Summer of 1981, 1982, 1983...really about 5 or 6 summers in a row, WTAF channel 29 in Philadelphia aired Batman reruns ritually, starting around Memorial Day and ending just before Labor Day...they knew when school was about to end and when most everyone began. Also when we went to Michigan, WXON 20 always seemed to have it scheduled in the mornings.
Batman was a show I took seriously in watching, particularly the fistfights. I also loved the music...a foreshadowng of my interest in TV/movie instrumentals.
I last talked about the structure of the first season which first aired in the winter and spring of 1966, and covered the first story which featured the Riddler.
The next week featured Burgess Meredith's first Penguin story. This to me was actually the loosest and weakest of the first season, though Burgess Meredith immediately established himself as a strong regular go-to villain who would pop up regularly throughout the series. The weakness here was the lack of a solid criminal scheme, rather the Penguin wanted Batman and Robin to "plan" it for him. Still the opening theme was not quite complete with its sound effect but was making progress.
And then we have the following week with the introduction of the Joker, the second most regular villain, featuring Cesar Romero as the "clown prince of crime". Unlike the Penguin's first foray, the Joker's was strong, albeit with some twists and turns as he adapted to Batman's actions. At the climax of the second part, the Joker threatens to behead Batman and Robin if a ransom is not paid. This episode also featured a slightly different Bat fight piece that was used only once more (in the next week's first parter in fact).
Note: on older rerun copies, Cesar Romero's signature mustache was not clearly seen, but remasters show it quite plainly.
Also, we see from these first 3 episodes alone that the villains are quite ready to murder our heroes and often gruesomely at that.
And then comes one of my favorites: Instant Freeze/Rats Like Cheese. Mr. Freeze as played here by George Sanders is a strong villain whose main goal is revenge on Batman. He is not physically notable in terms of makeup. In fact he looks like an ordinary older man who has to don an astronaut-like suit with cold air jets to keep him alive when he goes out. Otherwise, he lives in a mountain hideaway with an interesting device. He can control certain parts of a room's temperature to accomodate his henchmen and butler with 76 degrees of warmth, those sections shown in red while Mr. Freeze's personal cold domain is shown as a grayish blue, cool effects for 1966 (pun intended as always). I think what makes this story neat is how "cold" George Sanders plays it. Very serious, very threatening, and with Sanders's deep voiced English accent, he made this 2-episode story a bit dramatic like the pilot.
Note: Mr. Freeze would appear twice more, all with different actors portraying him. To me, this was the darkest and therefore best.
And then came a really strange and probably the most poignant of Batman stories: Zelda the Great. Zelda, as played by the late great Anne Baxter, was not a villain at heart, but rather committed thefts out of necessity to help pay the man who creates all of her tricks and illusions, an Albanian genius named Eevol Ekdol (played by character actor Jack Kruschen). There is no real climactic fistfight here, though the cliffhanger is Aunt Harriet being tied up and suspended over a vat of boiling oil. As it is revealed that Dick Grayson went to see Zelda when he was a young boy, the tragic story of a revealed fraud adds to the drama. This is probably a bit darker than the premiere and the most unusual story of the series.
That was the first ten episodes so far. And with that, we now enter the cycle of favorite villain repeats with some newbies shoved in here and there.
The Riddler as played by Frank Gorshin would appear in three more stories in this season: A Riddle A Day Keeps the Riddler Away/When The Rat's Away, The Mice Will Play, The Ring of Wax/Give 'Em The Axe, and Death in Slow Motion'The Riddler's False Notion. All were pretty strong stories with good cliffhangers. Ring of Wax introduced a definitive "Riddler Theme" in terms of music when he and his gang are breaking into a library vault with a wax solvent. The last story had a silent movie caper theme that was pretty fun to watch.
As for The Penguin, he made up for the somewhat weak introduction with The Penguin's Gone Straight/Not Yet He Ain't and Fine Finny Fiends/Batman Makes the Scenes. These two stories highlight even more the Penguin's arrogance and overinflated sense of self worth. This quality never went away in the series. The laugh that Burgess Meredith created came out of his cough from smoking.
The Joker followed up form his strong start with The Joker Goes to School/He Meets His Match, The Grisly Ghoul, and The Joker Trumps an Ace/Batman Sets the Pace. In the first story, the Joker decides to make high school students corrupt from giving them a false sense of easy living. The cliffhanger here was neat, attaching the Dynamic Duo to a rigged slot machine that would deliver killing jolts of electricity when the machine stopped at 3 lemons. Another slightly dark moment comes when Joker attempts to kill his moll, cheerleader Susie when she talks too much to Dick Grayson. Killing a teenage girl, not cool dude! In the last story, Joker is himself and also posing as a visiting fat maharajah who is being held for ransom by Joker. The fight scene where Batman rips out all of the stuffing from Joker's maharajah suit is pretty funny. Not one weak Joker story here.
And now we come to some one-offs, three of which will appear in the next season.
First up is David Wayne as the Mad Hatter (real name Jervis Tetch). I've seen David Wayne give some interesting performances, some mildly comic, others quite dramatic, but he lets loose a bit here as a quite quirky villain with a hat that contains a device that shoots a mesmerizing beam to its victims. Like Mr. Freeze, Mad Hatter is out for revenge, in this case on all of the jurors who found him guilty at his trial, plus Batman for testifying against him. Other than the hat, David Wayne was provided with thick upraised eyebrows and a long horizontal mustache. Quite murderous and quite quirky, he might have been the unintentional first "fun" villain. He would appear once more in season 2.
Next is, get this...? as False Face.Yes, that was how the producers billed him in the first part and the beginning of the second part. However, by the closing credits of the second part, it was revealed that character actor Malachi Throne was False Face. Wait, you might say, WHO? You are right, Malachi Throne was not on the same tier as Cesar Romero, Burgess Meredith, or even Frank Gorshin (a relative newbie compared to the other two). The story itself was good, a master of disguise making himself look like anybody he had just met. As a character actor, Throne was actually a good choice. However, his main look was a plastic mask when not posing as one of the other characters (O'Hara, Gordon, a cowboy)
And then we come to a true legend: Julie Newmar as Catwoman, hands down Batman's sexiest enemy with whom he would later have a bit of a flirtatious relationship with, even when she was trying to kill him. More on that when I come to season 2. Here, at her most villainous, she kidnaps Robin and forces Batman to do battle with a tiger. Catwoman's goal is always theft of something priceless, often cat-related like this story. And like in the future episodes, she falls to an uncertian fate at the end, but those nine lives...
And then we have another future appearance character: Victor Buono as King Tut. I always loved the backstory here: a professor of Egyptology who got hit on the head and believed he was King Tut, albeit an evil and conniving rendition of the ancient pharaoh. Even his henchmen understand their boss is a little off but they see he's smart and has a possible future as a gang leader. King Tut was definitely created to be a fun villain. Note that I said he was CREATED, which means he was the first villain on the show to not originate in the comics.
Finally, we top it off with another made-for-TV creation that did not originate in the comics...Roddy McDowall as the Bookworm, one other English actor this season. This episode starts a bit violently with Commissioner Gordon seemingly shot to death and falling off a suspension bridge. It is a ruse to steal the Batmobile when Batman arrives to investigate Gordon's "murder:. The Bookworm's M.O. is stealing evil plots from books as he cannot write anything original himself. The cliffhanger is Robin tied to the Gotham Clock Tower. Roddy McDowall is the strong part of this story with some interesting moments including a giant cookbook that traps in the duo and fills with hot steam to kill them. Not the season's best or worst, but it went to show that some villains created for the show were clever and some, like Bookworm, were one-offs, a pattern to be highly continued in season 2.
And there we have the first season. As I noted in part 1, there's nothing like a fresh loaf of bread right from the oven. That's how good the first season was. However, those fresh loaves can get stale fast and in part 3 we will examine that unfortunate transition in season 2.
No comments:
Post a Comment