Needless to say, there will be spoilers in this thread about a 40 year old movie…
I finally got to watch this campfest this morning. Oy vey was it ridiculous, even for Batman.
You know it’s bad when the movie starts with Batman fending off a shark which, even though it’s latched onto his leg, suspended in mid-air by its teeth, fails to tear his polyester costume. And when Robin finally brings him the shark repellant to spray in its face and it lets go, a mine in the shark’s guts explodes.
And it only gets worse… Batman can’t get rid of a bomb because sousaphone players won’t get out of his way… Batman and Robin are magnetically attached to a buoy, yet can still pull out a radio… In the batcave, you get heavy water out of the same tap as drinking water… On a submarine, Batman stops battling bad guys to put a cat on an inflatable life raft… Alfred gets to drive the batmobile, as long as he wears a mask under his eyeglasses…
And this movie was supposed to be the pilot for the series? What the hell were people smoking?
Batman (the movie and the series) was brilliant, and yards more sophisticated and clever than most comedies on the box today. Who among us hasn’t had the kind of day where we’ve thought to ourselves ruefully, “Some days you just can’t get rid of a bomb!”?
Batman was also structured as a series of two-part serials, in which our caped heroes would be in mortal jeopardy at the end of the first part. The “voice of God” narrator would ask three silly, pun-ridden questions to heighten the tension (so to speak), and conclude, “Tune in next week – same Bat-time, same Bat-channel!” How could anyone resist?
[Speaking of serials, I remember seeing a few eps in pre-school morning syndication in the 70’s. One cliffhanger ending was of Batman & Robin slowly sinking into a huge (about 15 feet tall) birthday cake. I missed the follow-up episode, so I never learned how they got out of that one. Dopers, can you help me with this one?]
Batman was a stoopid show, but it was brilliantly dumb, off-the-wall, and over-the-top, and appealed to a lot of otherwise-smart people. My father was getting his professional training back during the show’s prime-time run; he’s said that that was everyone’s favorite show in school, the only one that nobody wanted to miss, and that the dormitory TV lounge was always packed when Batman came on. We’re talking about a generation’s worth of dentists, orthodontists, and oral surgeons, here…
What I’ve never understood was why there was such a dearth of hilariously campy moments in the series as opposed to the movie. Nothing in the series came anywhere close to “Somedays you just can’t get rid of a bomb”.
Batman: Let’s go, but… inconspicuously… through the window.
So much of this depends on Adam West’s delivery and demeanor – he really was excellent at what he was being asked to do… and did it so well and so memorably that he paid for it for the rest of career
WHEELIE came up with a copy on DVD and it was great!. At least with Batman they “camp up” the silly parts, hell if you go to see any Steven Segal or Bruce Willis or Stallone or Ahnold or Jean Claude Bam Bam or Mel Gibson, basically any “action” movie the story is as full of holes as Batman but SS expects you to believe it. In particular the crapfest movie where SS beats up the battleship has a fight scene ripped off directly from Batman (where he is standing on the deck surrounded by bad guys who only approach him 1 at a time).
Besides Adam West is the coolest man in the world, ever!
If I weren’t feeling extremely lazy, I would go back through the most recent batch I picked up at the comic book store. I think that it’s either in a recent “Robin” or “Nightwing”, but a reference is made to the “some days, you just can’t get rid of a bomb” line.
