Vincent Price kept busy during his career, and 1959 exemplified that work ethic. Price acted in five features that year, with August’s The Bat as the last of these to see theaters.

Over the prior winter, an estate known as The Oaks suffered from murders committed by a madman referred to as “The Bat”. Authorities failed to apprehend the killer, and the property’s staff worries that he will strike again.

Mystery author Cornelia van Gorder (Agnes Moorehead) rents The Oaks and confronts these rumors. When Oaks owner Mark Fleming (John Bryant) winds up dead, Cornelia realizes that another crime spree might surface.

Hey, I touted this as a Vincent Price movie – where does he appear? Price plays Dr. Malcolm Wells, the friend of Fleming.

During a camping trip, Fleming confesses to Wells that he embezzled a million dollars from the bank where he works and tried to get the doctor involved with a cover-up scheme. Wells decides to keep the money for himself and murders Fleming.

If all of this sounds more like a crime thriller than the kind of horror tale the title and Price’s presence imply, then congrats! You nailed it.

Not that I will fault The Bat as false advertising. However, I do dock points from my view of the film as slow and inconsistent.

The narrative doesn’t bring a terribly coherent tale. It flits among characters and situations without much clarity, so the film can’t decide where to reside.

This becomes surprising given the simple nature of the overall tale. It really shouldn’t be too tough to link the various threads, but the movie muddies the waters in a way that makes the end result disjointed and oddly dull.

Cheap production values don’t help. Shots of the Oaks couldn’t look more like models if they tried, and the “bats” we see appear shockingly phony even by the standards of 1959.

Bat also provides an awfully chatty thriller. Endless discussion scenes occur instead of actual action, so the story gets bogged down in overly “talkie” sequences.

At least Moorehead brings catty charm to her character. The movie doesn’t give her a lot to do, but Moorehead adds an edge to the film that it desperately needs.

Price makes less of an impact, mainly because Bat makes his role so dull. Frankly, it seems illogical that the stolid town doctor suddenly becomes so willing to commit various crimes, and the film lacks much meat for Price.

Still, the sight of Moorehead and Price together occasionally threatens to bring the film to life. Unfortunately, the end result seems mediocre and without much suspense or intrigue.

The Bat appears in an aspect ratio of 1.85:1 on this Blu-ray Disc. Despite some positives, substantial problems appeared here.

The biggest issue stemmed from the heavy use of grain reduction techniques. The image lost all forms of grain and that created an unnatural, smoothed-out presentation.

Inevitably, this impacted sharpness. Though the film brought adequate delineation, the grain removal left much of the movie without detail or real definition. Actors tended to appear plastic.

Other aspects of the image worked better, as I saw no jagged edges or shimmering, and edge haloes remained absent. Print flaws also failed to appear.

Blacks looked pretty deep and dense, while shadows showed appropriate delineation. If those behind the image didn’t go nuts with grain reduction, this would’ve been a fine presentation, but the unnatural vibe became an issue.

As for the DTS monaural soundtrack of Bat, it worked just fine given its age and ambitions. Speech consistently appeared intelligible enough. Despite some reedy tones, the lines came across well enough.

Music lacked much heft, but the score and songs were acceptably lively and full. Effects also showed decent clarity.

Those elements didn’t pack much of a punch, but they were fairly accurate and tight. No issues with source noise occurred, so I thought the audio was good enough for a “C+“.

As we move to extras, we begin with an audio commentary from film scholar Jason A. Ney, though he trots out a couple soundbites from actors Agnes Moorehead and Vincent Price too. Ney provides a running, screen-specific look at the source and various versions over the years, this adaptation and story/characters, cast and crew, production details and the movie’s release.

Ney offers a pretty solid chat here, as he offers a good mix of topics and brings us a nice view of these domains. Toss in his less than reverential – though not snotty – view of the film and this ends up as a high-quality commentary.

Additional audio-only material comes via nine radio episodes featuring Vincent Price. We find “The Strange Death of Charles Umberstein” (11/23/43, 29:13), “Fugue in C Minor” (6/1/44, 29:37), “Hunting Trip” (9/12/46, 29:51), “Present Tense” (1/31/50, 29:27), “Three Skeleton Key” (3/17/50, 29:26), “Blood Bath” (29:27), “Angel Street” (10/9/45, 24:48), “The Lodger” (5/19/46, 29:48), and “Speaking of Cinderella” (4/6/56, 29:20).

Expect a variety of subjects across these programs – and some noteworthy co-stars as well. Ida Lupino appears in “Fugue”, Lloyd Nolan works in “Trip”, and both Anne Baxter and Cedric Hardwicke perform in “Angel”.

Also anticipate a bunch of pretty effective productions. Some work better than others, of course, and “Hunting Trip” and “Blood Bath” probably become the best of the bunch. Nonetheless, these radio programs add a lot to this set.

The Case for Crane Wilbur runs 22 minutes, 24 seconds and involves a discussion of the career of writer/actor/director Wilbur. We don’t get a slew of real insights, but this feels like a decent overview.

The release finishes with a booklet that includes photos and an essay from Ney. It concludes matters on a positive note.

Do not expect much from The Bat, as it seems less whodunnit? and more who cares? Despite some talent, it becomes slow and dull. The Blu-ray offers acceptable audio and an appealing set of bonus materials but too much grain reduction damages the image. This turns into a surprisingly boring thriller.