Use of Tropes: La Sombra del Murcielago

An outing for Blue Demon, the title of this Federico Curiel 1968 outing translates to The Shadow of the Bat and, to be clear from the outset, this is not a vampire movie. It is, however, a movie that does touch on some tropes from the vampire genre – especially from the luchador movies with vampires in them. Were these tropes accidentally used, rather than deliberately, I don’t know but Curiel was no stranger to vampire movies.

This could have been called Phantom (of the Opera), also, and we begin with the Bat (Fernando Osés, Empire of Dracula & Santo Vs Baron Brakola) playing his organ and his bat head does look like a mask because it is. The background we eventually get was that the Bat was a famous wrestler who cut his face badly when he went into the crowd in a match – we eventually see his very badly scarred face. This sent him mad and he spent some time in an asylum.

the Bat

He is obviously out of the asylum and holed up in what he describes as a mansion, that looks like caves and is identified later, by Blue Demon, as a castle. So, living in the castle is a trope but so is the bat mask. Whilst it is a mask it is reminiscent of the portrayal of the vampire in el Charro de las Calaveras, which was a full bat head affair (though this one works better). He has had his henchman, Gerardo (Gerardo Zepeda, Santo Contra la Hija de Frankenstein, Santo and Blue Demon Vs the Monsters & the Panther Women), go out and kidnap wrestlers to fight against. At the start of the film Gerardo has killed the latest one and the Bat strongly berates him for it.

Gerardo Zepeda as Gerardo

The Bat claims to not be a killer and it is likely he thinks those he fights have all been released as per his orders but the police are investigating a string of murders and Geraldo is eventually revealed to be a serial killer (though not named as such) who targets big men as he watched his father murdered by a big man as a child. When the bat wrestles he can hear the crowd cheering for him, in his madness, and his mood vacillates violently, so whilst he claims not to be a killer he does threaten murder and has henchmen put to death when they fail. This capital punishment is through either the Well of Rats or the Room of Bats… the latter we never see and the former is a shallow oubliette with half a dozen rats in it – but it does kind of tie in an affinity with both creatures.

Marta Romero as Marta

He sees on TV a singer named Marta (Marta Romero, Las Vampiras) and immediately falls for her (she has a fella but never mind that). He sends henchmen after her – who are beaten off by her fella and then killed for their failure – and then Garardo who is defeated when a passing Blue Demon intervenes. The majority of the film is then he looking to have her kidnapped and Blue Demon trying to figure who might be after her and then rescuing her when she is captured. His reason for wanting her is suggested, at the beginning, because “She will revitalize me.” This sounds ever-so vampiric but later he suggests that she, and her singing, will soothe his anger and eventually we discover that she isn’t the first, he just wants love and has a dungeon of women who rejected him. These are analogous to vampire “brides” and he describes them as ghosts, which Marta will become is she does not love him.

Blue Demon

Marta calls him heartless – which reminded me of Dracula being told “You yourself never loved. You never love!” and like Dracula he can, but only on his own twisted terms. The only other thing to mention is his exclamation, at one point, that “Everyone took me for dead, but I am immortal”. It should be noted that we don’t see him die – he is dropped into the Well of Rats and then the castle is engulfed in flames (Blue Demon has let several of the “brides” out but some must still be trapped as he tries, to no avail, to go into the burning building to rescue the others). Of course, the Bat likely perished – indeed, despite a visit by Blue Demon to what for all the world was essentially a witch, for information and the use of a feminine version of mandrake (which is meant to bend a woman’s will to love, but doesn’t work), there is nothing supernatural here, just insanity and obsession.

The imdb page is here.