Conference bookie::movies

147.0. "The Sea Bat" by DSSDEV::RUST () Tue Apr 20 1993 14:30

    I caught this little oddity of a picture on tape (from TNT's
    4-in-the-morning movie). Released in 1930, it's something of a
    "tropical action adventure romance" film, but I'd never heard of it
    before - nor of anyone associated with it (save for a certain Boris
    Karloff, whose name appeared well down in the list of credits as 'The
    Corsican').
    
    It started off quite promisingly, with some text-and-narration re the
    awesome and horrifying "sea bat," a giant ray so powerful that - as
    quoted from a National Geographic article - it was "known to lift a
    whole ship!". [The facts of the case are somewhat different, although
    'tis true that a very large ray could inflict severe bodily harm on a
    human being through sheer bulk. Much more dangerous are the small-but-
    poisonous stingrays, but I suspect the movie-makers wanted to go for
    spectacle here.]
    
    The audience is also treated to a promise of exotic voo-doo rituals,
    and adventurous sponge diving; what more could one want?
    
    The opening scene shows a beautiful youth gazing lazily out to sea, as
    a rag-tag group of sailors, of many races and nationalities, fits the
    ship out for the day's work. The camera wanders around for a while,
    conveying a very nice impression of tropical heat and too-hot-to-care 
    squalor. The sponge divers are a surly, quarrelsome lot, abusing
    the natives and fighting with each other. This "tropical paradise"
    appears to be a hell-hole...
    
    Ah, but what's this? An exotically-beautiful young woman waltzes by,
    aware that the snarling sea-dogs are watching her, pleased at the
    attention while contemptuous of the men themselves. One accosts her,
    demanding to see the bauble she's carrying - a carved wooden talisman
    of some kind that she angrily claims she's taking to give to her
    brother. "Ah, your brother," snarls the man, emphasizing the word as if
    he doesn't quite believe it. "Why waste so much attention on him, when
    I..." She scratches him, retrieves the amulet, and waltzes away. 
    
    At the docks she greets the handsome youth affectionately, urging the
    talisman on him, "to protect you from the sea bat," but he points to
    the enameled cross bound to his wrist and says that's good enough. <ah,
    foreboding!> 
    
    The boat sets out to sea, and soon we get to see the exciting world of
    commercial sponge-diving. Apparently, the native divers get to dive the
    (relative) shallows, using no gear and staying down only as long as
    they can hold their breaths, while the white divers use diving suits
    with helmets, so as to go much deeper. In any case, the handsome youth
    is one of the suited divers, and makes his way to the ocean floor to
    stalk the wily sponges.
    
    But wait! What is that huge shadow gliding through the water? Could it
    be...??? It is! The gigantic image of a huge ray, superimposed on the
    sponge beds!!! [Actually, the effects are relatively decent for 1930,
    but the chosen "sea bat" simply isn't all that scary-looking.] The
    hideous monster drifts towards our hero, and - oh, the horror - _lands_
    on him.
    
    Cut to the surface, where everyone notices that Something Has Gone
    Wrong. [For one thing, the sea bat surfaces a few seconds later, played
    by what appears to be a very large model, a la "Jaws". It even spouts
    water like a whale (rays aren't mammals - but the effect is nice).]
    After some crew members in a smaller boat hurl a harpoon at the thing
    (which turns and hauls them away just like Moby Dick, until the rope
    breaks), the people on the main ship pull the poor broken body of the
    young diver to the surface, another victim of the dreaded sea bat.
    [Nice touch, possibly authentic - the ship raises a black flag with an
    image of a shark on it, to alert the folks on shore that there's been a
    fatality.]
    
    The young girl is beside herself with grief, ripping the (clearly
    useless) cross from her dead brother's arm and cursing it and
    everything it symbolizes. So we are not too surprised when the next
    scene shows a minister stepping off the mail launch... 
    
    Things pick up speed from here. The minister is Not What He Seems. The
    girl is going wild in her grief, taunting the divers into dropping
    their work and hunting the sea bat, with herself as the reward for
    whoever kills it; in the mean time, she consoles herself by sneaking
    into the woods at night to join the natives in their voodoo rites.
    The minister follows her - is he trying to reform her, or to take
    advantage of her? And what of the sea bat???
    
    Alas, despite a promising beginning and a flurry of interesting plot
    elements in the middle, the movie goes rather flat. The girl,
    predictably, gives over her grief to win the affection of the first man
    she meets who yells at her rather than admiring her; the "minister",
    after a token encounter with the spouting, breaching sea bat [it looks
    _really_ silly when it's supposed to be leaping out of the water],
    achieves personal salvation in a singularly unbelievable manner; and
    the movie wraps up far too tidily. But I give it points for effort, and
    for the unmitigated gall of trying to push something called a "sea bat"
    as a terrifying monster of the deep.
    
    -b

    What are you doing up at 4 in the morning, young lady?!?!?!?!?
    
    NAZZ

    Sleeping, whilst my state-of-the-art robotic TV-watcher watches for me,
    of course. ;-)
    
    -b

    What a nice write-up!  Clearly on the way to replacing Gene Siskel.
    (Not Roger Ebert, we still wanna say "the fat guy" and "the other one").
    
      John