What’s your favorite scene? I enjoyed Commissioner Gordon and Chief O’Hara being subjected to a recording of the Joker laughing over and over again. When Batman and Robin arrive, Batman figures out that the Joker wrapped a rope around Commissioner Gordon’s waist and stuffed the bug down his pants. Commissioner Gordon says “Yes of course, I remember now. An oddly dressed costumed character DID bump into me on the subway this morning.” DUH! I also got a kick out of Otto Preminger as Mr. Freeze sending a bogus Batman and Robin to try to rescue Bruce Wayne’s dinner party from robbers, only to have them purposely foul everything up. So what are the favorite scenes from the SDMB members?
If the movie counts, the funniest line is “Some days you just can’t get rid of a bomb.”
Also from the movie, at the UN, Batman says to Robin, “Let’s go…but…inconspicuously…through the window.”
I was only 6 or 7 when I watched this show in syndication in the early 70s so the camp humor and ridiculousness was completely lost on me. I just watched it as a cool, action superhero show. I can specifically remember watching the above scene and hearing my older brothers & sisters laughing their asses off and not understanding why!
The scene of Adam West wrestling a shark off his leg while dangling from a helicopter was pretty over-the-top. But one of my favorites was when they were in Commissioner Gordon’s office and one of the villains plants a bomb in the batmobile parked in front. Of course the* “Batmobile Bomb Detector”* on Batmen’s utility belt starts beeping so he tells Robin, “Quickly! Activate the* Batmobile Bomb-Self-Ejecting Device*!” and the bomb just magically shoots straight up into the air and explodes!
“To the Bat-Poles!”
Helps to get that if you’re familiar with the Batman comix of the period and earlier, which often portrayed Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson sharing a bed. Bruce, you live in a fucking mansion! Why can’t your “ward” have his own room?!
Ah, King Tut! Not an awesome villain, but an awesome character, played with relish by the incomparable Victor Buono. In my favorite scene, Tut is enjoying a bunch of grapes while he gloats and plots to his his lovely sidekick. Well, he’s trying – one by one, he plucks the grapes from the bunch and tosses them into the air, with scant success. They bounce off his chin, his cheek, his nose… By the end of the scene, he is so frustrated that with a growl he attacks the bunch and tears off several grapes with his teeth, and noisily, sullenly, munches away.
Same here.
It wasn’t until my 30’s that I discovered by accident that this was a comedy show. I was just flipping through the channels when I noticed Batman was on. So I pause for a moment and soon thought “WTF?, This isn’t the show I remember.”
I was just a little older, and watched it as a cool, action superhero show, but still got the campiness of the fight-scenes with the superimposed “BAM!” and “PUNCH!” and “POW!” legends. Also, the campiness when the Joker decides to be an artist, and his “art” consists of not painting at all on the canvas, or of throwing buckets of paint on a table.
I’ve always remembered a scene in the Batcave (I think) where Robin says…“Gosh Batman! Is there anything you don’t know?” and BM replies (something akin to) “Yes, Robin. One or two.”
And, from The Movie: The nuns on the pier.
Otherwise the series was forgettable for me. I was 17 when it first ran- too old to enjoy it, but also too young.
Batgirl dancing the Cossack saber dance
Batman dancing ala Travolta (Pulp Fiction)
The swinging test tube holder in the movie
Batman and Robin out-singing a recording to keep them from being shredded in a piano recorder
The villain Liberace singing in jail
J. Pauline Spaghetti’s ex-husbands
Milton Berle’s Luis the Lilac
Batman wearing Bermuda shorts in a surfing contest with the Joker
Alfred interrupting Batman’s wedding
Batman saying “Well, that’s all water over the . . . . . … embankment, Robin.”
Because Batman never says “dam.”
The Bat-alphabet-soup-container. (From the episodes that crossed over with Green Hornet.)
That would be the Batusi.
I have to admit that I hated the old TV Batman show. I got all excited when they announced it as an upcoming addition to nthe fall schedule, but when I saw the reality of it, I was extremely turned off. I knew it was supposed to be “camp” (there were plenty of stories about it, all using that word, including a cover story in Life magazine), but it never “worked” for me, and I say this as a fan of MST3K and The Lost Skeleton of Cadavera.
I was beaten to the “Some days, you just can’t get rid of a bomb” scene, so I’ll mention the spectacle of Batman having a phone conversation with Bruce Wayne. 
“Batman comix of the period and earlier, which often portrayed Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson sharing a bed”
I did not recall this. Looking on the 'net, it appears you may be correct - as long as by “often” you mean only once and by “comix of the period” you mean more than a decade earleir.
The surfing episode has been mentioned, but another hilarious aspect of that episode:
Commissioner Gordon and Chief O’Hara were working undercover at the beach, wearing 1890s long swimsuits, and calling themselves Buzzy and Duke.
And apparently, everybody completely bought these two old men as ordinary surfer dudes! Nobody spotted them as cops (or even stared at them for being weirdoes) until they pulled out the cuffs to arrest Joker and his gang at the end.
There was one episode where Catwoman was arrested and put on trial. Her attorney, “Lucky Pierre,” loaded the jury with criminals, who voted to acquit.
After a big courtroom brawl, Catwoman and Pierre are arrested. As Pierre is hauled away, Batman says sadly, “What a shame- he might have had a great career in politics.”
The joke was that Pierre was Pierre Salinger, John F. Kennedy’s press secretary.
The Volga Batman always cracked me up.
From the Batman movie-
Riddler: “You think you’re pretty clever, don’t you mister Wayne?”
Bruce Wayne: “Clever enough to outwit you, you stupid fuck!”
(okay, supposedly he actually says ‘thug’ but the line is garbled enough that it catches me off guard every time.)