Review: Batman: The Movie (1966, Dir: Leslie Martinson)

Wow, I'd seen this film years and years back when I was a youngster and I knew it was the ultra-campy oft forgotten black sheep of the Batman movie-verse, but damn I had NO idea just how crazy it would be until I watched it the other day.

The whole film is riddled (ahem) with the most peculiar oddities that would seem odd in any film, let alone a Batman film. Right from the get go you're hit with an eye brow raising pre-title sequence disclaimer informing you that the film is dedicated to "lovers of adventure, lovers of pure escapism, lovers of unadulterated entertainment, lovers of the ridiculous and the bizarre--- To funlovers everywhere". Wow, sounds to me like a porno. But, it does in fact hit the nail on the head. If you're going to watch this film, leave your brain at the door because bizarre is absolutely the word of the day.

The budget is actually not too far distanced from that of the average porn film judging from the costuming and set design. My favourite show of budgetary constraints though has to be the utterly beat Batcopter. Not only is it a horribly converted everyday helicopter, its a horribly converted SECOND-HAND everyday helicopter. I guess old Wayne Enterprises wasn't having too great a time in the 60's. Or maybe Bruce had just spent all his money on creating other seemingly purposeless bat-gadgets such as a whole line of batshit oceanic repellent bat sprays.

The script in general is just filled with surreal eccentricities such as the shark repellent bat spray. Batman and Robin's detective skills seem to skew wildly from being completely blind to Catwoman's terrible disguise, to easily picking out the Penguin's much better disguise a few scenes later seemingly just for the sake of carrying the film forward in the direction the writer wants it to go. Indeed though, their detective prowess is never in question when it comes to solving the Riddler's absolutely jaw dropping "riddles". To say the answers to them are playing it loose on the scripting front is the understatement of the millennium.

The film is utterly crammed with nonsensical deus-ex machina scenarios such as these which just seem desperate to try and outdo the last set piece. And that's what the film is, from the exploding shark scene to the super molecular dust separator nail biting finale, its just one set piece after another, it never lets up. But ultimately the story plays second fiddle to these bizarre disconnected events and it all means nothing. Its just a weird and often hilarious curiosity of a film and for that I would say it's worth watching, but only ever once.