Cast: Lewis Wilson (Batman/Bruce Wayne), Douglas Croft (Robin/Dick Grayson), J. Carrol Nash (Dr. Daka), Shirley Patterson [Shawn Smith] (Linda Page), William Austin (Alfred), Charles Wilson (Capt. Arnold), Gus Glassmire (Martin Warren), Charles Middleton (Ken Colton), Robert Fiske (Foster), Michael Vallon (Preston), John Maxwell (Fletcher), Karl Hackett (Wallace), Ted Oliver (Marshall), George Chesebro (Bernard), Stanley Price (Captured Henchman), Sam Flint (Dr. Borden), Frank Shannon (Dr. Hayden), Earle Hodgins (Box Office Attendant), I. Stanford Jolley (Brett), Anthony Warde (Stone), George J. Lewis (Burke), Jack Ingram (Kline), Kenne Duncan (Aircraft Worker #1), Lynton Brent (Aircraft Worker #2), Terry Frost (Hospital Attendant), Tom London (Andrews), Dick Curtis (Croft), Lester Dorr (Lawson), Eddie Kane (Bail Officer), Bud Osborne (Zombie Brown), Pat O’Malley (Police Officer), Knox Manning (Narrator). Producer: Rudolph C. Flothow. Director: Lambert Hillyer. Screenplay: Victor McLeod, Leslie Swabacker, Harry Fraser (based on Batman comic magazine features appearing in Detective Comics and Batman magazines). Batman Creator: Bob Kane. Director of Photography: James S. Brown, Jr. Film Editors: Dwight Caldwell, Earl Turner. Music: Lee Zahler. Sound Engineer: Jack Goodrich. Studio: Columbia. Length: Approximately 260 minutes in 15 separate chapters. United States Release Dates: July 16–October 22, 1943.
1. “The Electrical Brain” (Released July 16, 1943)
2. “The Bat’s Cave” (Released July 23, 1943)
3. “The Mark of the Zombies” (Released July 30, 1943)
4. “Slaves of the Rising Sun” (Released August 6, 1943)
5. “The Living Corpse” (Released August 13, 1943)
6. “Poison Peril” (Released August 20, 1943)
7. “The Phoney Doctor” (Released August 27, 1943)
8. “Lured by Radium” (Released September 3, 1943)
9. “The Sign of the Sphinx” (Released September 10, 1943)
10. “Flying Spies” (Released September 17, 1943)
11. “A Nipponese Trap” (Released September 24, 1943)
12. “Embers of Evil” (Released October 1, 1943)
13. “Eight Steps Down” (Released October 8, 1943)
14. “The Executioner Strikes” (Released October 15, 1943)
15. “The Doom of the Rising Sun” (Released October 22, 1943)
The Batman character first appeared on the screen in the 1943 Columbia serial Batman, an odd but fascinating mixture of Batman comic mythos, World War II propaganda and cheaply crafted cliffhanger clichés. The production starred Lewis Wilson as Batman/Bruce Wayne and Douglas Croft as Robin/Dick Grayson. Batman was a black-and-white, 15-chapter film originally presented in theaters one chapter at a time in weekly installments. Each of Batman’s chapters ended with a scene showing its heroes facing seemingly inescapable mortal danger.
Unfortunately, Batman’s screen debut was most definitely not a well-realized, big-budget production—in fact, Columbia Pictures considered Batman such a low priority that they actually subcontracted the filming of the serial out to a smaller independent production company, Larry Darmour Productions. Darmour made Batman as cheaply and quickly as possible—all 260 minutes of it were filmed in the Los Angeles area between early June and mid–July 1943!1 Not surprisingly, Columbia’s offhand treatment of Batman as a screen property resulted in Batman leaving much to be desired in terms of quality.
In fact, even before Batman started shooting, it was apparent that Columbia did not think enough of Bob Kane and company’s wonderful Batman comic book work to put any serious effort into faithfully adapting it for the screen. Instead of taking the time and care to base Batman on some of Kane’s best Batman comic stories, they employed their own writers, Victor McLeod, Leslie Swabacker and Harry Fraser, to throw together a plot for Batman’s motion picture debut. Their script was a flimsy wartime adventure tale full of unimaginative cliffhanger clichés, a work so generic that it could have featured most any action hero as the main character, costumed or not. Batman’s script did not render the character completely unrecognizable from his comic book self, but he certainly did not come across as being as complex or unique as he had proven to be on the comics page.
It is likely that this decision to deviate from the “comic book” Batman in Batman had less to do with any negative opinions the writers might have had regarding Kane’s work, and more to do with Columbia’s wish to have Batman’s adventures reflect the United States’ preoccupation with World War II. After all, many films of the early 1940s were not looked upon as just entertainment, they were also looked upon as a means to help keep American wartime morale high. Batman definitely was such a motion picture—it was as much about exhorting Americans to fight the Axis Powers, especially the Japanese, as it was about Batman.
Consequently, Batman adopted a World War II–themed plot that ignored all of the classic villains found in Batman’s comic book world. The Japanese criminal mastermind Dr. Daka was Batman’s only villain—all 15 chapters of the serial revolved around Batman and Robin’s efforts to bring him to justice. The character was portrayed by an American actor, J. Carrol Naish, made up with slicked-back dark hair and eyeliner in order to look Japanese.
Daka was a ruthless and insidiously clever agent of the Japanese government, determined to see the American way of life wiped off the face of the earth. From his secret base of operations in a deserted area of Gotham City known as “Little Tokyo,” he aided Japan in their efforts to conquer the United States and turn all Americans into slaves of a vast Japanese empire. Naish evidently considered America’s anti–Japanese sentiments as his own personal license to ham it up in Batman—he played Daka’s villainy up for all its worth, making the character seem all the more evil. (In fact, Naish was so gloriously dastardly as Daka that one wishes the serial had given him the opportunity to play an established Batman villain like the Joker—he probably would have been tremendous.)
While America’s concerns regarding Japanese aggression during the World War II years were all too real, Batman’s depiction of Daka and his Japanese spy operation were completely fictional. In fact, “fanciful” might be an even better word—for example, Daka had an outlandish, “mad scientist”–looking machine in his lair that altered human beings’ brain waves and turned them into “zombies.” Daka used his “zombie machine” to turn decent, patriotic Americans into his own personal slaves—he would then force these slaves to help him carry out his plans to destroy the United States. The slaves were fitted with a metal headpiece that was connected directly to their brain (just how these headpieces were connected was a question the serial never bothered to answer) so that Daka could communicate with them from his hideout through a remote microphone. Daka was also able to transmit images the slaves saw through their own eyes onto a screen in his lair, allowing him to spy through his slaves.
Lewis Wilson as Batman and Douglas Croft as Robin in Batman (1943).
Daka’s hand-held “radium gun” emitted a lightning bolt–like blast so powerful it could destroy virtually anything it was directed at. Much of Batman’s plot dealt with Daka trying to obtain enough radium to build a larger gun that could be used as a weapon of mass destruction. Daka never realized his plans of building a large radium gun in Batman, but his hand-held model wreaked plenty of havoc in the opening chapters.
Batman’s anti–Japanese sentiments come across now as bigoted and hysterical, and they appear all the more Neanderthal when coupled with such outrageously silly science fiction. In fact, most every time Batman has been publicly screened since its initial 1940s run, it has been screened for laughs—it has become widely regarded as a camp howler, a film so bad it is good. (I’ll discuss this interpretation of Batman and how it affected the 1960s Batman television show and motion picture in detail a bit later.)
One might be tempted to write Batman off as a total loss for its low production values, for basically ignoring Batman comic stories, for its offensive racial stereotypes, and for its ridiculous science fiction elements. And we haven’t even gotten around to actually discussing Batman’s depiction of Batman and Robin yet!
One of Batman’s biggest problems in terms of attempting to bring Batman and Robin to life was the characters’ costumes—their uniforms were designed as offhandedly as everything else in the serial was. Obviously, Kane and company were able to make Batman and Robin’s costumes appear more dramatic and well-tailored on the one-dimensional comics page than they ever could have been in real life, but Batman’s uncredited costume designers did not make much of an effort to close this gap between comic book fantasy and reality.
Batman’s costume was by far the worse of the two. Its cowl was lumpy and misshapen, and the bat ears pointed in crazy, asymmetric angles off the top of it! Plus, the cowl’s eye holes were cut at a severe angle, making it almost impossible to see out of it. Its cape was far too short, and it did not wrap around the front of the costume to give the appearance of bat wings like it did in the comics. And even though Batman was filmed in black and white, it was obvious that the cape, cowl, gloves and boots were all slightly different colors from one another. Its utility belt was an oversized, shiny, Santa Claus–style belt that did not even have proper compartments to store crimefighting equipment in. Finally, its bodysuit was made of a heavy fabric that bunched up so much it resembled pajamas more than it did acrobatic gear. Incidentally, the costume did have at least one positive feature worth mentioning—the bat emblem on its chest was well-crafted.
Granted, Batman was made in the 1940s, well before the age of fabrics like spandex—but even when giving the serial’s costume designers this allowance, the fact remains that they certainly could have done a better job of capturing Batman’s comic book look. One need only to look at the excellent costuming found in other comic book serials of the time like Adventures of Captain Marvel (1941) or Superman (1948) to realize how poor Batman’s costume here really was.
Batman’s Robin costume was decidedly better, closely resembling the look of the 1940s-era comic book Robin. Also, the costume had medieval-looking long laces running up the front of its “R” emblazoned tunic that recalled the character’s original Robin Hood inspiration. However, it still had one glaring problem—its mask was nothing more that a cheap oval-shaped dime store mask that covered far more of the face than it should have. One would think that Batman’s costume designers would have thought to take a minute or two to trim the mask with a pair of scissors so that it looked like more like the comic book Robin’s mask.
Not only did Batman not give Batman and Robin proper costumes, it also did not give them a Batmobile. The heroes were forced to drive Bruce Wayne’s rather plain-looking convertible around Gotham City while they were fighting crime. This obviously made no narrative sense—if Batman and Robin were so determined to keep their real identities a secret, why would they venture out in public in Bruce Wayne’s car? Furthermore, even by the early 1940s the Batmobile had become one of the most recognizable elements of the Batman mythos—depicting Batman without his Batmobile was like depicting the Lone Ranger without his horse Silver. Columbia’s decision not to bother with creating a Batmobile was further proof of how little the studio cared about the serial’s quality.
Batman and Robin’s fight scenes in Batman were just about the most unimaginatively staged film fight scenes of all time. At least once in every episode, the heroes would encounter Daka’s henchmen and a fight would break out. More often than not, everyone would basically stand in one place and flail their arms at one another until the criminals were able to momentarily overpower Batman or Robin. Then the henchmen wouldrun off, and Batman and Robin would pull themselves together so that they could try to track the criminals down yet again. Simply put, Batman and Robin almost never won a fight in Batman, whether they were fighting two men or ten. Obviously, this is the way the action in most all serials was structured—Batman and Robin could not win their battle against Daka and his men too quickly, or the serial would not have lasted 15 chapters.
Still, director Lambert Hillyer certainly could have done a better job of varying the serial’s action scenes so they would not become so mind-numbingly repetitive. Furthermore, would it really have thrown off Batman’s narrative thread that much if Batman and Robin were allowed to win at least a few of their battles? After all, the characters of Batman and Robin were supposed to be skilled hand-to-hand combatants—but Batman depicts them as being so maddeningly inept in this regard that they couldn’t have won a fight against a group of grade schoolers.
So we can add Batman’s shoddy treatment of the Batman and Robin characters to the list of deficits. But Batman did have a number of good moments, many of them attributable to Lewis Wilson’s Batman and Douglas Croft’s Robin. Wilson and Croft had almost everything going against them in Batman, still they managed to bring their characters to life quite well in a number of scenes.
Twenty-three-year-old Lewis Wilson’s good looks and sturdy physique made him perfectly suited for the role of Batman/Bruce Wayne. He played Batman in a straightforward, square-jawed action hero manner that at times transcended his ill-fitting costume. And he did an excellent job of capturing the dual nature of Bruce Wayne’s character. Wilson did Wayne’s “bored playboy” routine as well or better than any other actor who would ever play the role, and he also was effective in conveying Wayne’s grim determination when his playboy guise was dropped.
Douglas Croft was equally good as Robin/Dick Grayson. Croft had one major advantage over every other actor that would ever play the role—namely, he was closer in age to the character than they were. To date, Croft has been the screen’s only true “Boy Wonder”—he was about 16 years old when Batman was filmed, and he looked even younger than that. His youthful appearance was complemented by a naturally exuberant demeanor, making him perfectly suited for the part. Croft had only one feature that was markedly different from the comic book Robin: His head was covered with a wiry, slightly unruly hair. But even this feature was in keeping with Batman’s depiction of Robin as a free-spirited, adventurous boy.
It is interesting to note that Batman is the only live-action Batman screen work to feature a juvenile Robin operating within Batman’s world of murder, death and destruction. The serial played up the harder-edged crime drama aspects found in many Batman comic plots of the 1940s. Consequently, the youngster was faced with some pretty horrific scenes in Batman, such as people being crushed in mine collapses or devoured by ravenous alligators
The interaction between Wilson and Croft in the serial made their performances all the more effective. Because Croft was so young when Batman was filmed, the relationship between Bruce/Batman and Robin/Dick seemed quite believable. The characters came across like their comic book selves in the serial as well as any other live-action screen portrayal of Batman and Robin. Batman and Robin’s rapport mirrored the way they operated in their comic book world—they were like a “father-son” team, a team forged out of a love of adventure and a wish to see justice prevail over evil. Perhaps “mentor-pupil” might be even better words to use to phrase their relationship—because even though Dick was unquestionably a minor under Bruce’s care, he still had enough say in their partnership to question Bruce’s actions at times during the serial.
Lee Zahler’s musical score contained several brooding, memorable melodies that were quite effective in setting the mood for Batman and Robin’s adventures. The untitled theme that accompanied Batman’s opening credits was perhaps the best of his compositions—in fact, its opening notes are suspiciously similar to the distinctive first few notes of Danny Elfman’s “Batman Theme” composed for the 1989 Batman. If Elfman did indeed steal this motif from Zahler, he should not feel too guilty about it—Zahler himself stole several key musical phrases for his Batman music from Richard Wagner’s 1840 opera Rienzi. (I’ll discuss the similarity between Zahler’s and Elfman’s Batman themes in more detail in Chapter 8.)
The visual design of Batman’s opening credits should also be singled out for praise. Each chapter opened with a richly rendered painting of the familiar Batman logo featuring a bat silhouette with Batman’s face on the head. The title of the serial, main credits and individual chapter title rolled over this painting, resulting in an image that was perhaps as powerful as anything else found in Batman.
Perhaps Batman’s greatest strength was that it introduced a number of elements into the Batman mythos that would end up becoming as vital to the character as his cape and cowl. First, the Batcave was entirely an invention of Batman’s screenwriters. It was actually referred to as the “Bat’s Cave” in Batman, but its name was just about the only element of it that would be changed from the screen to the comic page. In Batman’s first scenes, the “Bat’s Cave” was established as Batman’s secret base of operations, located under Bruce Wayne’s residence in Gotham City. It was made up of a dimly lit main chamber that featured a bat insignia on one of its rocky walls and a state-of-the-art crime laboratory in a separate room. Batman’s “Bat’s Cave” certainly was not as elaborate as the comic book Batcave would become over the years, but it holds the distinction of being Batman’s first official “home.”
Batman also was responsible for creating one of Batman’s most memorable supporting characters—Alfred, Bruce Wayne’s faithful English butler. Alfred, played by William Austin, was an essential but slightly bumbling member of Batman’s crimefighting team and the only person who knew that Bruce and Dick were actually Batman and Robin. Many times during the course of the serial he was called into service to assist them. Batman’s writers likely created Alfred to be a “comic relief sidekick,” much like the characters “Gabby” Hayes and Smiley Burnette played in Western films. Alfred was unquestionably a “good guy” in the serial, but one who often found himself on the receiving end of Bruce and Dick’s wisecracks and practical jokes.
Batman’s writers evidently informed DC Comics that they had created the Alfred character for the serial, because Alfred was written into Batman’s comic book world several months before the premiere of Batman’s first chapter.2 The character made his first comic appearance in “Here Comes Alfred,” a story featured in Batman #16, April-May 1943.
In “Here Comes Alfred,” Alfred unexpectedly arrives from England to assume the duties of Bruce’s butler. Alfred explains that he has come to attend to Bruce at the request of his father, who for many years worked as a butler for Bruce’s father. Bruce and Dick are concerned about letting Alfred, an amateur detective, stay with them because he might stumble onto the fact that they are actually Batman and Robin. But Bruce does not have the heart to immediately send him away, so he allows him to stay for one night. Of course, in that one night Alfred does accidentally find out about Bruce and Dick’s alter egos, so the heroes have no choice but to make him a member of their team.
Apparently, no one at DC was given the opportunity to find out what William Austin was going to look like in the role of Alfred before the creation of “Here Comes Alfred”—in the story, Alfred was portly and clean-shaven, while Austin’s Alfred was tall, thin and sported a moustache. Not long after Batman began running in theaters, DC figured out a way to reconcile these conflicting versions of the character—in the story “Accidentally on Purpose” which appeared in Detective Comics #83, January 1944, Alfred went on a diet and grew a moustache! Alfred’s comic book look has continued to be modeled on Austin right up to the present day.
Alfred would eventually evolve into a far more respected member of Batman’s inner circle that he was shown to be in Batman, “Here Comes Alfred,” and “Accidentally on Purpose.” Over the years, he would become something of a wise father figure for Bruce and Dick, and certainly their closest confidant. He would also be given a last name, or more accurately, two last names—in the comics, his name was first revealed to be Alfred Beagle, but that name was changed to Alfred Pennyworth. “Pennyworth” was the name that caught on with Batman comic writers, so the character has been known as Alfred Pennyworth for most of his existence. At any rate, Alfred would become such an important part of Batman’s mythos that he would become the only character other than Batman himself to appear in every Batman-related film and television project. Even though Batman’s Alfred was not the fully realized character he would eventually turn out to be, he was quite fun to watch thanks to Austin’s light, comedic performance.
It should be noted that Alfred’s origin as depicted in “Here Comes Alfred” was in no way a part of Batman’s storyline. This is hardly surprising, because the serial also made no effort to incorporate the origins of Batman and Robin into its narrative. Like most Batman comic stories, Batman simply began its story with the premise that Batman and Robin were already well-established crimefighters.
However, there was one major difference in terms of how well-established they were in the comics and how well-established they were in the serial—namely, the Gotham City Police still considered Batman and Robin to be vigilantes who operated outside the law. In the comics, Commissioner Gordon had appointed Batman an honorary member of Gotham’s Police Department. For some unknown reason, Batman’s writers chose not only to ignore this element of Batman comic stories, but also to ignore Commissioner Gordon altogether—he was not included in the serial’s storyline in any way.
The Gotham Police Department was instead represented by a character created specifically for the serial, Captain Arnold. The befuddled captain (Charles Wilson) spent most of his scenes wondering who Batman and Robin were and why they were so much better crimefighters than any of the officers on his force. Batman’s decision to ignore Gordon and the crimefighters’ “official” relationship with the Gotham Police did not really hamper the serial in any way, because it simply harkened back to those very first Batman stories when Batman was a true vigilante.
Batman also featured a love interest for Bruce Wayne. The character of Bruce’s girlfriend Linda Page was pulled from early 1940s Batman comic stories in order to give Batman a “damsel in distress” to rescue in most every chapter. Like the comic version of Linda, the movie version of Linda would often be annoyed with Bruce because he was seemingly wasting his life away as a self-centered, lazy playboy. Of course, neither version of Linda ever caught on to the fact that Bruce behaved the way he did in order to keep people from figuring out that he was actually Batman. The part of Linda was played by Shirley Patterson in Batman, and her performance was amiable enough—though it certainly did not rise above the decidedly clichéd nature of her character.
Chapter 1 of Batman, “The Electrical Brain,” starts out promisingly enough. Batman is seen sitting behind a desk in his “Bat’s Cave,” wearing a grim expression on his face. A narrator explains that the crimefighter is planning his latest assault on the forces of evil. Batman’s thoughts are interrupted when Robin runs up to him. Batman smiles, puts his arm around his junior partner and the two of them dash out of the cave.
The heroes call the Gotham City Police Station to tell them to pick up a “package” they have left for Capt. Arnold—two criminals neatly tied up with bat insignias stamped on their heads. Before Batman and Robin leave the scene, one of the criminals brazenly tells them that they will suffer Dr. Daka’s wrath for their interference. The heroes do not stick around to find out more about Daka, because Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson are due to meet Bruce’s girlfriend Linda Page at her place of employment, the Gotham City Foundation. (The Foundation seems to be some sort of medical facility, though its purpose is never really explained during the serial’s 15 chapters.)
At the Foundation, Bruce puts on his “bored playboy” ruse while talking to Linda, and she is put off by his seeming laziness. When she leaves the room, Dick advises Bruce to drop the act and let her know that he is really Batman. Bruce rejects this suggestion, saying he doesn’t want Linda to worry about him; also, the U.S. government is planning on giving Batman and Robin ultra-secret wartime intelligence assignments, so they must not let anyone know about their crimefighting identities.
The next day, Bruce, Dick and Alfred accompany Linda on a trip to pick up Linda’s Uncle Martin, who is just being released from prison. Martin was unjustly convicted of a crime five years ago, and he is eager to make a fresh start. Just before Linda and company arrive, his old cellmate Foster, who had been released from prison some months before, intercepts him at the prison gates. Foster tricks Martin into leaving the prison with him by saying that Linda had sent him. When Martin gets suspicious, Foster pulls a gun on him and forces him into a waiting car. Linda, Bruce, Dick and Alfred see Martin being driven off, but they are unable to catch up with the car.
Foster takes Martin to an area of Gotham called “Little Tokyo,” which used to be populated by Japanese immigrants. However, now that the Japanese have bombed Pearl Harbor and the U.S. has entered World War II, the area is almost deserted because the country’s “wise government has rounded up the shifty-eyed Japs,” as the narrator phrases it.
This is undoubtedly Batman’s most repugnantly racist moment—obviously, America’s decision to imprison over 100,000 Japanese-Americans who lived in the western part of the U.S. during the World War II years simply because they were of Japanese descent was a monstrously unjust one. It was an action that Americans should have been ashamed of, even during the uncertainty of the war years, not one to be celebrated in a fantasy movie serial geared mainly for young audiences. Simply put, this moment in Batman spews the kind of propaganda one might have expected to hear from our fascist enemies, not from the United States. Luckily, Batman would not touch on real-life World War II issues again—most all of its anti–Japanese sentiment from this point on would be directed at the fictional Dr. Daka.
Foster forces Martin into an amusement park–style attraction called the “Japanese Cave of Horrors.” This attraction, the only business still operating in Little Tokyo, features wax figures depicting the history of Japan’s villainy throughout the years. But the “Japanese Cave of Horrors” is not what it seems—its real purpose is not to expose Japan’s villainy, but to conceal it. Deep inside the attraction is the secret headquarters of Foster’s boss Daka.
When Martin is brought before Daka, Daka explains that as a servant of the Japanese Emperor Hirohito, he has been charged with the duty of helping to “destroy the democratic forces of evil in the United States to make way for the new order, an order that will bring about the liberation of the enslaved people of America.” To achieve this goal, Daka has assembled a group of American businessmen who are experts in fields of industry and commerce—these men are helping Daka in his efforts. Daka “asks” Martin to join their cause, at the same time warning him that if he should refuse this request, he will be forced to join. Martin refuses, saying that no amount of torture can compel him to turn against his country.
Daka explains that he will force Martin to serve him by using his “zombie machine” to turn Martin into a mindless drone who responds only to his (Daka’s) commands. Daka demonstrates his zombie technology by commanding one of these zombies to come into the room. The drone, one of Martin’s old business partners, does not even recognize Martin. Martin is frightened by this demonstration, but he still refuses to cooperate with Daka.
Daka chooses not to turn Martin into a zombie at this point; instead, he injects Martin with truth serum in order to find out what he knows about the Gotham City Foundation’s radium supply. Martin tells Daka that a small amount of radium is kept in the Foundation’s safe. Daka has in his possession a radium gun which is so powerful it can destroy virtually anything it is aimed at. Daka tells his men that if he can obtain enough radium, he can build a much larger gun that could be used as a weapon of mass destruction. Daka sends Foster and some of his other henchmen to the Foundation to steal the radium.
Bruce and Dick are at the Foundation when the criminals arrive. Recognizing the men as the ones Martin drove off with, they decide to investigate as Batman and Robin.
Daka’s henchmen force their way into the Foundation, overpower Linda and use the radium gun to blow up the safe holding the radium. Before they can flee, Batman and Robin crash through a window and begin fighting them. The heroes chase the criminals onto the roof of the building, where they narrowly escape being struck by several blasts from the radium gun. The criminals eventually overpower Batman and Robin and throw Batman off of the roof. The chapter closes with Batman plummeting to his doom.
Chapter 2 of Batman, “The Bat’s Cave,” opens with a brief recap of Chapter 1’s climactic moments. We then see that Batman survives his fall from the roof because he lands on a painter’s scaffolding several floors down. Climbing back up to the roof, he and Robin apprehend one of Daka’s men and take him and the radium gun to the Bat’s Cave.
At the cave, they interrogate the henchman, who is spooked by all of the bats flying around in the darkness. He tells the heroes that he was hired to help steal the Gotham City Foundation’s radium supply and then take it to a low-rent hotel called the House of the Open Door. The heroes deliver the hood to Captain Arnold at the Gotham Police Station.
Daka, furious over the loss of the radium gun, assumes that the weapon must still be somewhere in the Foundation and he instructs his men to interrogate Linda regarding its whereabouts. One of Daka’s thugs calls Linda, pretending to be Martin, and sets up a meeting with her at a nightclub. Bruce finds out about this meeting and fears it might be a trap. He and Dick follow her, but their efforts are in vain—Daka’s men kidnap her and spirit her away to the House of the Open Door.
Based on the information they received from Daka’s hood in the Bat’s Cave, Batman and Robin decide to check out the House of the Open Door. The heroes burst into the hotel just as the thugs are getting rough with Linda. A fight ensues and a fire breaks out in the chaos. Batman and Robin climb out a window to safety, walking on a utility line like high-wire artists. Robin makes it to the ground, but Batman, who is carrying the unconscious Linda, falls when one of the hoods shorts out the line, causing it to break. The chapter ends with Batman and Linda apparently falling to their death.
Chapter 3, “The Mark of the Zombies,” recaps Batman and Linda’s fall, and then reveals that Robin saves the pair by throwing them a rope at the last second. (Or rather, this seems to be what Robin does—the action is so unclear in this scene it is almost impossible to make out!)
Daka makes plans to hijack a government train carrying a supply of radium, and also makes good on his threat to turn the uncooperative Martin into a zombie. Meanwhile, Batman places an anonymous notice in the paper advertising the discovery of the radium gun in the hopes of luring Daka or his men out of hiding. Daka takes the bait, sending his men to meet with the finder of the weapon. Batman and Robin do not keep this appointment themselves; they send Alfred to meet with Daka’s men, staying close in case of trouble.
Of course, there is trouble—the hoods pull a gun on Alfred, and the heroes jump in to save him. The thugs give Batman and Robin more trouble than they bargained on, so Alfred ends up saving them by grabbing the gun and firing it wildly into the air, scaring the hoods off. Because of the fight, Foster inadvertently left behind a map detailing Daka’s train hijack plans. The train is just about to reach the bridge that Daka intends to destroy in order to stop it, so Batman and Robin leap into action and confront Daka’s men on the bridge. The heroes are able to prevent the destruction of the bridge, but Batman is knocked out in the struggle. He lies unconscious on the railroad bridge with the train bearing down on him as the chapter ends.
In Chapter 4, “Slaves of the Rising Sun,” we see that Robin saves Batman by pushing him off the bridge to safety right before the train reaches him. They both fall into a shallow creek as the train thunders by. Daka is furious with his men when he learns that both the radium gun and the government radium shipment have slipped through their fingers. In fact, he becomes so furious that Foster tells him he is quitting their gang right then and there. But Daka will have none of this insubordination. He drops Foster through a hidden trapdoor right in the middle of his lair. The trapdoor leads down into a pit filled with Daka’s “pets,” a bunch of ravenous alligators. As Foster meets his horrible fate, Daka tells his remaining men that they would be wise to avoid harboring the kind of mutinous thoughts that their late colleague did.
Daka hatches another scheme to capture Linda, who is carrying papers containing information about a shipment of radium due to arrive at the Foundation. Daka’s hoods do not succeed in nabbing Linda, but they are able to steal the papers. Learning the details of the shipment, they hijack the armored car carrying the radium. As they flee in the armored car, Batman and Robin pursue them. Robin drives as Batman leaps out of their car and onto the armored car. Using the radium gun, he blasts his way into the car and overpowers the hoods. The chapter closes with Batman struggling with the armored car’s driver as it careens off the edge of a cliff.
Chapter 5, “The Living Corpse,” reveals that Batman falls out of the armored car right before it goes over the cliff. Some time later, the corpse of a Japanese soldier is delivered to Daka, who (using a special electrical apparatus) is able to briefly bring him back to life. During those moments, the soldier tells Daka that a new airplane motor has been designed by the Americans at the Lockwood Aircraft Factory, and that the Japanese government wants Daka to steal it. The soldier then lapses back into death, happy that he has served his country.
Bruce and Dick also learn about the new airplane motor, though not through anything as diabolical as a “living corpse.” They get a letter from the U.S. government containing a seemingly blank sheet of paper. But when Bruce submerges the paper in a special chemical, writing appears on the paper telling the heroes to be on the lookout for saboteurs at Lockwood. (This scene contains one of Batman’s funniest gaffes—the address on the letter reads “Mr. Bruce Wayne/1918 Hill Road/Los Angeles, Calif.” Even though the serial was being filmed in California, one would think that Batman’s prop department would have remembered that Batman was supposed to be operating in Gotham City!)
Daka is able to turn two Lockwood employees into zombies and sends them back to the factory to steal the plane containing the new motor. The zombies knock out the plane’s pilots and fly the craft into the sky themselves, unaware that Batman has stowed away on board. Batman attacks the zombies, and during their struggle the plane goes out of control and crashes.
Chapter 6, “Poison Peril,” reveals that Batman and the zombies were inside the plane when it crashed—the solution to this cliffhanger is simply that Batman walks away from the crash miraculously unharmed! In fact, his costume isn’t even dirtied or torn. (Batman’s writers were seemingly running out of escape ideas for Batman only five chapters into the serial.) As Batman makes his way back to town, he looks at a road sign that says “Garden City—58 miles”—it seems that Batman’s prop department was still having problems understanding that Batman’s adventures were supposed to be taking place in Gotham City!
Bruce and Dick are eventually able to get back home, where they find Linda waiting for them. She has come to tell them that Martin’s friend Ken Colton has come to town. Colton had entered into a joint mining venture with Martin, and it just so happens that their mine has yielded a rich supply of (you guessed it) radium. Bruce, Dick and Colton meet over at Linda’s apartment that night so that Colton can tell them all about his good fortune.
Someone else listens in on this conversation: Daka has bugged Linda’s apartment in order to find out her connection to Batman. (He has figured out that there must be some connection between the two, because every time she is in trouble, Batman comes to her rescue.) However, right before Colton tells them where the mine is, Dick finds the bug and disconnects it. Daka then sends his men to break into Colton’s hotel room to try to find out the location of the mine. But Colton comes back to his room while they are there, and a fight ensues. Luckily for Colton, Batman and Robin burst in and chase the thugs off.
Daka still will not give up on finding the location of Colton’s mine, so he commands Martin to call Colton. Under Daka’s influence, Martin asks Colton to meet him at a chemical warehouse. Bruce learns of Martin’s call and assumes that it is meant to lead Colton into a trap. He has Alfred dress up as Colton and go to the warehouse. Of course, it is a trap—Daka’s men arrive and start to rough up “Colton.” Batman and Robin come to Alfred’s rescue, but the thugs overpower them. To make matters worse, some chemicals are ignited during the fight, trapping Batman, Robin and Alfred. The chapter ends with the trio facing what looks to be certain doom as the fire bursts into a fierce explosion.
In Chapter 7, “The Phoney Doctor,” Robin and Alfred take refuge from the explosion in a large safe, and Batman is saved by collapsing steel beams that form a protective arch above him. Later, Bruce calls Colton to warn him that someone is still trying to find the location of his mine. But this warning is not enough to keep Colton out of danger—one of Daka’s men, posing as a doctor, abducts the miner. Bruce and Dick check in on Colton and realize he has been forcibly taken. The handkerchief soaked in chloroform used to drug Colton has been left at the scene, and Bruce sees a Japanese laundry mark on it. Investigating the Japanese laundromat, Bruce and Dick see some of Daka’s men. They change to Batman and Robin and jump the criminals. They are overpowered, and Batman is thrown down an elevator shaft. (Or rather, a laughably bad dummy in a Batman costume is thrown down an elevator shaft!) The elevator car is just about to come down on him as the chapter ends.
In Chapter 8, “Lured by Radium,” Robin stops the elevator car right before it can crush Batman. (However, it does not explain how Batman was able to survive the 20-foot-plus fall right on his face that preceded his close call with the elevator.) Later, Linda convinces Bruce and Dick to accompany her on a visit to Colton’s mine. Since Martin and now Colton have gone missing, Linda thinks that maybe they can find a clue as to their whereabouts inside of Colton’s cabin located near the mine’s entrance. Linda, Bruce, Dick and Alfred set off for the mine, carrying a trailer full of supplies with them.
Daka is holding Colton prisoner, and he is able to persuade the miner to reveal the location of the mine. Daka sends his men and Colton out to the mine to retrieve some radium for him. Daka’s men go the entrance of the mine, and Colton manages to escape from them. Bruce and Dick decide to walk to the entrance of the mine and check it out as well, and there they see the car belonging to Daka’s men. They decide to investigate as Batman and Robin.
Colton exits the mine through a secret passage that leads to a trapdoor located in the floor of the cabin. As he comes up through the trapdoor, he is surprised to find Linda and Alfred there. Colton tells them he is going to blow the mine up with dynamite and finish off Daka’s men. Alfred fears that Bruce and Dick are still in the mine, so he rushes off to warn them. But he doesn’t get far—two of Daka’s men capture him. When Linda realizes that Alfred has not been able to warn Bruce and Dick, she follows Colton through the trapdoor to try to find them. Linda is confronted by several more of Daka’s men. Batman and Robin come to her rescue, and a chaotic fight ensues. During the struggle, one of the thugs lands on the dynamite detonator, which sets off a tremendous explosion. The chapter closes as the explosion brings the walls of the mine crashing down.
In Chapter 9, “The Sign of the Sphinx,” we learn that Batman, Robin and Linda get clear of the explosion and falling rubble. Batman and Robin capture one of Daka’s men, a hood named Marshall. Colton has been killed in the explosion.
Batman and Robin sneak away, change out of their costumes and return to the cabin. Bruce and Dick explain their absence to Linda by telling her they never went into the mine—they laid down under a tree and took a nap! She is furious with them, and tells them that Colton is dead. In another one of Batman’s funniest gaffes, Bruce asks her what happened to Colton—but Linda simply says, “I don’t want to talk about it, let’s get out of this place”—and then everyone just leaves the cabin for home! Their friend has been brutally killed, and they all brush it off as if it were of no more concern than a bad day at work—they don’t even bother to try to find a way to recover his body!
The heroes take Marshall back to the Bat’s Cave, and through him they learn that Daka’s men are hiding out at a waterfront dive called the Sphinx Club. Bruce assumes the guise of a cheap gangster and, calling himself Chuck White, he goes to the club. One of Daka’s men, Fletcher, becomes suspicious of Bruce, pulls a gun on him and prepares to search him. Just then, Robin shines a bat signal flashlight through the window on the wall next to Bruce, and Fletcher and Daka’s other hoods are momentarily distracted. Bruce breaks free of them and changes to Batman. As the criminals attack Robin outside the club, Batman appears on a nearby rooftop, spreading his arms wide to make a giant bat silhouette with his cape just before he pounces on them. Unfortunately, this dramatic entrance doesn’t help the heroes’ chances in the fight—they are overpowered and Batman is knocked out under a loading ramp. The chapter ends with one of the gangsters cutting a rope that seemingly sends the ramp crashing down on Batman.
Chapter 10, “Flying Spies,” reveals that Batman is able to roll out of the way of the ramp right before it lands on him. Later, the heroes decide to turn Marshall over to the police. However, they do not tell the police about the Sphinx Club and the fact that Daka’s men are hiding there. The heroes hope that Fletcher or one of the other men will lead them to the brains of their organization. (Batman and Robin still have no idea they are up against Daka—they haven’t heard his name mentioned since the very opening of Chapter 1.)
Daka receives word that a shipment of radium will soon be dropped from a plane for him. As he prepares to receive this shipment, Batman and Robin also receive word about the radium drop from the U.S. government. Bruce again dons his Chuck White disguise and returns to the Sphinx Club. He allows himself to be recruited as a member of Daka’s gang, and his first assignment is to help Daka’s men retrieve the radium. As they wait for the plane to fly overhead and drop the shipment, several of Daka’s men again become suspicious of Bruce. When they confront him, he runs out of sight and changes into Batman. The radium is dropped via parachute, and Batman drives off in one of the criminals’ cars in order to get to it. But one of Daka’s men shoots out a tire on the car. The car careens off a road and bursts into flames.
In Chapter 11, “A Nipponese Trap,” Batman jumps free of the car before it crashes and burns. (There is no explanation as to why the car caught on fire in the first place—after all, it only suffered a punctured tire!) Batman, smarting over his failure to keep the radium shipment out of the criminals’ hands, forms another plan to catch up with the criminals. Again disguising himself as Chuck White, he gets himself thrown into the prison cell next to Marshall. Bruce strikes up a conversation with Marshall, telling him that he knows where Batman’s Bat’s Cave is located. Marshall gives Bruce the address of yet another hideout that Daka’s men are using, and tells him to go there and relay the information about the Bat’s Cave.
Batman and Robin go to the address Marshall has provided and attack Daka’s men who are stationed there. But they are yet again overpowered and knocked out. The criminals unmask Batman, but Bruce is still disguised as Chuck White—so they assume that Chuck White is Batman. Robin regains consciousness, and from the other room he radios the police for help. Realizing their cover is blown, the criminals decide to dynamite the hideout so that the police will not find any clues there. The chapter ends with Batman and Robin apparently still inside the hideout as it is destroyed by a huge explosion.
Chapter 12, “Embers of Evil,” reveals that the heroes are able to escape the explosion through a trapdoor in the hideout floor. Later, Daka hatches yet another scheme to capture Batman. Using Martin as bait, Daka draws Linda into a trap, and this time she does not escape his clutches. Now using Linda as bait, Daka lures Batman and Robin to a factory where Daka’s men are holding her hostage. A fight breaks out between the heroes and the henchmen, and the factory catches fire in the melee. Everyone escapes except for Batman, who as the chapter ends is trapped in the inferno.
In Chapter 13, “Eight Steps Down,” Batman gets out of the factory right before it collapses. He and Robin return to the Sphinx Club (shut down by Capt. Arnold since Daka’s men were discovered to be hiding there) to look for clues regarding Linda’s disappearance.
They capture one of Daka’s thugs, Bernie, still hiding out in the building, and take him back to the Bat’s Cave to interrogate him. Bernie tips them off to still another one of Daka’s hideouts, one located on Bell Street. There the heroes find a hidden tunnel leading from it to Daka’s lair.
Meanwhile, Linda is taken to Daka and comes face-to-face with him for the first time. Daka tries to force Linda to lead Bruce Wayne to him; Daka has finally come to the conclusion that the connection between Linda and Batman might be that Wayne and Batman are the same person. Linda refuses, so Daka prepares to turn her into a zombie. Just as he is strapping her to the zombie machine, Batman sets off an alarm in the tunnel outside of Daka’s lair. Daka opens a trapdoor under Batman’s feet and he falls into a pit with spikes lining the walls. (This is another one of Batman’s most unintentionally funny scenes. The spikes in the pit do not look sharp at all, they are shaped like—well, to be perfectly blunt, they are extremely phallic-looking! If Fredric Wertham, author of the 1954 anti-comic diatribe Seduction of the Innocent, had ever gotten the chance to see this scene, he would have had a field day with it.) The walls suddenly start to close in as the chapter ends.
In Chapter 14, “The Executioner Strikes,” Batman wedges a crowbar between the walls to keep from being impaled by the spikes. Daka destroys the Bell Street tunnel leading to his hideout, so Batman and Robin resolve to find another way in. Daka also makes good on his threat to turn Linda into a zombie; he then instructs her to write Bruce a letter asking him to meet her. Bruce receives the letter and, even though he is convinced it is meant to lead him into a trap, he goes to the location of the meeting as Batman. Two of Daka’s men jump him, knock him out and place him in a large coffin-like crate. (One would think that the mighty Batman would be on his guard a bit more when walking into a situation that he knew was a trap.) In a quick succession of scenes, we see the crate being taken to Daka’s lair and Daka dumping it into his alligator pit.
In Chapter 15, “The Doom of the Rising Sun,” we learn that Chapter 14’s final scenes were basically an out-and-out cheat accomplished through editing: Well before the crate is taken to Daka, Robin rescues Batman from his predicament. The heroes then place one of Daka’s men in the crate, and he meets his end in the alligator pit. Meanwhile, Batman and Robin have followed the men who took the crate to Daka’s lair, so they have finally found a way to get to their as-yet-unknown foe.
The heroes make their way through the “Japanese Cave of Horrors,” trying to locate the entrance into Daka’s lair. Via one of his remote viewing devices Daka sees Batman and Robin in the cave, and he sends his men out to capture them. The heroes overcome all of the thugs (yes, they finally get to decisively win a fight—after all, we are in the last chapter of the serial!) and Batman makes his way into the main chamber of Daka’s lair.
Before Batman can get to Daka, two zombies grab him. Daka prepares to turn Batman into a zombie, but before he does he cannot resist the chance to gloat a bit, bringing out his zombies Martin and Linda to show Batman how complete his triumph is. Robin bursts in and throws a lasso around Daka, capturing him. Batman then makes the bound Daka walk him through the process of “de-zombifying” Linda and Martin.
In going through Daka’s papers, Batman learns that Martin was convicted and sent to prison on the basis of false testimony from one of Daka’s men, so Martin can now begin a fresh start in life as an exonerated man. While Batman has been looking over these papers, Daka has loosened his bonds. He jumps up and takes Linda hostage as he tries to make his escape. Batman yells to Robin to hit the switch that closes the automatic door leading out of the lair, but Robin mistakenly hits the switch that opens the trapdoor leading to the alligator pit. As luck would have it, Daka is standing on the trapdoor—he falls into the pit and is devoured by his alligator “pets.”
Capt. Arnold arrives on the scene but the officer still is not able to find out who Batman and Robin really are because the heroes escape through one of the lair’s hidden doors. Arnold offers to take Linda home just as Bruce and Dick come in looking for her. (Capt. Arnold probably should have been able to guess Batman and Robin’s real identities by this extremely coincidental appearance of Bruce and Dick, but he makes no such deduction.) The serial ends with Bruce, Dick and Linda all headed for home, happy in the knowledge that good has vanquished over evil.
After “The Doom of the Rising Sun” finished its run in the autumn of 1943, Batman’s big screen debut was a matter of history. And not particularly momentous history at that. Batman performed well enough for Columbia, but its quality was such that there was really nothing to distinguish the production from the dozens of other similar low-budget serials that premiered in the mid–1940s. So, generally speaking, Batman went from the theaters to obscurity almost overnight—the serial was given a very low profile re-release by Columbia in 1954, and after that, it gathered dust in the studio’s archives. Batman remained there for over a decade, apparently destined to be forgotten by all but the most avid film buffs and comic book fans.
Then in 1965, a very strange thing happened to Batman. As the concept of “camp” entertainment became popular in the 1960s, and younger audiences looked to find works so outrageously bad they were good, Columbia re-released the serial in its 15-chapter entirety under the title An Evening with Batman and Robin. The marathon film played in selected cities across the country, mainly in college towns, and it drew huge crowds who howled with laughter at Batman and Robin’s efforts to vanquish Daka’s forces of evil. In fact, this release of Batman as a camp piece actually brought the film far more attention than it had ever received as a straight action-adventure piece. Time magazine even ran a national story on the serial in November 1965 which stated “Wilson and Croft prompt more laughter than any other pair since Laurel and Hardy.”3
Batman’s 1965 resurrection as a camp hero was certainly troubling to the character’s loyal comic book fans—after all, DC Comics had just performed a major Bat-revamp the previous year to make him a more plausible, “serious” character than he had been in his 1950s incarnation. But in all fairness, Batman arguably worked far better as camp entertainment than it ever had as an action-adventure work. Simply put, from a modern perspective much of Batman was ridiculous—so why not enjoy it as comedic, escapist entertainment?
Holy foreshadowing, Batman! In an amazing coincidence, guess what television show was going into production just as Batman was enjoying its run as an unintentional comedy? The ABC prime-time series Batman premiered in January 1966, right on the heels of An Evening with Batman and Robin’s improbable success. So the 1943 Batman turned out to be the work that started to shape the general public’s perception of Batman as a camp hero. Of course, ABC’s Batman was the work that would cement this perception for decades, but the 1943 Batman should be credited (perhaps serious Batman fans would prefer the word “faulted”) for getting the “Batman as camp” ball rolling.
In his autobiography Batman and Me, Bob Kane expressed his disappointment over seeing his creation come to the screen for the first time in such a low-budget, poorly-realized production. He visited the set while Batman was being filmed, and was distressed to learn that Columbia wasn’t even giving Batman and Robin a Batmobile to drive around in. Kane was also decidedly unimpressed with the serial’s uninspired World War II–themed plot. In short, Batman’s creator didn’t think any more of Batman than the 1960s audiences who viewed it as a camp work did.4
Interestingly, Batman was treated as somewhat of a more “serious” work when it was released on home video formats in the years following its 1960s camp revival. Due to the success of An Evening with Batman and Robin and ABC’s Batman, Columbia edited the serial into a roughly hour-long, six-chapter version entitled The Adventures of Batman and offered it for sale on 8mm and Super 8mm film at stores throughout the country in the late 1960s. The Adventures of Batman was packaged in brightly colored boxes that featured a dramatic painting of Batman clad in a parachute harness, bearing down on a criminal. The art was accompanied by the tag line “Mightiest Hero of All Action Serials!”
Obviously, this art was not particularly representative of the action found in The Adventures of Batman. In fact, its image of Batman was actually taken from posters used to advertise the 1949 serial Batman and Robin. But still, it presented The Adventures of Batman in the spirit that the 1943 Batman was originally intended to be taken—namely, as an action-adventure piece rather than a camp piece. Unfortunately, Columbia short-changed this home movie version of Batman by choosing to release it as a silent film with subtitles rather than as a sound film. When stripped of sound, The Adventures of Batman simply did not have the same kind of impact that the serial had in its original 1943 form.
In the 1970s, Columbia released a second home movie version of Batman which was far superior to The Adventures of Batman. The serial was presented under its original title on Super 8mm sound film as part of a series called Columbia Pictures: The Condensed Features Collection. This version of Batman not only restored sound to the serial, but also presented it in its full 15-chapter format. The Super 8mm sound version of Batman was packaged in boxes that featured colorful pop art–style renderings of Batman, Robin, Linda Page and Dr. Daka.
Batman was released to the general public on VHS videotape in 1990 by GoodTimes Home Video. Unfortunately, the two-tape set was unquestionably a “cheapie” designed to cash in on the character’s newfound popularity following the blockbuster success of the 1989 film Batman. It was recorded at a substandard playback speed, which resulted in picture and sound being considerably less sharp than most pre-recorded videotapes. It also contained some decidedly amateurish dialogue edits in its audio track; these edits were meant to tone down the serial’s anti–Japanese content, replacing the word “Japs” with the word “thugs,” for example. Since this VHS version of Batman was likely going to be viewed by very young Batman fans, the edits were definitely reasonable ones—however, they should have been handled with considerably more finesse.
Like the box art for the Batman home movies, the box art for the GoodTimes VHS version of Batman advertised the serial as an action-adventure piece. It featured a dramatic, though highly retouched photograph of Lewis Wilson in his Batman costume, leaping through a cloud of smoke. The most amusing thing about the photo was that the bat ears on Wilson’s cowl were severely cropped so that they did not point off in crazy, asymmetric angles the way they really did in the serial!
Batman was finally treated to a high-quality home video release in late 2005, when Sony Pictures Home Entertainment presented the serial on a 2-disc DVD set. The overall picture and sound quality of the set was reasonably good, although it varied from chapter to chapter—some chapters seemed almost pristine, while others appeared to be derived from inferior quality prints. Perhaps the set’s biggest drawback was that it offered no bonus features or printed material dealing with the making of the serial. That said, however, the Sony DVD release of Batman was a vast improvement over the previous home video versions of Batman.
Interestingly, Sony chose not to remove any of Batman’s anti–Japanese sentiments in their DVD release of the serial. As previously mentioned, the GoodTimes VHS version of Batman altered some of the serial’s most bigoted dialogue, presumably because GoodTimes was anticipating that their product would be watched by very young Batman fans. Sony certainly had to assume that their version of the serial would also attract the attention of youngsters, but they decided to let the serial’s unpleasant racial stereotypes stand as a matter of historical record.
Like previous home video versions of Batman, the Batman DVD set was packaged in a manner that was both visually striking and decidedly misleading. The cover of the set was adorned with dramatic, sepia-toned artwork depicting Batman and Robin swooping down from out of the sky, an image far more stylish and striking than anything found in the serial itself! Obviously, the artwork was a not-so-subtle attempt to market the set as a kind of counterpart to the 2005 blockbuster film Batman Begins, which had first been advertised through a series of sepia-toned posters. Just in case anyone missed Sony’s attempt to connect the two works, there was a tag line displayed prominently on Batman’s back cover that read “SEE HOW BATMAN REALLY BEGAN!” And just in case that didn’t get the point across, the Batman DVD set was released on the very same week that Batman Begins was first released on DVD!
It has now been seven decades since Batman was first released, and Sony’s Batman DVD set has guaranteed that the serial will be accessible to anyone who wishes to see it for a long, long time. Batman is basically such a poor motion picture work that one might argue it is not deserving of the longevity it has ended up enjoying. But this author feels that Batman is worthy of remembrance. After all, the serial does represent the first time Batman ever appeared on screen—and despite all its flaws, Batman’s best moments are just about as memorable and enjoyable as any screen depiction of the character to date. Granted, these moments are few and far between. But scenes such as the ones showing Batman and Robin interrogating thugs in the Bat’s Cave, or Batman spreading his arms wide to make a giant bat silhouette with his cape just before he pounces on a group of criminals, are “classic Batman,” as true to the character as any Batman image put on film in the 70-plus years since. Batman might not be very good, but it is still good enough to always stand as a very important milestone in the character’s history.