Programme notes CH 03 — The Haunted Screen
The Bat Whispers
A masked killer called the Bat, a rented mansion with a fortune hidden somewhere in its walls, and a night when every guest is lying about something.
Roland West had already filmed this Broadway thriller once, silent, in 1926. He came back to it with sound and an urge to move the camera that nobody else in Hollywood had in 1930. The picture opens on a clock tower and drops through a city of miniatures to a single window, all in one swoop, and the house it lands in is all staircases and dark landings. Chester Morris plays the detective with a hard grin. Stay through The End: Morris steps in front of a curtain and asks you not to tell anyone who the Bat is.
Credits — follow anyone
- Directed by
- Roland West
- Photographed by
- Ray June
Every name is a door — each opens onto everything else that person made in the network.
The thread · every thread
Chester Morris made both in 1930: the convict at the centre of The Big House and the detective at the centre of The Bat Whispers. Same jaw, same clipped voice, and on opposite sides of the law.
Two Broadway mysteries that Universal and United Artists turned into old dark house pictures. Leni's camera drifts down corridors of blowing curtains, and West's swoops through a city of miniatures to reach the house. In both, the house is the star.