Batman (1943)

User Rating:

6.8/10   

Director:

Lambert Hillyer

Writers:

Bob Kane (character)
Victor McLeod (screenplay) ...

Release Date:

15 April 1943 (USA)

Genre:

Action | Adventure | Crime | Sci-Fi | Thriller

Tagline:

A HUNDRED TIMES MORE THRILLING ON THE SCREEN! (original 1943 one-sheet posters)

Plot:

Japanese spymaster Prince Daka operates a covert espionage organization located in Metropolis' now-deserted Little Tokyo which turns American scientists into pliable zombies.

Plot Keywords:

Japanese | Bat | Espionage | Batman | Spymaster

Cast

Lewis Wilson	...	Batman / Bruce Wayne
Douglas Croft	...	Robin / Richard 'Dick' Grayson
J. Carrol Naish	...	Dr. Tito Daka / Prince Daka
Shirley Patterson	...	Linda Page

Also Known As:

An Evening with Batman and Robin (USA) (reissue title)
The Batman (USA) (poster title)

Runtime:

260 min (15 episodes)

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (RCA Sound System)

Certification:

USA:Approved

Filming Locations:

Iverson Ranch, Chatsworth, Los Angeles, California, USA

Company:

Columbia Pictures Corporation

Trivia:

With this release, Batman became the first DC Comics character to have his own serial.

Goofs:

Revealing mistakes: A hairy-legged stuntman plays Robin (whose legs are clean-shaven) in several shots.

Quotes:

[first lines]
Narrator: High atop one of the hills which ring the teaming metropolis of Gotham City, a large house rears its bulk against the dark sky. Outwardly there's nothing to distinguish this house from many others, but deep in the cavernous basements of this house is a chamber hewn from the living rock of the mountainside...

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Steel (1997)

Soundtrack:

Rienzi- Overture

Ultimate nostalgia experience still intrigues.

Discovering the Batman serial and the strip cartoon at the age of eight must have shaped (warped?) my taste for the rest of my life.

Even pre-pubescent, I could tell this one was superior to the draggy Sam Katzman chapter plays which engulfed my Saturday afternoons. Encountering it again in the sixties when it was a star turn in the low camp boom wasn't an anti climax. The imagery (imagery yet!) of the comic book survived diluted and distorted. Batman silhouetted against a night sky made white by the deep red filter, after Robin strikes fear into the hearts of the henchmen by showing the bat signal on their wall, remains embedded in the memory bank. A disguised Bruce Wayne waves a gun at one stage and we miss the Batmobile but Bob Kane made over his drawings of Alfred the Butler to look like William Austin.

Add on another forty (gulp) years and we've had political correctness an a version removing Knox Manning's narration about the wisdom of a government that locks up it's evil Nipponese citizens in a camp or the fetching Shirley Patterson shrieking "A Jap" when faced with J. Carrol Naisch, his Irish eyes pulled back into the fiendish mask of Dr. Dakar the sadistic son of Nippon feeding henchmen to pet alligators. The baggy forties suits and baggy 4F extras, along with the tackiness of the hand me down sets have become period detail as much as drab. We do notice that they have only two zombie hats so if there are a couple on screen, one has to go out and send another one in.

Along with that however, there are some remarkably well staged action scenes - the chase after that armored car we keep on seeing in old Columbia movies, the fire that showers (The) Batman with burning rafters,apparently staged by western specialist Harry Frazer who gets a writer credit.

Lewis Wilson, Douglas Croft and Shirley Patterson must have resented the fact that their careers peaked here but how about poor old Lambert Hillyer who was one of the architects of the classic westerns of William S. Hart and has now survived only as the director of record of this rush job kids actioner.