Programme notes CH 03 — The Haunted Screen
The Vampire Bat
A village blames a vampire for its bloodless dead. The doctor up the hill has a laboratory he keeps locked.
Majestic, a Poverty Row outfit, signed Lionel Atwill and Fay Wray while Warner Bros. had them making Mystery of the Wax Museum, and rented Universal's backlot village to look like a studio picture. Melvyn Douglas is the police inspector who will not believe in vampires, played as a light comedian dropped into a horror film. Dwight Frye, Renfield two years before, is the simple man who keeps bats as pets and so becomes the village's answer. The film is harder on the mob with torches than on whatever is draining the bodies. Watch Frye's face when the townspeople start using the word.
Credits — follow anyone
- Directed by
- Frank R. Strayer
- Photographed by
- Ira H. Morgan
- With
- Fay Wray · Melvyn Douglas · Lionel Belmore · George E. Stone · Lionel Atwill · Dwight Frye
Every name is a door — each opens onto everything else that person made in the network.
The thread · every thread
Fay Wray, four months apart: hunted through RKO's jungle at night in one, menaced in a rented Universal village in the other. The big studio shot its thriller on sets built for King Kong; the small one borrowed somebody else's Europe. Both run about an hour and waste none of it.