Devil Bat's Daughter (1946)

"But who would want to know the secret of creating giant bats?" asks the hero of Devil Bat's Daughter (1946).  The answer, of course, was Bela Lugosi, in The Devil Bat (1941), to which this film was a sequel of sorts.  I say 'of sorts' because it doesn't include any of the cast or characters from the earlier film.  While not quite an early example of an 'in name only' sequel, or eve a thematic sequel, Devil Bat's Daughter has only a loose association with the first film and, unlike that movie, is less a horror film than a thriller.  As the title indicates, the link between the two films is the titular daughter - although never seen or mentioned in the first film, it seems that mad scientist Lugosi had an estranged wife and a daughter in the UK.  She now turns up in the US, years after the events of the first film and finds herself embroiled in a plot by her psychiatrist to murder his wife and frame Lugosi's daughter for it.  Which he does by convincing her that she has the same 'bad blood' as her notorious father and inducing her to have nightmares about vampire bats.  Her father, Lugosi in the previous film, had developed a strain of giant vampire bats, then sent them against those who had previously ridiculed his work.  He achieved this by giving the victims a special shaving lotion laced with pheromones that the bats could home in on.  Back in the sequel, the psychiatrist's stepson is suspicious over his mother's death and determines to get to the truth.

This involves him convincing the girl that she isn't responsible and doesn't share her father's 'bad blood'.  He does this by effectively rewriting history - according to his investigations everything we saw go on in Devil Bat was a lie.  Lugosi was simply a misunderstood researcher who never harmed anyone.  Apparently creating giant vampire bats really was a valid scientific experiment which could have benefitted medical science.  People only died because some of his bats accidentally escaped and mauled them.  Lugosi provided a convenient scapegoat for the authorities when he, too, fell victim to his creations.  You really have to admire PRC's nerve here - creating a sequel to one of its biggest hits that actuall repudiates and invalidates that entire film.  (The script also deals Lugosi a heinous personal insult by describing his character as having been Romanian, despite Bela having been a proud Hungarian).  Devil Bat's Daughter is a typically cheap but efficient PRC programmer,directed with a certain degree of style by German ex pat Frank Wisbar (whose other 1946 PRC film, Strangler of the Swamp, has gained something of a cult classic status).  While enjoyable enough in its own right, Devil Bat's Daughter would have come as a bitter disappointment to anyone expecting a conventional sequel to The Devil Bat, with blood sucking giant bats and Bela Lugosi.