Super Movies! The first one with Batman

 

Title: Batman

What Year?: 1966

Classification: Prototype

Rating: What The Hell??? (2/4)

 

Back when I started movie reviews, something I acknowledged up front is that my pop culture experience as an Eighties kid had little to do with the 1980s. I didn’t have a TV until the end of the decade, I didn’t go to the movies often, and what I did get exposure to tended to be older media the adults weren’t paying attention to. The end result was that my bedrock for TV in particular became the 1960s: The Twilight Zone, Get Smart, and for that matter the original Star Trek. Despite this footprint, I have only made a few forays into the period as a reviewer, and then usually into things I knew little or nothing about at the time. With this review, I am coming back to the period, for what was possibly my most meaningful ‘60s experience after Trek, and it’s all the more fitting that I’m doing it for my longest-running and least prolific feature. I present Batman, the original, and it is… odd.

Our story begins with a quick introduction to our heroes, Batman and Robin, and incarnations of four somewhat randomized villains, the Joker, the Penguin, Cat Woman and the Riddler. Our villains have teemed up, with the Penguin as the leader if only because he commands a submarine that serves as their hideout. They proceed with a series of loosely connected schemes, including a trap or two for Batman and the Boy Wonder. But the plot gets in gear as Cat Woman romances Bruce Wayne under the guise of a Russian reporter. When the villains use the romance to blackmail the billionaire, our hero must choose between his dual identities. And in case this is sounding philosophical, there’s also a rubber shark, a gaggle of dehydrated UN representatives, and a marching band that doesn’t notice a guy with a bomb!

Batman was a 1966 superhero film by director Leslie H. Martinson, distributed by 20^th Century Fox. The film became the first feature-length DC superhero movie, and the first live-action Batman adaptation since 1940s serials. While it was remembered as a cinematic adaptation of the contemporary TV series, the film was developed and filmed during the first season of the show, before the success of either was certain. The film starred Adam West and Burt Ward in their roles as Batman and Robin, with Burgess Meredith (see... The Manitou?) as the Penguin. Cesar Romero and Frank Gorshin also reprised their TV roles as the Joker and the Riddler, while Lee Meriwether appeared as Cat Woman in place of Julie Newmar. The film was judged a moderate box office success, earning $3.9 million against a budget of up to $1.5M. The series continued until 1968, after which it continued to air in syndication. The movie was first released on home video in 1985 and remains available in digital formats. Adam West died in 2016, shortly before the release of his final film, the direct-to-video animated film Batman Vs. Two Face.

For my experiences, I can remember growing up aware of Batman and Superman, mainly through story books and other media at witsome remove from the source material. Of course, that all changed with the release of the Tim Burton movie, which seemed to coincide with a local revival of the ‘60s show. I can recall seeing it shortly after it would have come out, but it was the show that had the greatest impact, up to the 1990s animated series. What stands out in hindsight is that the show offered the most balanced portrayal of the mythos. There was a good rotation in the major villains, with Burgess Meredith being the most impressive. Then there were very good portrayals of the (then) relatively obscure villains, including what must have been Otto Preminger’s incarnation of Mr. Freeze. Unfortunately, I could see even as a kid that there were things that badly dated the series, particularly a wildly sexist plot I might have doubted existed if I wasn't me. (See here and here, or better yet, don't.) As I matured, the show quickly became a good memory better left in the past. I was even less interested in the movie, which even series fans are critical of. The viewing that led to this review finally came because a friend wanted to see it. Once I saw it, I knew I had to cover it, simply because I couldn’t see coming back to it anytime soon.

What really stands out watching the movie is that it is quite different from the show, though it’s subtle enough to make things hard to pin down. The most obvious departure is that there’s no close counterpart to the usual death trap/ execution machine sequences that always set up the cliffhangers. It could also seem disorienting to have the Joker treated as a supporting character, which is really an indicator of how much the mythos has evolved. The shift further reflects the levels of talent involved. Merriwether is superb as Cat Woman, while Meredith is simply the best actor the show ever had, at least after George Sanders’ one-time appearance as Freeze. There’s also a bit more “edge”, not just innuendo but genuinely dark moments, plus a political note; this comes out most blatantly with the useless UN delegates, who keep arguing even as the Joker picks them off one by one. An extra surreal bit is a shark attack a full decade before Jaws, all the more jarring for the comically bad effects which feel like they should be in a parody.

The most interesting aspects of the movie are the surprising moments of emotional depth. This is most obvious in the romance of Wayne and Cat Woman, which pushes the much-ridiculed West to surprising heights. Of course, the credibility gets stretched by the hero’s failure to recognize her identity, though Cat Woman is equally at fault unless she is holding out on her cohorts. What’s even more intriguing are Batman’s lectures to Robin, which get as far as emphasizing the value of human life after several of the Penguin’s goons possibly die in a science experiment gone amok. It’s an early preview of the character’s increasingly strict “no kill” policy. It also establishes a clearly and convincingly paternal relationship with Robin, notwithstanding the jokes that were brewing even then. There’s a point, however, where this becomes yet another case of “too much and not enough”. You can have Batman colorful and campy or dark and moody, but there was never going to be much room for middle ground. One extra bit of annoyance is that the movie all but inverts the vigilante angle, at one point explicitly announcing that Batman is a deputized agent for the police. All this simply dissipates any antiauthoritarian subtexts carried over from the source material, at least until the end, which almost anticipates Superman IV.

That leaves the “one scene”, and this time it’s one that I was genuinely unprepared for. Batman discovers a bomb in a room above a tavern on a wharf, and promptly goes into overdrive. It is truly a comic-book bomb, complete with a sizzling fuse. The amusing part is that he does everything reasonable within moments, warning the patrons to flee the establishment. It’s more than enough to prevent civilian casualties, unless that thing’s a Davy Crockett nuke. (And it’s clearly not his fault two idiots keep eating…) Rather than leave well enough alone and run for it, however, he grabs the bomb and rushes out onto the improbably crowded pier. A completely surreal sequence follows as he encounters one heartrending innocent after another, like a baby carriage, a marching band that seems to be everywhere at once, nuns, young lovers in a rowboat, and even a flotilla of ducks. He finally says, “Some days, you just can’t get rid of a bomb!” And then… then… the damn thing goes off.

In closing, this is one time I don’t feel like I need to justify my rating. This is a movie that makes no excuses for itself, and to that extent, it lives up to the series. Yes, it’s weird. Yes, it’s dated. Yes, it hovers between campy and outright bad. But the superhero genre and the franchise had to start somewhere, and this certainly isn’t the worst outing for Batman or DC in general. It also shows that what is “dark” in the franchise and genre was always there, and you don’t have to ramp up gritty for its own sake to 100 on a scale of 10 to do it justice. It was a good start, which should be good enough to remember, if not always to dig up again. And with that, I’m once more calling it a day.

Image credit The Bat Channel.