Dr. Carruthers plots his revenge on his employers who are making a profit off of his invention. He electrically enlarges bats and sends them out to kill his employers’ family by instilling in the bats a hatred for a particular perfume he has discovered, which he gets his victims to apply before going outdoors. Johnny Layton, a reporter, eventually figures out Carruthers is the killer. He puts the perfume on himself and Carruthers in the hopes he will reveal himself, but the bats swoop on in before he get a confession.
This campy, entertaining cheapie from PRC Pictures features Bela Lugosi as a chemist who plots an elaborate revenge scheme on his business partners, whom he feels have cheated him out of his share. To this end he develops a mutant breed of vicious, oversized bats and trains several of this breed to home in on a special chemical which he then blends with shaving lotion. Presenting gifts of the lotion to his partners as a peace offering (and browbeating them into splashing it on themselves while in his presence), he subsequently unleashes his monstrous pets to tear them to pieces. Believe it or not, this was one of PRC’s more successful horror programmers, spawning a the sequel Devil Bat’s Daughter.
Bernd Pulch 