The Bela Lugosi Collection: The Devil Bat and Scared to Death

Both of these flicks, The Bela Lugoshi Collection: The Devil Bat and Scared to Death, are making their disc debuts, but apart from the novelty of seeing Lugosi with blue eyes (the metaphysical noir Scared to Death is his only extant color film), the attraction is the likably hokey Devil Bat. Seen on TV or on tapes that were dubbed from faded 16 mm, Bat seemed the work of morons. This disc, however, mastered from a rare 35 mm print, reveals it to be just an average low-budget monster melodrama (mad chemist sics killer bats on imagined betrayers)-not Citizen Kane, but demonstrably the product of trained professionals. A major, if tacky, revelation. B