Imposter syndrome is a psychological pattern where individuals doubt their own abilities, skills, and accomplishments despite external evidence of their success (this is how I feel every time I actually bake on the stove instead of air frying everything). Key symptoms include persistent feelings of self-doubt, believing one is a fraud, and a constant fear of being “found out”… and also pretending to be a movie that clearly, by the advertising, you are not! Take the (fatally) classic film The Bat, for instance. On the surface, it seems like a furious, maddening horror extravaganza, filled with dark caves, screaming women, and especially starring the nefarious Vincent Price. But as the late great Strother Martin once said, “What we have here is a failure to communicate,” because not only is the film the furthest thing from an alarming, petrifying, and appalling journey into a dark cave of horrifying mysteries, but this particular glop of cinematic guano is a horror movie suffering from imposter syndrome (and wild, wonky, and weird acting) because when the lights are turned on and it’s time for The Bat to fly (and someone die… while watching the film), the only secret you won’t be able to keep will be how this is truthfully an Agatha Christie/Perry Mason/Nero Wolf murder mystery crime-murder- thriller chiller!
It is said that there are over a thousand various species of Chiroptera (or more commonly known as bats). Still, equally, there are just as many versions of this adventure flapping around the entertainment caverns of disappointment. Published first as a mysterious novel called The Circular Staircase by Mary Roberts Rinehart, the popularity of the book eventually peaked with several prominent directors (like a young Cecil B. DeMille, among just a few), eventually lensed as a silent movie by director Edward LeSaint (credited with over three hundred films, including The Wolf and His Mate and Brooding Eyes). The story was then adapted by Rinehart personally as a stage play called The Bat, in which she infamously altered major plot points, locations, and characters (including the addition of the villainous thief known as The Bat). A success on stage, none other than two more adaptations sank their teeth into audiences with the infamous Mary Pickford-produced 1926 version, followed by the 1930 talkie The Bat Whispers, both being moderate if forgotten successes. Then a TV adaptation in the early days of a show called Climax!, an anthology show most famous for also adapting a little-known paperback called Casino Royale featuring the first on-screen appearance by super spy James Bond (shaken, not fanged)! Finally, after securing the rights from Mary Pickford, C.J. Trevin, along with writer/director Crane Wilbur, went about creating a confusing, if not faithful (to the play only) version of the story, even though the final results seem to have been infected with imposter venom (as well as poisonous box office reviews). Trevin and Wilbur must have thirsted for some strange brew of bat’s winged witchcraft to luck out getting Price, who agreed to be in the film only because when he was a kid, the stage production scared him badly, even though he felt the script should have been lining the bottom of the cage to collect the dookie of the flying rats on set!
Cornelia Van Gorder (played perfectly by Agnes Moorehead), the premier and heralded murder mystery writer (eat your heart out Jessica Fletcher) has rented from the local bank president John Fleming the mansion known as The Oaks, a place of great riches, and hopefully juicier plots points for her newest “Whodunit.” Even though she feels she got a sweet deal, the author discovers there have been several instances of “stranger-danger” from a local murderer/thief known from his calling cards as The Bat, as he dresses in an all-black suit, mask, and a claw with razer sharps fingernails (maybe should have been known as The Wolverine?). Not afraid of this in the slightest, Van Gorder quickly starts to notice a few things going bump in the night, as The Bat tries to find hidden within the mansion a treasure of looted bara bonds and secured paper Fleming stole from his own bank. Telling all of this to his doctor (played by always reliable and sinister Price, even if he doesn’t have much to do), who turns around and gives Fleming a taste of his own medicine, it is up to the doctor to find the trove before The Bat does. Or is Price the Bat? Or is it one of the helpers the published artists bring with them? Or will there be a plot twist that actually makes audiences screech into the night with terror? Or will you march back out to the ticket booth to demand your money back from this shocker-knocker of mistaken identity (of what kind of movie it wants to be)?
Sonaring your way at a blinding eighty minutes, much like director LaSaint, Wilbur was a known actor and mostly spent much of his career as a screenwriter, writing such (so-so) classics like The Amazing Mr. X and two (truthfully) horror films starring Price in House of Wax 3-D and The Mad Magician (two for the Price of one). You can find this on most streaming platforms due to hanging upside down in the caves of Public Domain Mountain. So, the next time you feel lucky and think you can write the next great American novel, have confidence and keep repeating to yourself, “I’m not an imposter, as I am the next great novelist of the century, and the novel I’m writing doesn’t suck!”
