Rating:  -
Fascinating movie serial of Batman and Robin serial.Robin looks very young and Batman plays the bored always tired rich playboy to perfection.Look out for J.Carol Naish as the Asian evil doer.Note this was filmed during World War 2 and the film studios knew nothing of political correctness.
Rating: -
The 1943 Batman serial is the first rendition on screen of the famed Caped Crusader. Generally, the film quality is good with occasional picture contrast instability (as where dark shades appear as if the brightness dial has been turned up).
Chapter One is a disappointment as it seems to have been lifted from a VHS copy with the contrast too strong as faces appear white with loss of detail. Fortunately, the subsequent chapters were derived from better-preserved (though not perfect) film materials taken perhaps from the studio or a collector's vault. .
The plot line is too "comicky" to be taken seriously. Racist references and comments toward the Japanese are common, but heck, this was produced during the Second World War where Japan was vilified to the extreme, the way that Bin Laden and his ilk are vilified today.
While the later post-war Batman and Robin serial, also released by Sony, is top notch in picture quality and sound quality compared to this, the 1943 serial gives the viewer a flavor of the times then.
Rating:  -
Despite the overt racism, low budget, and low quality Batman suit, this serial was much, much better than I expected. It is vastly, vastly superior to the almost unwatchably bad 1949 serial, `Batman and Robin'(some would say that the 1949 serial is not `almost' unwatchable). This serial should be very enjoyable to fans of old movies, B-pictures, golden age comics, as well as serials. I rate it as one of my top 5 favorite serials.
Admittedly, Lewis Wilson's Batman suit leaves a lot to be desired. Anyone who has seen the stills available on the net can see that for himself. But director Lambert Hiller was pretty savvy regarding this deficiency and is pretty adept at limiting and controlling the audience's visual exposure to the suit (and it's the mask that has the most problems) so that the giggle factor is minimized. You tend to see Batman's mask only for a few seconds at a time. In a lot of frames, Batman is seen mostly from behind, so that you only see the pointy -eared head, and scalloped bat-cape. This makes Batman seem more mysterious and formidable, and follows a tradition from the comic books.
I found that the serial was so engaging and the directing so skillful, that by the middle of the 2nd chapter I didn't think the suit was silly anymore.
A lot of the credit goes to the cast. Lewis Wilson was very credible as both Bruce Wayne and Batman. As Bruce Wayne, he is suave and upper class, and as Batman he is tough, brainy, and no-nonsense. I especially enjoyed hearing him chastise, and then hang up on, a slow-witted policeman when Batman is debriefing him via phone.
There's a couple scenes in which Batman takes crooks to the Batcave, tries to browbeat them for information, then locks them inside alone with his pet bats. In one very clever sequence, he employs a nice bit of deception on one of these thugs. But even though it is WWII, the fate of the world us up for grabs, U.S. terroritory has been attacked on 3 fronts and U.S. citizens are interned at camps in the Phillipines, Batman never employs torture, waterboarding, simulated suffocation, sexual humiliation, electric shock, or dog attacks, or other `enhanced interrogation methods' to extract information from these traitors and saboteurs. That is because, even though he is a weird figure of the dark, striking terror into the hearts of criminals, Batman is not willing to degrade himself by torture, he is not willing to sacrifice his own humanity. Novel thought, eh?
The fight scenes range from so-so to pretty cool. Sometimes the cape gets in Batman's way, which is why if you really were a masked vigilante you wouldn't survive your first week on the job if you wore a cape. But there really are some good moves in some of the fight scenes, like when a bunch of thugs knocks Batman down and pile on, the stuntmen handled it really well when Batman throws the thugs off. Also, the stuntman who played Batman was able to do a really convincing knockout punch, there are times when he really looks like he is putting all his weight into it, and you know the thug's jaw shoulda been busted. Batman jumps down on crooks through windows and skylights a lot, which is what Batman should do.
I also liked the moments when Batman pulled Bruce Wayne's fiancé, Linda Page, out of danger: from his voice it sounds like he actually cares about her, and is not just using her to dispel rumors about his sexual preferences. Unlike a modern Batman, however, Bruce Wayne never succumbs to the temptation of revealing his double identity to his love interest. Speaking of Linda, she is a quite a fox and a good actress as well.
Douglas Croft made an excellent Robin, once you get used to his big hair (this is the 1st cinematic `afro' hair style, 25 years before Linc from `The Mod Squad'!), valiant, good in a fight, not the least bit obnoxious. Croft was 17 when this was filmed, appearing to be about 14 or 15, which is about how old the real Robin would have been, so Croft had the honor of being the only real boy to play the boy wonder.
Also, since the film is in black and white, Robin's suit shows up as a variety of gray tones, as opposed to the rather sissified red and yellow of the comics (what latent tendencies the guy who dreamed up that suit must have had!). Likewise, Batman's suit is darker in black and white, and in many scenes it's plausible that he really can frighten criminals.
Characterization is, shall we say, minimalist, at least as far as the good guys are concerned. In my opinion, this approach works well because excessive emotional exposition would slow the action down. Besides, the histrionics and hang-wringing that modern directors have impose on our childhood heroes usually just makes them look ridiculous. One nice touch here is that Bruce and Dick sometimes address each other by their given names, despite being in costume, which is something real people would do if real people moonlighted as superheroes.
Some people criticize this serial because there is not a proper Batmobile. But you have to remember, Batman only had a real Batmobile -a black hot rod with a custom batnose front end- for only about 1 year when this serial was made. Nothing, not the characters, or any of the various gimmicks, had become an institution yet. Only a year prior, Batman had been driving around in a regular car, distinguished only by a bat-shaped hood ornament. Conversely, this serial caused Alfred and the Batcave to be introduced in the comics. These contributions greatly outweigh the absence of a Batmobile.
The director, Lambert Hiller, had previously done `Dracula's Daughter,' and put in many atmospheric touches that give this serial the ambience of a 1930's Universal horror film. This is entirely appropriate, since the original Batman comics borrowed heavy from those films, and had only been created 4 years before this serial, in 1939. Having read a great many of the Batman comics of this period, it is my opinion that this serial comes the closest to the original concept of Batman, as envisioned by his 4 creators, Bill Finger, Gardner Fox, Jerry Robinson and Bob Kane (who managed to grab all the credit). The 1st year or 2 of Batman comics had a very dark, primitive, gritty feel, which this serial captures nicely. The opening musical score for each chapter, if you listen to it, contains the inspiration for Danny Elfman's 1989 Batman music.
Speaking of horror, Dr. Tito Daka has to be one of the greatest, most evil, intelligent, sadistic and insane serial villains ever. As great as, perhaps greater (?) than Ming the Merciless from Flash Gordon. And the wacky happenings in Daka's lab and hideout are just some of the wildest, weirdest, pulp-fictionest stuff you've ever seen. Wait till you see the part where a Japanese soldier is put into suspended animation, dumped into a coffin, and electrically revived to deliver a secret message.
There has been much said over the years about the racism of this serial, and yes, there is considerable racism. Some of it seems too ridiculous to take seriously now: Dr. Daka was played by a Caucasian actor, and his supposed Japanese voice sounds instead like Peter Lorre trying to do a Mexican accent. But there are a couple places where the narrator talks about the WWII U.S. govt. concentration camps, wherein 120,000 U.S. citizens were unconstitutionally confined for the duration. Even after all these years, that's still offensive. But it's offensive because it really happened, the U.S. really did put 120,000 people into concentration camps.
Another touchy point are the recurring shots of a bizarre propaganda carnival ride, in which wax figures depict Japanese soldiers picking on and brutalizing Caucasians. Obviously, these images were meant to inflame anti-Japanese feelings in U.S. theater-goers, thus helping the nation retain it's `resolve.' Today, however, anyone who has read even the smallest amount of history will know that compared to the real atrocities committed by both Japan and the U.S., the wax tableaus now seem mild in comparison.
I am told that the late 1980's VHS release of this serial had been censored of much of the anti-Japanese references, possibly by the Japanese company Sony, which holds the rights to it. If that is so, then it is perhaps significant that Sony no longer feels obliged to sensor this material. Maybe this is cautionary, giving we who would inter people on the basis of religion or ethnicity (can you say `Gitmo'?) a glimpse into a previous time when, to our eventual shame, we did interr 120,000 people. Or perhaps Sony sees that the U.S. is now competing in the War Crimes Olympics, thus tacitly condoning, perhaps emulating, the Axis tactics of WWII. Maybe Sony just thinks atrocities have come back into style.
Rating: -
It's interesting watching the 40's version of the series. It was more like Batman was intended than the 60's version. Check it out if your a fan.
Rating: -
I watched the first episode when I first got this last year and wasn't too drawn in by it. Yeah it was Batman, but it just didn't grab me right off the bat (no pun). But I gave it another shot and it did get better. Batman and Robin themselves were actually pretty good. They didn't always make decisions that I thought were true to the characters (how many times does Batman let the bad guys meet their doom? I lost count) but overall I thought they worked well off each other and were never annoying. Batman's ears look a little like horns (Devilman?), but other than that the costumes are Adam West quality.
The rest of the cast varies. I enjoyed their version of Alfred who was a good source of comic relief and also got in on quite a bit of the action. It should be noted that even though Alfred existed in the comics beforehand as a fatter, moustacheless version of himself, that the Alfred we know today had his look based on this actor. The love interest to Bruce is a cookie cutter damsel in distress and the villain really leaves something to be desired. Dr. Daka isn't horrible as a villain, but really wasn't very interesting and reminded me more of a Bond villain than anything.
The overall plot is pretty basic and not very exciting, but I will give them credit for the cliff hanger endings that have become typical of Batman stories. The action is pretty awful by today's standards, lots of punching and falling, repeat and is usually how every episode ends and begins, recapping what happened previously. Not once can I remember Batman kicking anyone or throwing a batarang, which is not how I picture a man who spent years training to fight in multiple styles of martial arts, but I'll let it go considering the timeframe.
The one thing that saves this for me is without the well chreographed fights, the cool car, and the gadgets, Batman still manages to overcome the odds with his wits and detective skills. There were times I was apalled that Batman would be so careless but then to discover that is what he intended to gather information. Also I really enjoyed the fact that he went undercover as Chuck White, a sleazy criminal, on more than a few occasions because as of now, I don't recall Batman every disguising himself in any recent incarnations of the character and that truely sticks to the roots. This serial is also responsible for introducing the bat cave to the mythology.
I will watch the 1949 serial to compare it to this one. I just hope that the plot is better with a more fulfilling ending and the villain will be more engaging.
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