Review" 'The Bat' Special Edition Blu-ray

The Film Detective issued a blu-ray of The Bat in 2015, and though Crane Wilbur's comedic 1959 old dark house flick, based on a play by Mary Roberts Rinehart, remained a complete delight, the disc was not without issues. While I did note in my review that it was a vast improvement over the myriad DVD editions of this public domain picture, I also noted the myriad "specs and thin scratches" that invade the image regularly and the disc's crackly audio. It was also a pretty bare bones package.

Seven years later, the Film Detective is going back into that old dark house and reemerging with a special edition that is superior to the first one in every way. The picture improvement is immediately noticeable, with almost none of the blemishes that defaced the 2015 edition. There's still a touch of background crackle in a few scenes, but overall, the sound is clean, clear, and dynamic.

The package is similarly improved with an informative 22-minute featurette on director Crane, whose varied career included starring in the silent "Perils of Pauline" serial, penning the play on which the silent feature The Monster--starring Crane and Lon Chaney--was based, writing and directing a daring cinematic critique of the U.S. support of eugenics, and scripting such genre favorites as House of Wax with future Bat star Vincent Price and Ray Harryhausen's Mysterious Island. Nine radio shows featuring Price, a feature commentary by film scholar Jason A. Ney, and Ney's text essay on Mary Roberts Rinehart round out a new edition that justifies a double-dip.