classicsoncall
I really wish I had seen this as a kid because I'm pretty well convinced I wouldn't have fallen for any of the goofy gimmicks on display here. Don't get me wrong, these Columbia serials have a special place in the minds and hearts of Batman fans like myself, but they do take a special effort to get through. One is always on the fence on how liberal one's use of the fast forward button ought to be, in my case I have to breeze through each of the opening chapters to get to just the right spot to see what kind of red herring the last one offered before a car went over a cliff or some building blew up.Robert Lowery and Johnny Duncan seemed like pretty good choices to portray the costumed heroes; Lowery managed to distract me a bit with his uncanny resemblance to Johnny Weissmuller, and it eventually dawned on me that he portrayed Big Tim Champion in the 'Circus Boy' TV series of the mid-Fifties. How he dealt with the Bat-Mask I'll never know, the protruding nose and ears might have been menacing to crooks but they seemed rather silly looking to me. Perhaps to further a connection to Batman's namesake, I thought it interesting that the script often called for him to swoop down from an elevated position with outstretched cape to simulate a flying bat.One of the funniest things throughout the entire serial occurred when Batman needed a blow torch to cut through some wall or other, and he just so happened to have one under his cape. Throughout the story there are a myriad of credibility defying devices introduced that boggle the mind like a remote control machine that stops automotive vehicles in their tracks, invisibility rays, and a tele-viewer the Wizard is able to use to see virtually anything the script calls for.More than anything, what blows my mind is that at one time, grown men saw fit to write, produce and act in these stories with virtually no self-conscious embarrassment over how dumb they looked. Take for example any scene in which more than one thug or henchman was involved in which they consistently crossed paths wondering what to do next. And was it my imagination or did every uniformed policeman in the picture look like he was already past retirement age? Well look, I don't want to rain on anyone's parade here. Early serials like this were an interesting attempt to get super-heroes from the comic pages onto the big screen and were wildly and successfully accepted by young matinée fans of the day. And if you missed an episode during any fifteen chapter run it's not like it would have been the end of the world. You just picked up the story in mid stream the following week and you'd be back on track in no time.
along_came_bialy
I only saw this series once or twice as a child and thought it no longer existed, however I managed to track it down a couple of years ago on video. Though it is not as good as the 1943 series, it is still a great production. It has better visual effects (most notably The Wizard becoming invisible),which must have been amazing in 1949. There was also more intrigue than the 1943 series, the question about The wizards true identity was well written. William Fawcett was wonderful as the eccentric Profeser Hamill, my favorite character from the series. Robert Lowery and Johnny Duncan were superb as Batman and Robin. Johnny Duncan was not as "in your face" as the 60's Robin, which I really admire. The ending was not greatly acted, however the series was low budget even for the 1940's so It might have been filmed quickly. I really like the car Batman Drives as well, it was just a normal car, allowing Bruce wayne to be drive it as himself and Batman. The fact that it was filmed in Black and White makes it more dramatic. It has the same effect as Tim Burtons dark films.
Brandt Sponseller
In the review I just finished for Darkness (2002/I), I mentioned how "originality" shouldn't be an important consideration for artworks, because it is a quality that's usually determined by the viewer's familiarity with precursor material, which almost always exists. This 1949 Batman and Robin serial is a great example of that. I'm a big fan of the 1966 – 1968 "Batman" television show starring Adam West (please release it on DVD, by the way!). I would have said that the late 60s television show was a very original portrayal of the caped crusader. No, I wasn't quite so stupid to believe that 20th Century Fox Television invented the character. What I would have meant is that the wonderfully campy way that they portrayed the character was original. However, I had never even heard of this 1949 serial until the release of the DVD this past March (which is probably sufficient for serious Batman fans to call me stupid, after all). I was completely surprised at how close in tone and appearance Batman and Robin is to the Adam West show. That hasn't lessened my appreciation of the television show, but it certainly helped me love Batman and Robin! That's not to say that Batman and Robin contains fight scenes with swanky late 1960s go-go music and "Bang!" and "Wham!" graphics superimposed in colorful little stars, but the fight scenes here are not far from that. Plus, Robert Lowery, who plays Batman here, looks strikingly similar to Adam West, his costume looks similar, as does Robin (Johnny Duncan) and his costume, Alfred (Eric Wilton), Commissioner Gordon (Lyle Talbot), the Bruce Wayne house set, the Batcave set, and so on. This serial is always just on the edge of camp/supreme cheesiness, and it frequently crosses that line. It makes you realize that the Adam West television series arrived at its tenor by just slightly exaggerating this serial enough so that it would become a tongue-in-cheek spoof.So how do you know if you'll like Batman and Robin if you haven't seen it? If you've seen the Adam West television show, imagine it toned down just a tad, film it in black & white, and set it in the late 1940s--Batman even drives a big, old late 40s gas guzzler instead of the Batmobile. Just like the television show, every one of the 15 episodes here except the last end in a ridiculous cliff-hanger, with a narrator saying, "Can Batman release himself from the web of duct tape without falling into the boiling vat of goo?" And of course we know that the next episode will have him easily escaping. Except here, unlike the television show, he'll escape merely by an easy physical effort rather than employing the "Bat Anti-duct-tape-de-goo-inater". Well, usually. There were cool "oxygen breathers" and such.The villain here is known as "The Wizard". He has the typical comic book bad guy dreams of world domination/destruction. He tries to achieve this primarily by acquiring a "remote control" machine, which is a big old vacuum tube and dial monstrosity that enables its wielder to manipulate any kind of mechanical/electrical device at a distance. It basically turns things like automobiles into life-sized versions of those remote controlled toy cars you can buy at Radio Shack, except that it makes them even easier to break. This probably seemed like a much more amazing, fantastical idea in 1949. Now it's just humorous, especially how The Wizard can "tune" the remote control machine into any object of his desire by arbitrarily tweaking a couple big rotary knobs.In order to stretch out the serial, which is just the one story (maybe that's normal for serials--I don't know, this is the first one I've seen so far) into 15 episodes, most of which are around 16 minutes in length, minus the minute or two recap of the previous episode's cliffhanger at the beginning, The Wizard has to run into a lot of technical glitches, almost have his henchman caught a few times, and they keep trying to dispose of Batman and Robin in different ways--each time saying, "Now they're really out of our hair for good!"--This is said about ten times. The bulk of each episode consists of material like this, plus the obligatory, frequently hilarious fight scenes.That might not sound completely attractive, but the absurdity of the scenarios and the absurdity of the "repetitions" make Batman and Robin very entertaining. Some aspects--such as the Batcave material, including Batman's ridiculous devices (my favorite was a machine that could reconstruct a photograph that had been burnt to ashes), could have been featured more often for my tastes. Vicki Vale (a very attractive Jane Adams) and the ubiquitous human deus ex machina, Barry Brown (Rick Vallin), could have been better integrated into the plot and made more important characters. But overall, Batman and Robin is well constructed and well written, as long as you have a strong taste for the ridiculous.It is well known that Steven Spielberg and George Lucas were influenced by serials from this era. Although I don't know the extent to which Batman and Robin was actually an influence on Lucas, it's interesting to note at least some minor resemblances to Star Wars, including the fact that The Wizard has Darth Vader qualities, some episodes have names like "The Wizard Strikes Back", and the musical cue when the episode title card appears sounds suspiciously similar to John Williams score when the episode title cards appear in the Star Wars films. I also thought it was interesting to note the ways in which Gene Simmons' early costumes, at least, bore a resemblance to this (and the West) instantiation of Batman. But that would only interest you if you were also a Kiss fan.Is Batman and Robin "original"? I suppose I'll have to save that for if and when the 1943 serial, The Batman, makes it to DVD.
BadWebDiver
I remember this being shown in serial version as a black & white fill-in for a 70s youth culture show in Australia. It was actually a music and pop culture show, and this was done as a novelty bit; but I thoroughly loved it; and avidly followed the adventure every week. I wish some younger kids shows of today had the guts to try something like that, and reinvent the classic stories.I especially remember the submarine going to the hidden lair of the villain.And also Batman and Robin riding around in the standard convertible. For a while, I started to doubt this version existed, since it never got mentioned in any discussion of Batman.It's this version that caused me to be rather dismissive of the more campy over-the-top TV series (starring Adam West and Burt Ward) that everyone is so fond of now.
