The Dynamic Duo rev up the Batboat in the Caped Crusader’s first and looniest film.
Every Wednesday from now untilThe Batmanhits theaters, we’re watching Batman’s theatrical films in chronological order.
This week: the 1966 feature from the classic TV show’s cast and crew.
Adam West as Batman in ‘Batman: The Movie’.20th Century Studios
Available to rent on VOD, but track down the glorious Blu-ray.
See you next Waynesday, when we dance with the devil in the pale moonlight.
Lookwelldidn’t get a pick up, but the absurdist-referential clique loved West and kept him employed.
‘Batman: The Movie’.20th Century Studios
Steady cartoon work and sitcom cameos rebuilt his nostalgic legacy.
“His serious delusions made him funny in a goofy way,” is how West describes his Batman.
He could be talking about Lookwell, or the version of himself he played for decades.
But 1966’sBatmanmovie still arrives revitalized in this century.
Colors pop, performers shriek.
“THIS YACHT!”
starts the narrator (William Dozier).
“Is bringing a REVOLUTIONARY SCIENTIFIC INVENTION to GOTHAM CITY!”
a little rascal squeak.
Whereas Bruce looks like a sitcom husband who left his wife for an ascot.
West was twice-divorced and living hot in Malibu.
His hair is sunkissed; the memoir makes it clear his ’60s were well swung.
They park at Wayne Manor, played by a Pasadena insta-castle.
After a costume change, they drive the Batmobile to their private helipad.
High above sunny Gotham City, they greet an adoring public.
A swarm of bikini-clad ladies wave at them as they pass overhead.
It wasn’t the first time the Caped Crusader ever played in theaters.
But it would be the first proper feature, and a bigger screen required a bigger idea.
So four guest villains unite into one superbad team, the United Underworld.
Penguin (Burgess Meredith) waddles.
The Riddler (Frank Gorshin) has his crazy laughter.
Joker (Cesar Romero) has, errr, different crazy laughter.
I can take them or leave them, but put Lee Meriwether on Supervillain Mount Rushmore.
As “Miss Kitka,” she seduces capitalist pig Bruce Wayne.
Their date night turns into a paranoid masquerade of shifting identities.
The Underworld wants to flush out Batman by kidnapping Bruce, because they don’t know heisBatman.
Bruce wants to protect Miss Kitka from villains like Catwoman, who she herself is.
Robin and Alfred (Alan Napier) secretly watch the pair via closed circuit Bat-camera.
The other baddies receive secret updates via Cat-morse code.
It’s a dizzy surveillance circus, and a dreamy interlude.
Bruce and Kitka dance in a lounge, serenaded by a magenta-lit vocalist singing “Plaisir D’Amour.”
They cozy up in a horse-drawn carriage, and the Bat-signal fills the sky.
Bruce assures her that Batman and Robin must be racing to police headquarters.
“How strange,” he responds.
“I close… MY eyes.. and I dream of something… quite… ASTONISHINGLY different.”
His cheek rubs her temple.
“Da,da,” she says, “Keep your eyes closed.
Continue with this dream.”
“The dream continues,” Bruce whispers.
“It approaches a climax!”
“Nyet,” she purrs.
“Not so fast.
Be more slow.”
Meriwether was 11 years past a Miss America crown.
West had only just been that guy fromthat Nestle Quik commercial.
But their scenes sizzle like nothing else in Bat cinema.
Watch out, nuns!
Oh no, a baby!
Now surely, Batman, you won’t blow up those poor birds?
Will Batman ever stop running?
That business model collapsed.
Witness the infinity buffet.
Barring further COVID delays, we are two months fromRobert PattinsonheadliningThe Batman.
He’s taking over the cowl fromBen Affleck except not, because Affleck will be back inThe Flash.
So will Michael Keaton thanks, multiverse!
whowill also be inBatgirl.
Every era can coexist, andmust, really.
The primary vehicle for filmed blockbuster entertainment is no longer the individual film but the Holy Archive.
I’m forgetting something.
This is the normal showbiz bet for the 2020s: No one will ever get tired of anything!
Is that right, though?
Batfleck, known for their amiable disposition, may yet wage a culture war against Pattzman.
We live in a society where a Joker movie without Batman significantly outgrossed a Batman movie with Superman.
is way more contemporary than the angry man with a butler.
How did we get here, and where are we going?
Is Batman evolving past Batman?
In fairness, Batman has been around long enough to disprove any expert opinion.
Best to avoid definitive statements.
Something in the canon always disproves something else in the canon, just like the Bible or the Constitution.
The films are a relatively small part of the legacy, in terms of pure intake hours.
Yet their importance is obvious.
Their stylistic decisions trickled down to other blockbusters, throughout the superhero genre, and into daily life.
In that vast history, West’sBatmanmakes a strange place to start.
It’s a hoot, produced in a short burst.
The seams show: Stock footage, obvious stuntmen.
Cheapness isn’t always a virtue, and Martinson’s framing is dangerously multicam.
Still, nobody mentions murdered parents.
The plot hinges on an “instant whiskey maker” which dehydrates humans into dust.
A shark attacks, and explodes.
(Ward gets all the best lines.
Robin misses no beat: “A sparrow with a machine gun!")
Will this character ever feel so weightless again?
Is breeziness a lost virtue?
These were old traditions exploded, sexy and violent and out there.
A decade later,Star Warswent the other direction, reimagining the old serials with religious awe.
We have so many cathedrals lately, and I miss the funhouse.
