak, this one was filmed in both a 35mm and an experimental 65mm format, as well as another 35mm print for foreign release. Image Entertainment distributed a Milestone DVD of both domestic prints some years ago, so I was fortunate enough to compare the two prints, although the differences aren't substantial. While some of the same-planned shots were clearly filmed in different takes judging by slightly different prop and actor positions, or a bit different line reading, most scenes seem to have been filmed simultaneously by adjacent cameras. Predictably, the widescreen version tends to feature more distant perspectives, while the then-normal aspect ratio usually, but not always, has more intimate framing. The 65mm camera usually had the superior positions, at least as far as blocking, and this is sometimes alleviated in the 35mm version by a bit more cutting, such as shot reverse shots during conversations. Today, the 35mm print looks darker and sometimes even a bit out of focus, or at least softer in image, compared to the sharp 65mm copy. Nevertheless, I wouldn't say that either is undoubtedly better than the other, and the 35mm version is the one that most audiences saw in 1930 due to the expense required of theatres for additional equipment to project the other. Few other films, such as "The Big Trail" (1930), also experimented with this widescreen method before it quickly fell out of use.
Like the 1926 film, there's some nice lighting effects and use of miniatures, but here there's the addition of storm effects and a swooping camera on those miniatures, including one through a window, although the jump cuts employed to transition between miniatures and live actors are blatant. There are also shadows and a silhouette shot for the Bat, and a nice overhead shot of him peering through a glass roof at a bank robbery. "Alibi" similarly starts with some tour-de-force filmmaking around effective editing and staging to effectively announce the film's sound. Both also feature phantom-ride type shots of traffic from the front of police cars, and there's also a phantom-ride shot here from the front of a train.
While there are a few other impressive techniques employed throughout this one, including tracking shots and silhouettes and shadows standing out in low-key lighting, when "Alibi" and "The Bat Whispers" delve fully into their talkie sequences is when it becomes clear that West wasn't a great filmmaker, especially with a hack like his pal Chester Morris as the star. The actor's grimacing is so artificial that at best it induces laughter at the performance, as opposed to Chaney's self-parody in "The Monster" that seems to invite our laughing with him. Morris was awful in his Oscar-nominated role in "Alibi," and he's awful here. Nor does West do him any favors with the close-ups with black-out backgrounds on his obnoxious facial gyrations. In both silent and talkie versions, the play is all mystery plot and no characters--just caricatures. At least, the 1926 film didn't lend them voices or the undue attention given to a star like Morris. It's not just Morris's character that's ruined by the addition of sound, either. The comic relief becomes especially a nuisance because of it, including the scaredy-cat antics of the maid and the mouth clicking habit of the hired detective.
As opposed to the 1926 version, which implored the audience in an introductory title card not to spoil the bat reveal to others, this one waits until the fourth-wall-breaking epilogue to do likewise. More interesting than that, though, are two things that happened after the film. Its garage business takes on a different meaning coming from West, who, years later, became a murder suspect in the mysterious death in his garage of his mistress, actress Thelma Todd. And the eponymous Bat criminal would be credited by Bob Kane as an inspiration for the creation of the comic-book superhero Batman, although I think the silent version actually has more similarities to the Dark Knight, including a sort of bat signal. But, this one does bare a faint resemblance to Christian Bale's iteration with that whispering.