BATMAN: THE MOVIE
Released 30 July 1966
Directed by Leslie H. Martinson
Starring: Adam West, Burt Ward, Lee Meriwether, Burgess Meredith, Cesar Romero, Frank Gorshin, Neil Hamilton, Alan Napier, Stafford Repp, Madge Blake, Reginald Denny
Rated PG for unspecified reasons (mild action violence and smoking).
105 minutes
BATMAN: Pretty fishy what happened to me on that ladder...
COMMISSIONER GORDON: You mean where there's fish there could be a Penguin?
ROBIN: But wait! It happened at sea...'sea'. 'C' for Catwoman!
BATMAN: Yet, an exploding shark was "pulling my leg"...
COMMISSIONER GORDON: The Joker!
CHIEF O'HARA: All adds up to a sinister riddle...riddle-er. Riddler!
BATMAN: The four of them, their forces combined...
ROBIN: Holy nightmare!
Spun off from the iconic 1960s
Batman TV series, BATMAN: THE
MOVIE is largely a parody of the comics, full of goofy villainous antics
like penguin-shaped submarines and sharks stuffed with TNT, and
humorously specific Batman tech such as "Shark Repellant Bat-Spray". In
one moment, Batman and Robin are trapped as the Penguin's submarine
fires missiles at them and just as their doom seems imminent, the scene
cuts to them in the safety of the Bat-Boat, awkwardly commenting on the
heroism of the porpoise that threw itself in from the missile to save
them, supposedly only moments before. Then again, while the movie
obviously takes the silliness to a much further degree, there is a
faithfulness to its adaptation within the "Silver Age of Comic Books"
happening at the time, when the content regulatory body of the Comic
Code Authority had made the comics more child-friendly, and ultimately a
lot lighter in tone. In the world of film in 1966, the New Hollywood
movement was about to explode a year later while a new generation of
filmmakers and European influences was already beginning to emerge in
movies like BLOWUP and WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF?, and in response
to cultural shifts within film and the country at large, some movies,
especially family movies, depicted an zanier, innocent version of these
changes. BATMAN: THE MOVIE is a thoroughly campy product of the
fictional "groovy '60s", riffing on Cold War themes with lots of bright
colors and absurdist humor.
Clad in gray tights and an awkward,
purplish cowl and cape, Adam West stars as the not-so-Dark Knight, who,
with his youngish ward Robin (Burt Ward), is an officially deputized
crimefighter in Gotham City, completely absent of any suggestion of
moral ambiguity. The villains are similarly simplistic and more
mischievous than sinister, as Batman's greatest nemeses, the Penguin
(Burgess Meredith), the Joker (Cesar Romero), the Riddler (Frank
Gorshin) and Catwoman (Lee Meriwether, replacing Julie Newmar from the
series) have combined their forces into the United Underworld, a
criminal organization bent on world domination. They have obtained a
dehydrator that can remove all the moisture from a person, leaving
nothing but colorful dust, and they intend to use it to kidnap and hold
for ransom the members of the United World Organization's Security
Council, leaving international relations in disarray (well, more so than
they had been before).
West reminds me of Bruce Campbell, a guy
just to the wrong side of being handsome, which makes for a good campy
hero, and his less than super physique in an entirely non-imposing
costume adds to the fun, but it's safe to say that this would all be a
tough sell to today's Batman fans, even the kiddies. To be perfectly
frank, Batman is a character invented to entertain children, and he was
so long before Frank Miller and Alan Moore reinvented him in the '80s,
regardless of the darker version's merits. Plus, it's tough to deny the
homoerotic undertones between Batman and Robin in the comics, so it's
kind of fitting that a Batman movie would be a super campy kids movie.
The
villains aren't above killing people, but they only feel utterly benign
regardless. My favorite is Cesar Romero's Joker, complete with a
painted-over mustache, who just seems to overly excited at everything,
but not in a way that seems truly insane as much as it seems childishly
innocent. Burgess Meredith's Penguin is positioned as the leader of the
gang (after all, it's his submarine they're all hanging out in for most
of the time), but despite the intriguing, totally faithful visual
rendering of the comics character (as opposed to the other major movie
depiction of the character), he's the least interesting of them. Since,
I've never seen the original TV series, in which she was played by
Julie Newmar for the first two seasons and Eartha Kitt for the third, I
don't know how she compares, but as Catwoman, Lee Meriwether is an
amusing "'60s babe", playing it straight more often than the rest, but
hamming it up good whenever she adopts the Soviet identity of Kitayna
Ireyna Tatanya Kerenska Alisoff (or Miss "Kitka", for short) or is about
to throw the cat she usually carries around as a weapon.
It's frothy goofy fun, not unlike the Burton movies in terms of substance, but of a much more colorful brand.
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