“Hand me down… the shark…repellent…Batspray!”

“Inexplicably popular” is a phrase that gets bandied around a lot. There’s plenty of books and movies and so on that achieve monumental success despite being, by any fair assessment, fucking terrible. But what about things that are inexplicably unpopular? What about those works that attract passionate, fiery loathing despite being very, very good indeed?

Because the Adam West Batman series is just the tops. It is genuinely one of the best tv comedies of its decade. It’s smart, it’s funky and it just captures the vibe of the sixties so well.

No, no, no. Not THOSE sixties. THESE sixties.

There, much better.

And yet, for the longest time it felt like the Adam West series was loved by everybody but Batman fans. And sure, having to listen to the millionth tired joke about “BIFF BAM KAPOW!” and shark repellant got real old, real fast, but that wasn’t the show’s fault.

Less forgivable was the frankly toxic level of vitriol that a subset of the Batman fandom had towards this show. Not quite Phantom Menace levels but close. And this rejection of everything that even vaguely resembled Batman ’66 was, I would argue, a big reason why the nineties in comics were so fucking try-hard and asinine, as the medium went through its angsty adolesence loudly proclaiming that comics are ACTUALLY REALLY DARK AND MATURE, MOM.

Thankfully, things seem to have turned a corner. As comics became mainstream and lost their stigma, the show has undergone a reappraisal as younger generations have discovered the series and realised that

a) It’s fucking hilarious.

b) It’s supposed to be fucking hilarious.

c) This shit is meme-tastic.

So remember The Clone Wars?

No, not that one.

Not that one either.

Yes, the CGI movie that preceded the 2008 series. The ’66 Batman was originally intended to be the same thing only slightly less camp and not terrible.

Yeah. I know the series became great. Doesn’t change this.

The movie was originally intended as a launch for the TV series. However, the studio told the creators that they wouldn’t pony up the budget for a whole seperate movie. Instead, the movie ended up being a kind of feature length finale for the first season of the TV show, albeit one that was shown in theatres. The script was written in ten days and…honestly that shows. Not that it’s not hilarious, but it very much feels like a series of incidents strung together rather than a single cohesive whole. It also absolutely feels like a TV episode padded out to feature length. Let’s take the opening.

We open on a shot of a yacht with the narrator (producer William Dozier) telling us that this boat is heading to Gotham with some kind of amazing scientific invention but that Batman has received an anonymous tip that the yacht is in grave peril. So we get shots of Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson driving towards Gotham (I don’t know if the series even attempted to pretend that this isn’t California, it could not look less East Coast if it tried), arriving at Wayne Manor, changing into their costumes, getting into the Batmobile, driving to an airport, getting into the Bat-copter (which apparently has a full time staff working at the airport who just look after this one helicopter for Batman) and then we get shots of the Bat-Copter flying over the city towards the yacht. Was all that needed? No. Is it padding to puff up the runtime and also allow the producers to show off their cool new Bat-copter? Yes.

But it also provides some invaluable word-building. Every version of Batman has to make a choice; how does society feel about Batman? Is he a mere urban legend? Is he a recognised superhero with the somewhat wary respect of the police? Is he a wanted outlaw? And as this sequence makes clear, in this universe, Batman is not simply out in the open, a recognised ally of the police and government. He’s basically a super scientist hero king to all humanity. He’s Jesus with pointy ears. Just look at how these cops react to seeing the Bat-Copter flying overhead.

These men will never wash their eyeballs again.

Our heroes fly over the yacht and Batman prepares to board the ship when suddenly the vessel disappears and Batman is attacked by a shark.

Still more realistic than Jaws.

This of course leads to the best line in the movie, and indeed, in fiction, with the caped crusader ordering his young ward to provide him with a bat-themed aerosol specifically designed for the deterrence of carcharadons. And Adam West didn’t get an Academy Award for this because the Oscars are bullshit. In the nick of time, he’s able to repel the shark and it explodes.

We cut to a press conference in Commissioner Gordon’s office which Batman has apparently called just so he can refuse to answer any questions about the vanishing vessel or the exploding shark. One of the journalists is a Russian named Miss Kitka, and with a name like that you can probably guess which of Batman’s rogues she actually is.

Oh go to Hell!

So this is Catwoman, played by Lee Merriweather replacing Season 1’s Catwoman Julie Newmar who was unavailable for the movie. Fun bit of trivia, in the comics continuation of this series, the depiction of Catwoman randomly switches between Julie Newmar, Lee Merriweather and Eartha Kitt and they never explain or even acknowledge it. Kitka asks the dynamic duo to take off their masks so the good people of Russia can see what a smile looks like but Gordon is shocked at the suggestion, saying that disclosing their identities would “completely destroy their value as ace crimefighters!”

“Holy hurtful, Batman!”

The press conference over, Batman, Gordon, Robin and Chief O’Hara (oh faith and begob ’tis himself) discuss the recent attempt on Batman’s life via exploding shark. I love that I got to write that sentence. Batman reveals that while he and Robin were being lured to the vanishing yacht, the real yacht containing the invention and its inventor, Commodore Schmidlapp, were captured. Batman asks Gordon what “super criminals” are currently at large and they learn that Joker, Penguin, Riddler and Catwoman are all currently on the lam. This then leads to…look, just see for yourselves:

It makes just as much sense as the detective work on Sherlock, these guys are just honest about it.

We cut to the Benbow Inn, where the four villains have set up a cosy little Legion of Doom called United Underworld. Riddler angrily berates Penguin for the failure of his exploding shark and Penguin replies “how was I to know they’d have a can of shark-repellant bat spray?!” which…I feel he’s answered his own question there. Who else would have a can of shark repellant bat-spray? We also learn that the group have kidnapped Schmidlapp and are keeping him the basement, having convinced him that he’s still on board the ship and that they’ve just been waylaid by fog.

Meanwhile, Batman and Robin have deduced that the vanishing yacht was a hologram (“similar to the common desert mirage”) and find the projector on a floating bouy. Unfortunately, they’re unable to get any fingerprints due to “salt and corrosion! The infamous old enemies of the crimefighter!”. Suddenly, the bouy becomes magnetised and they’re pinned by their utility belts.

The Penguin shoots torpedoes at them from his war-surplus “pre-atomic” submarine (the movie keeps reminding us that it’s pre-atomic and I have no idea why). Batman is able to destroy two of the torpedoes with his radio-detonator but then…

Fortunately, this Batman has the kind of plot armour that would make even Grant Morrison blush, and the pair are saved by the noble sacrifice of a porpoise literally throwing itself in front of the torpedo to save his life.

I LOVE THIS MOVIE. IT IS THE BEST MOVIE. PERIOD.

They take the Bat Boat back to the Bat Shore and contact the navy to learn that they recently sold a war-surplus submarine to a Mr. P.N. Gwynne who didn’t even leave a forwarding address.

So in case you were worried, it’s not just the police, the military in this universe is also basically helpless without Batman.

The villains come up with a fiendish plan, to kidnap a millionaire and lure Batman to their base where he’ll be finished off with an exploding octopus (okay that’s three ocean animals in this movie that die from heavy explosives. Who wrote this thing?).

They choose, of course, Bruce Wayne. Disguised as Kitka she goes to Wayne Manor and he ends up asking her out to dinner because, for all his reputation as a stuffy square, sixties Bruce Wayne is smooth AF.

Batman asks Robin to help him deduce another riddle; “What has yellow skin and writes?” which Robin immediately answers “a ballpoint banana!”

“Well, I think it’s…”“Nobody asked you, Forties Robin!”

They deduce from the riddle that the villains are going to make an attempt on Miss Kitka’s life so he has Alfred and Robin tail him on his date with her and forces them to watch has them as back up. Unfortunately, so incensed with jealousy no, actually that’s the only way to read this, so incensed with jealousy that he turns off the video feed, Robin misses Bruce Wayne getting abducted by the villains.

They take him to the United Underworld headquarters but Bruce escapes his bonds and just goes HAM on all of them and escapes through the window and dives into the sea. He returns to Wayne manor where Commissioner Gordon and Dick Grayson are hard at work rescuing him by pacing around the room looking concerned. Bruce and Dick change back into Batman and Robin and head over to the United Underworld headquarter looking for Miss Kitka. Instead they find a bomb which leads to Batman running around the wharf to find a safe place to dispose of it.

“Some days you just can’t get rid of a bomb!”

Robin is stunned that Batman risked his life to save the drunks of this slum (because Sixties Robin feels about drunks the way Forties Robin felt about Asians).

They get waylaid by the Penguin, transparently disguised as Commodore Schmidlapp and decide to take him back to the Batcave to verify his identity. However! It transpires that the villain let himself be captured because he knew they’d take him to exactly where he wanted to be to enact his devious plan!

Nolan didn’t invent shit.

See, it turns out that Schmidlapp’s device is a de-hydrator capable of sucking all the moisture out of a human body and turning them to sand, which can then be re-hydrated elsewhere. Penguin uses water from the Batmobile’s supply to reconstitute five goons. Unfortunately, the water he used was radioactive which causes them to vanish the second Batman and Robin punch them. As Batman sombrely tells Robin, they won’t be coming back “in this universe” which I think is the superhero equivalent of telling your sidekick that his dog has gone to live on a nice farm upstate.

Batman pretends that he believes that Penguin really is Schmidlapp and they drive him back to town. Penguin gasses them and steals the Batmobile and drives off. Batman and Robin, however, were actually inocculated against the knock out gas have the Bat-Cycle stashed nearby. They ride to the airport and then take to the air in the Bat-Copter, tracking the Batmobile.

On the submarine, the Riddler fires off another clue rocket over Joker and Catwoman’s objections and here I must pause to comment on just how damn perfect Frank Gorshin’s Riddler is. There’s a moment earlier when the villains think they’ve killed Batman and they’re celebrating, but the Riddler just looks stunned. As if he can’t believe the game is over and he doesn’t know what to do now. And this line he gives when the Joker (of all people) tries to talk him out of giving Batman any more clues:

“Oh, but I must, I must! Why, outwitting Batman is my sole delight, my heaven on earth, my very paradise!”

Don’t tell me this movie isn’t accurate to the comics. Don’t even try.

The Riddler launches his rocket which causes the Bat Copter to crash…onto a massive pile of foam rubber and Batman and Robin are able to deduce from his clue that the villains are attacking the United World Organisation.

“Mom, can we have the United Nations?”
“We have the United Nations at home.”

They’re too late to prevent the villains from dehydrating the UWO Security Council consisting of the ambassadors of Japan, the U.S, the U.S.S.R., Israel, France, Spain, West Germany, the United Kingdom, and Nigeria.

“Dude, what the fuck?”

Batman and Robin chase the Penguin’s submarine in the Batboat and fires a laser at the sub, forcing it to surface. We get a big BIFF BAM KAPOW fight on the deck of the submarine and the villains are defeated. But, to his horror, Batman discovers that Catwoman was actually Miss Kitka the whole time.

Now cracks a noble heart.

The dynamic duo recover vials containing the dehydrated ambassadors but Schmidlapp barges in demanding tea and knocks the vials over and it’s all “You got the Ambassador of West Germany in my Ambassador of Japan! Well you go the Ambassador of Japan in my Ambassador of West Germany!” basically it’s a mess.

The world waits with bated breath as, in the Batcave, Batman and Robin labour to seperate the grains of Ambassador grit into their constituent parts. This tone, they head back to the United World Organisation and rehydrate the vials.

It…mostly works.

I mean, they’re all talking different languages and are now effectively entirely different human beings but. Y’know.

This is a far better result than anyone could reasonably have expected.

Batman muses that this may actually do more for world peace than anything the not-UN has been able to achieve so far and they quietly leave through the window.

***

The Dark Knight Detective

Let’s face it. He is the best Batman. If you had to choose an onscreen version of Gotham city to live in, I know which one I’d pick. The one with the sunny beaches, throngs of girls in bikinis and no serious crime. West’s Batman isn’t really all that different from the “Bat-God” of many modern Batman stories; hyper-competent and supernaturally prepared. As for Bruce Wayne, one of Adam West’s stipulations for the movie was that he get to spend more time out of the cowl as Bruce Wayne to show off his range and boy does he. Perhaps unexpectently, West nails the “playboy heart-throb” aspect of the character better than any live action actor apart from Bale.

I mean. I’m just gonna say it.
This is a Batman who fucks.

The Boy Wonder

Give Burt Ward his due. To this day, his portrayal of Robin is the most iconic and influential take on the character there has ever been. Plenty have tried. Chris O’Donnell. Joseph Gordon Levitt. Brenton Thwaites.

They try. Oh how they try.

His Faithful Manservant

Unfortunately, while the movie is overall a very good showcase of the strengths of its parent series, it regrettably gives very little for Alan Napier’s Alfred to do. But rest assured, ’66 Alfred was a fucking BOSS.

The Comish

In many ways, Commissioner Gordon is the Watson to Batman’s Holmes and often with the same results. Whereas in the comics Gordon is usually a heroic cop so badass that he’d be the hero of any other story, Neil Hamilton plays the commissioner as a kindly but dim patrician who couldn’t tie his shoe-laces without Batman’s help. But he does it so well.

The Clown Prince of Crime

The first movie appearance of Batman’s arch-enemy is frankly bizarre to a modern comics fan. Joker actually teaming up (and others being willing to team up with him) is odd enough. But the fact that he’s clearly the junior member of this partnership (and the least crazy by far) is just weird. Plus, Cesar Romero refusing to shave off the moustache and forcing them to just paint over it looks gross. It always looked gross. He doesn’t want to shave the moustache to play the Joker? Maybe he doesn’t get to play the Joker then, how about that?

The Prince of Puzzles

The Riddler is one of the most famous Batman villains and that’s entirely down to Frank Gorshin, whose manic, gonzo, portrayal took an obscure villain with around three comics appearances and rocketed him into the A list of Batman’s rogues. It kinda makes me wish he’d played the Joker instead as he’s simultaneously funnier and scarier than Romero’s Joker.

That pompous, waddling maestro of fowl play, master of a million criminal umbrellas!

Penguin fans, enjoy your moment. It was never this good again. If you never read a Batman comic but only knew the character through the sixties TV show and movie (and, let’s be frank, that was probably the case for the vast majority of Batman fans between 1966 and 1989) you would be forgiven for thinking that the Penguin was Batman’s arch-enemy. In the United Underworld, Catwoman is the femme fatale double agent, Riddler is the ideas-man, Joker is…honestly just a lackey who brings the hostage his tea. But Penguin is the leader. The Penguin is one of the most malleable of all the main rogues. Catwoman, Riddler and even Joker remain broadly consistent across depictions but the Penguin will frequently be taken apart and rebuilt from the ground up in any new Batman continuity. Sometimes he’s a disgusting sewer monster. Sometimes he’s an old money WASP. Sometimes he’s British, sometimes American. Now he’s a radical anarchist preaching class warfare, later he’ll be a semi-respectable nightclub owner. But Burgess Meredith’s Penguin is a capital S Supervillain. He’s got gadgets, an army of lackies, a submarine headquarters and a plan that wouldn’t have been out of place in a Roger Moore era Bond movie. I actually remember being genuinely scared of the Penguin as a young child, but that was probably because he bore a passing resemblance to the Child-Catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

The Queen of Criminals, the Princess of Plunder

It’s one of the eternal questions: who was the best sixties Catwoman; Newmar, Merriweather or Kitt? Personally I think Newmar was the best at portraying the character’s sexual charisma, whereas Eartha Kitt was better at bringing out Selina’s swagger and ego. Merriweather is more of a well-rounded Jill of all Trades. She’s probably the weakest of the three but make no mistake, she’s still a fantastic Catwoman.

Batman NEVER kills, except: 

It is with regret that I must report that we have our first and second confirmed killings by Batman onscreen. Neither his fault, to be sure. He didn’t know that the springboard he knocked that goon onto would catapult him into the arms of the Penguin’s exploding octopus. And, he wasn’t to know that the Penguin re-hydrated that goon with heavy water which caused him to become atomically unstable and turn to anti-matter at the slightest impact (I really appreciate that all the science in this movie is airtight). But still. There it is. Batman has blood on his hands. Hopefully this was a once off.

Where does he get those wonderful toys?: 

So many gadgets! The Batboat! The Bat-Copter! The Shark-Repellant Bat-Spray! And of course, most importantly, the Bat-Ladder!

Do you have any idea how long I’ve waited to see a comics accurate Bat Ladder onscreen?

It’s the car, right? Chicks dig the car:

Finally! A Batmobile that actually looks like a mobile that would be driven by a bat. The sixties Batmobile had a (not) surprisingly epic backstory. A one of a kind concept car built by Ford, the Batmobile began life in 1954 as the only Lincoln Futura ever built. Its sleek body was (according to the Batman wiki which I have decided I trust totally) was fabricated by Ghia of Italy, whose artisans hammered the car’s panels over logs and tree stumps (I mean honestly, how ELSE would Batman’s care be built?). When the time came to create the Batmobile, legendary Hollywood customizer George Barris bought the Futura from Ford for a princely $1 and remade it into the Batmobile. Unfortunately, because the car was a prototype and by this stage over a decade old, it frequently malfunctioned, with the engine overheating, the tyres blowing and, (I swear I’m not making this up) the batteries frequently dying.

FINAL SCORE OUT OF TEN:

NEXT UPDATE: 20th April 2023 (need to focus on some writing, sorry folks)

NEXT TIME: Obscure British animation? Legendarily terrible? One of the biggest flops of all time? Is it my birthday?!