Editorials
Public Domain Horror: Watch ‘The Bat’ (1926) NOW!
Over 30,000 of you guys read Rebel Phoenix’s incredible list of 10 of the most influential horror movies you’ve never heard of (…let alone seen). I personally wanted to watch a few of them, and found it extremely diffucult to find on DVD. Thankfully a few are now public domain. The one that caught my eye were Roland West’s The Bat (1926) and The Bat Whispers (1930), two films that inspired Bob Kane’s “Batman”. After a little digging online, we’ve found The Bat in its entirety for you guys to watch right here on Bloody Disgusting. If you enjoy it, we also added 6 minutes of clips from The Bat Whispers, along with the full-lenth version of The Man Who Laughs (1926) with Conrad Veidt whom inspired The Joker as well!
From Archive.org:
“A Silent film based upon the Broadway play by Mary Roberts Rinehart and Avery Hopwood, this Silent Gem was directed by Roland West in 1926, later being Remade as the Bat Whispers in 1930 (by Roland West) and again in 1958 in the Bat starring Vincent Price, also available at the Archive. Oh, and when I say silent, I mean silent – this was transferred from a 16mm print and was probably meant to be played with live musical accompaniment.
SYNOPSIS: The Bat, a masked criminal, terrorises a mansion filled with the guests of a mystery writer, a mansion in which a robber has hidden $20,000 of Stolen money. The House guests along with a detective search for Clues – them being the location of the money and the identity of the Bat.
N.B – As many Batfans will know, this film is where Bob Kane got the Inspiration for the comic book superhero “Batman” – if you look, you’ll notice the Bat-signal, here used to frighten the guests before the Bat attacks. ”
NOTE: There is no sound, so pick the band of your choice and kick-start some tunes before hitting “play.”
“The Man Who Laughs” is an American silent film directed by the German Expressionist filmmaker Paul Leni. The film is an adaptation of Victor Hugo’s novel of the same name and stars Conrad Veidt as Gwynplaine and Mary Philbin as the blind Dea. The film is known for the grim Carnival freak-like grin on the character Gwynplaine’s face which often leads the film to be credited to the horror film genre. Film critic Roger Ebert stated “The Man Who Laughs is a melodrama, at times even a swashbuckler, but so steeped in Expressionist gloom that it plays like a horror film.”
There’s been a lot of talk about how Christopher Nolan snuck in some horror elements into his epic adaptation of The Odyssey. However, even before the Cyclops began to eat Ithican soldiers and Circe subjected them to magical body-horror, cinemagoers were already witnessing supernatural terror through a certain trailer that was attached to most IMAX screenings of Nolan’s film.
It turns out that this trailer was for Rob Savage’s Other Mommy, an adaptation of Bird Box author Josh Malerman’s horror novel, Incidents Around the House. With the teaser now available online and revealing that the award-winning Jessica Chastain is playing the titular antagonist (as well as her ill-fated human counterpart), not to mention the fact that the picture is being helmed by the director of hits like Host and The Boogeyman, genre fans are understandably hyped for this upcoming thriller.
That’s why I’ve decided to take a closer look at the trailer and share four things we learned from this sneak peek at Other Mommy!
4. Rob Savage is Going Back to His Supernatural Horror Roots
I know I’m in the minority when I admit that Dashcam is my favorite Rob Savage movie, but even I understand why the filmmakers’ fans have been waiting a while for the director to get back to telling more grounded paranormal stories as he did with 2020’s Host.
Other Mommy obviously isn’t a found footage movie, but moments like the poltergeist activity on the kitchen table combined with the nature of the source material, which actually features a full-on exorcism, indicate that this adaptation is more than a simple creature feature. That’s why I think Savage is once again going to borrow from the same ghostly narratives that made his debut film such a viral hit.
3. Other Mommy is a More Convincing Doppelganger in the Adaptation
Part of the horror from Malerman’s original novel came from the fact that the entity taking on the form of Bela’s (Arabella Olivia Clark) mother wasn’t very good at passing itself off as human. This resulted in several uncanny moments where other characters began to notice that there was something visibly wrong with the family and decided to keep their distance.
Savage’s film appears to be taking a different route, with the trailer showing a version of the entity that can, at least physically, imitate Chastain’s character perfectly. This change is likely the result of the filmmakers wanting to incorporate more paranoid scenes where Bela and her father, played by Jay Duplass, are confused about which Mommy is safe to interact with.
2. The Family is Also Better Off This Time Around
Incidents Around the House featured some interesting subtext about how poverty can negatively affect American family dynamics. After all, the main characters were already feeling scared and isolated before the entity emerged from Bela’s closet and began scratching at their emotional wounds. The trailer for the movie, however, depicts the family as being relatively well off before these incidents begin to occur.
I can only imagine that this part of the story was changed so that the family’s fall from grace can be even more dramatic as the mom and dad’s pasts are revealed and Bela falls further into the clutches of the demonic antagonist.
1. Jessica Chastain is Embodying Evil Dead Rise’s Alyssa Sutherland
Mothers turning against their children is one of the most disturbing horror tropes out there (just check out classics like Hereditary and Carrie if you need proof), but it takes a remarkably skilled actress to pull off such a monstrous transformation. This is especially true when both a regular, loving mother and the Other share the screen in the same film.
That’s why I appreciate how Chastain appears to be channeling another evil redhead mother that recently traumatized audiences with her performance. It’s too early to be sure, but I’m fairly confident that Chastain’s character has at least some amount of Ellie in her cinematic DNA – Ellie being the iconic deadite brought to life by Australian actress Alyssa Sutherland in 2023’s Evil Dead Rise.
Let us know in the comments if you think we missed any important details from the trailer, and don’t forget to check out Other Mommy when it hits theaters on October 9!
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