It was getting late, and most people headed out, marking the near end of T(ween) Fest 2025 weekend. However, Sandy was up for one more movie, so I popped in my recently procured Blu Ray for 1930’s The Bat Whispers. Sandy later admitted he was a bit unenthusiastic about the choice. These old dark house movies are not always as good as you’d like them to be.
Even if he had told me this at the beginning, I would have had no fears. The Bat Whispers (the director had previously made a silent film of the same stageplay, The Bat) is possibly the very best of the breed, right up there with the silent Cat and the Canary and James Wales’ Old Dark House.
The film was experimentally shot in two versions. There’s a standard framing, and then a very early use of widescreen. This required two sets of cameras, and thus the film was actually shot twice, with subtle but real differences between the two.
The opening, where psychotic supercriminal the Bat informs police that he’ll be robbing a rich man at midnight, is so good that Bob Kane ripped the scenario off for the very first ‘scene’ of the very first appearance of Batman’s The Joker. Indeed, they lifted many influences from this film, including the appearance of the Bat himself and he way of lowering himself on ropes down the sides of building.
I really love this movie. It was shot back in the day where a cut to a building or cityscape or mansion or traveling car was usually achieved via model work. This, along with the heavy influence of German expressionism, lends the film an extremely pleasing artificiality suitable for the adaptation of a stage play. I can’t imagine anyone in our crowd not enjoying this.
And so ended T(ween) Fest. The next day it was back to Chicago for me.
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