Batman is a faithful flicks adaptation of the hugely successful vigorous-action TV series, which after most of 1966 had been a genuine appear culture rarity comparable to the James Bond fashion and Beatlemania, and almost unequalled as regards a TV pretentiousness before or since. The Batman movie, filmed in the late Descend from of ‘66 and released that August, between the end of the beginning season and premiere of the second, is cheaply made and overlong but also colorful and very funny at times. It’s also evocative of the TV series in proper about every way - a good thing for fans since the much-desired TV show has long been unavailable on home video scheduled to seemingly unresolvable rights issues.
Fox’s Blu-ray accurately captures the look of the film’s theatrical appearance: lots of bright, primary colors and comic book panel-style oblique angles, but the high-def image also accentuates its low budget: it looks very much like a TV show inexpensively brought to the big screen. The disc is packed with extras, many carried over from the August 2001 Special Edition DVD, but there’s some new high-def material as well as a DTS HD 5.1 Master Lossless Audio mix. All told, it’s worth the upgrade.
The story is relatively simple, far too simple to justify its 105-minute running time: Commodore Schmidlapp (Reginald Denny) is kidnapped - along with his fantastic new invention, a “Total Dehydrator” - by the United Underworld, an uneasy alliance of Gotham City’s most notorious villains: The Joker (Cesar Romero), The Penguin (Burgess Meredith), The Riddler (Frank Gorshin), and Catwoman (Lee Meriwether, replacing an unavailable Julie Newmar from the TV series).
As Bruce Wayne/Batman (Adam West) and his ward Dick Grayson/Robin (Bruce Ward) inch toward finding the villains’ lair and uncovering their dastardly plot, Bruce and his alter-ego fall for a Russian journalist from the Moscow Bugle (love that name!), Miss Kitka, actually Catwoman in disguise. Meanwhile, the villains come up with a plan to lure Batman into a trap, using a kidnapped millionaire as bait - Bruce Wayne! Oh bitter irony.
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Like the TV show, the movie reaches two very different audiences at once: kids were attracted to the comic book elements while adults appreciated its deliberately campy humor. This sort of thing is rarely attempted in television (Captain Nice, When Things Were Rotten, etc.) and Batman may be the only series to have successfully pulled it off.
Many people were responsible for Batman’s success, but the biggest share must go to star Adam West, without whom the show probably wouldn’t have worked. Other actors could have played Robin, and some of the villains were played by different actors over the show’s three seasons. But West was the perfect match for this Batman: there is an earnestness in his consistently hilarious performance that only Neil Hamilton’s Commissioner Gordon comes close to matching. (Hamilton was an excellent “straight man” on this series and a fine actor late in life; by 1966, he had been making films for nearly half a century. See his appearance in the The Outer Limits episode “The Invisibles” as an example of his diversity.)
Handicapped by a cowl that severely restricted his facial expressions, West relied on a funny clipped speech, constantly adjusting its speed. Like Fred Astaire’s dancing, West makes something extremely complex seem easy and natural, but that precise type of delivery had to have required hours upon hours of thought and preparation: it’s a masterwork of comic timing.
In the movie, one also has a new appreciation for his talent as a physical comedian. The scene everyone remembers succeeds largely due to West’s funny, frantic movements: Batman darts around a pier with a lit bomb the size of a basketball, vainly trying to dispose of the thing before it explodes. In every direction is an obstacle, however: a group of nuns, lovers in a rowboat, a Salvation Army brass band, a family of ducks. Again, though hindered by a head-to-toe costume that would seem to limit most expression, West somehow conveys Batman’s sense of urgency, panic, and controlled frustration. For that gem of a scene alone, Batman is worth watching. (Interestingly, West doesn’t simply play Bruce Wayne as Batman unmasked, but in a much less stylized manner. I wonder if this was deliberate, or if wearing the costume somehow inspired him.)
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The rest of the film is hit-and-miss. Some ideas are quite funny: when the Batcopter is struck by one of The Riddler’s Polaris missiles, sending it crashing to earth, Batman and Robin are saved by an enormous pile of foam rubber - an outdoor display at the Foam Rubber Wholesalers Convention. (”I’d say the odds against it would make even the most reckless gambler cringe,” Batman says.) However, the picture makes the mistake of shooting its wad in the first half-hour. During that time everything there is to see is shown: the Bat Cave, the Batmobile, the four villains and their submarine, as well as several new gadgets, the aforementioned Batcopter and Batboat. After that the film becomes rather serial-like in its extreme repetitiveness. Almost every scene drags on way too long; had it been fine-tuned to 70-75 minutes instead of 105, it might have become a classic ’60s comedy instead of the kind of footnote it’s become.
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The picture probably erred in teaming its four most popular (rogues gallery of) villains, and this might even have contributed to the TV show’s decline soon thereafter. It smells of desperation, the same kind of thing that prompted Frankenstein to meet the Wolfman and Dracula and so on back in the 1940s. A better script might have concentrated on one villain with others making cameo appearances. Romero and Meredith are a delight as The Joker and The Penguin (and, for my money, far more enjoyable than Jack Nicholson and Danny DeVito were later on), and Meriwether is pretty sexy as Catwomen, though no one ever fit that cat-suit quite as curvaceously as Julie Newmar. The real delight though is watching Frank Gorshin’s totally insane performance as the wild-eyed, manic Riddler, like Kirk Douglas (who Gorshin often impersonated) after downing a cocktail of crack and amphetamines.
The picture reportedly cost $1,377,000 million to make. That’s cheap by 1966 standards but I suspect the film may have cost even less, and that a lot of the budget went to studio overhead.* 20th Century-Fox was in dire shape at the time and a Batman movie was a low-cost, sure-fire way to generate some revenue. The cast was inexpensive, the major sets were already standing, the costumes already fitted, etc., and even a lot of the “new” stuff looks borrowed from other Fox properties. The Penguin’s submarine, for instance, looks pilfered from spare parts off the Voyage to the Bottom of Sea set, another Fox series.
Director Leslie H. Martinson was one of these traffic cop directors along the lines of Gordon Douglas or Norman Taurog. He doesn’t bring much in the way of a personal style to the film but that’s okay; that the film is no better or worse than the TV show is neither his fault nor is it a bad thing. About the only thing completely new to the film are its colorful opening titles, which had 1966 youngsters knocking their knees with excitement. Designed by Richard Kuhn, they may have been influenced by Rialto Film’s Edgar Wallace movies coming out of West Germany at the same time. It may be coincidental, but they do look quite alike.