8/22/07: Batman (1966)You know how you can tell nobody watches
The Simpsons anymore? Everyone’s impressed by
The Simpsons Movie, which commits the worst sins imaginable for a theatrical release based on a still-running TV show. It plays like three recent TV episodes strung together to fill the bare necessity of an 87-minute running time. This makes
The Simpsons Movie more predictable than any major-studio product that the series might mock.
There was a time, however, when the folks at 20th Century Fox got the idea done right. Americans got to see the big-screen
Batman in the summer of '66, while the TV show was still hot off its January debut. That was possible because the script had been rattling around the Fox studios back when they were thinking about making a film version first.
A bigger budget allowed for a Batcopter and Batcycle, but
Batman is really an example of how a small-screen hit can cheaply translate to the big screen. It could play in theaters today and still have better villains than
Spider-Man 3, better pirates than
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, and a better prosthetic nose than
Oceans’s 13.
And while the politics of
The Simpsons Movie will be painfully dated in five years,
Batman remains a timeless classic that reflects America’s finest values and worst flaws. It takes place in a world weirder than anything Tim Burton ever imagined. It’s a place where traditional chivalry co-exists with mad abandon. It’s a place called 1966.
The movie begins with Batman and Robin surviving an exploding shark attack. Afterwards, there’s a press conference where we meet our first supervillains—the press.
“You’re lucky the Dynamic Duo will talk to you a’tall,” says Chief O’Hara, and he speaks for many forces of good. Batman confidently tells lies to a few reporters, and then focuses on an attractive lady in a leopard skin outfit.
“My name is Comrade Kitanya Irenya Tatanya Karenska Alisoff,” she announces. “I work for the
Moscow Bugle.” She proceeds to ask Batman to remove his mask, and compares him to “the masked vigilantes in the Westerns.” An outraged Commissioner Gordon explains that Batman and Robin are fully deputized agents of the law, while a smitten Batman forgives that request about the mask as just a cultural misunderstanding.
Robin also makes an important point when Comrade Alisoff asks about the crime fighters’ taste in outfits: “Don't be put off by them, ma’am. Underneath this garb, we’re perfectly ordinary Americans.”
We’ll be reminded of that later in the film. For now, it’s more important that Comrade Alisoff takes a cab down to the docks and reveals her true identity as Catwoman. Batman might have seen through the Russkie impersonation if it had been Julie Newmar, but she was busy filming
MacKenna’s Gold. Instead, we get Lee Meriwether doing a really fine job—even at 5’8”.
Catwoman is meeting with The Joker, The Penguin, and The Riddler just as Batman is figuring out that the four escaped convicts have gotten together as the United Underworld. They’ve got their hands on a fantastic new invention that dehydrates humans into little piles of powder that can later be reanimated. They’re plotting to use this device to kidnap the nine members of the National Security Council of the United World Headquarters—as conveniently brought up when Catwoman chides her squabbling cohorts: “United Underworld? Ha! We're about as united as the members of the United World Headquarters on Gotham East River.”
This is a good time to note that big-screen value. The only big surprise that
The Simpsons Movie offers is Tom Hanks. Fans of the
Batman series got a multiplex multiple of the show’s best villains. As noted, Meriwether does a surprisingly sexy job filling Newmar’s thigh-high boots. Burgess Meredith was one of the great hams of all time, and his turn as The Penguin is brilliantly balanced by Frank Gorshin, who winds The Riddler tighter than ever.
Meanwhile, Cesar Romero’s Joker becomes a fatherly presence that’s almost subtle. He even gets to point out that The Riddler spends way too much time taunting Batman with skywriting that provides clues to the caper.
We’ll keep taking Adam West and Burt Ward for granted as Batman and Robin, but only because they make hilarious sincerity look so easy.
The villains have decided to start their plans by killing off Batman. That explains the exploding shark attack that started the film in James Bond fashion. Forced to try again, The Riddler comes up with an ingenious plan to lure the crime fighter to their headquarters by kidnapping millionaire Bruce Wayne.
Comrade Kitanya Irenya Tatanya Karenska Alisoff swings back into action, and is soon off on a romantic evening with the handsome millionaire. This provides some vital big-screen Baterosexuality. Wayne is eager to pioneer some détente with Kitka—“a charming acronym,” he observes—who claims to need protection from The Riddler. This puts Robin in the uncomfortable position of checking in via spy cam on Bruce and Kitka’s romantic moments.
At one point, Commissioner Gordon asks for a status report, and can’t believe that the couple has been sitting in a horse carriage at the park for over an hour. He asks what they’re doing in there.
“No comment, Commissioner,” says a libertarian Robin. “Let’s just say no trace of criminal activity.” That isn’t what the cops told us one hot summer night in 1985.
Robin turns off the surveillance cameras once Bruce goes back to Kitka’s opulent penthouse, although Alfred the butler—along for the ride—isn’t sure if that’s the prudent thing to do. “I don’t know about prudent, Alfred,” replies the Boy Wonder, “but it’s sure as heck the only decent thing to do.”
Let’s also mention that Robin’s surveillance takes him past Gotham City’s monument to Benedict Arnold. Like we said, it’s 1966. Commissioner Gordon and Chief O’Hara are probably the last conservatives on the Gotham City payroll.
Batman isn’t in a hurry to trust the federal government, either—as seen when the Batboat finds itself under attack by The Penguin’s spiffy new submarine. Batman quickly gets Vice Admiral Fangschliester on the phone, and asks if the Navy’s recently sold any war surplus submarines.
Fangschliester checks, and cheerfully informs Batman that they just sold a pre-atomic model to a Mr. P.N. Gwynne.
“Did this P.N. Gwynne leave an address?” asks Batman.
“No,” replies Fangschliester, “just a post office box number.”
Batman doesn’t hide his displeasure. “Gosh,” says the chastened Fangschliester, who’s probably still doddering around the Pentagon and signing off on war surplus purchases by Mr. A. Akbar.
Anyway, Bruce Wayne turns out to unusually resourceful and escapes from his kidnappers. At least the four villains have bought enough time to break into the United World Headquarters via that submarine. They find the Security Council, and it’s a real mix of creeps and simps. The U.S.S.R. rep is in full military regalia, and the United Kingdom delegate is pleading, “It is the considered opinion of Her Majesty’s government that we pursue peace at all costs.”
They’re so busy shouting in different languages that they don’t notice as The Joker casually takes aim and turns each of them into a differently colored pile of powder.
It’s hardly a spoiler to reveal that Batman and Robin eventually capture the villains—and their stunt doubles. This would usually wrap the film at a pleasant 95 minutes. The movie, however, has a final statement that wouldn’t fit into the format of the television show. The test tubes with the dehydrated Security Council end up smashed, and the different piles of colored powder are scrambled together.
Batman and Robin get to work at the Batcave with the Super Molecular Dust Separator. Batman announces to Robin that they’re just about finished. “Then,” he explains, “I’ll activate the computer link, feed in the various ethnic and national factors.”
This gives Robin an idea: “With the way the world is, don’t you think we ought to try to improve those factors?”
Batman explains that it’s not for mortals like superheroes to tamper with nature—as was proven earlier when The Penguin infiltrated the Batcave and accidentally used hard water to rehydrate some hidden henchmen. (He provided a distraction by lecturing Batman about constitutional rights.) The poor henchmen then turned into anti-matter at the slightest biff, bang, or pow.
It’s important that we see the Dynamic Duo have this discussion. They return to the United World Headquarters and successfully rehydrate the Security Council to their normal state—except all the dignitaries are now speaking in other languages. There’s been some kind of merry mix-up, but we know it’s nothing Batman did intentionally.
Our hero continues to think positive: “Who knows, Robin? This strange mixing of minds may be the greatest single service ever performed for humanity.” Batman may be on to something. The ambassador for West Germany is now speaking Hebrew, and that would’ve given those godless East Germans something new to worry about.
“Let’s go,” adds Batman, “but inconspicuously—through the window.” And they do, because it’s 1966, and that’s fairly subtle by that summer’s standards. More importantly, the final shot is Batman and Robin actually rappelling down a skyscraper after a TV season of them duckwalking up horizontal buildings, and that had to be a sight worth the purchase of a ticket.
Make it your own: The folks at Fox got the big-screen
Batman right, and continued the tradition with
the DVD. The print looks great, there are plenty of extras, and Adam West and Burt Ward provide one of the format’s truly great commentaries. Reasonably priced, too, so buy several and convince them to get working on finally releasing the series.
