Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Serial Batman - 1

Back in the mid-sixties there was a revival of sorts for the earliest serial adventures of Batman of the 40s, touring college campuses and such, as "an evening with Batman and Robin". That lead to the Batman TV show, which in turn lead to a tour of the second set of serials, the NEW Adventures of Batman and Robin, from 1949.

I remember on a cold and snowy early afternoon sometime in 1966, being dropped off by my dad at a run-down movie house where for only a couple bucks I watched ALL the Batman serials from both sets, and didn't get out until dark. I was saturated, of course, but it was fun.

I actually liked the cheesiness of the costumes and villains and the "Bats-Cave", because it seemed more realistic to me. In real life, how good could costumes really be, and how hard to be swinging around all the time. No, these guys climbed through the windows the hard way and got the crap beaten out of them in nearly every episode.

I watched some of these a couple of years ago on DVD with my daughter, and she and I enjoyed the episodes still, even though we laughed our way through them.






6 comments:

Unknown said...

I love those ears on the cowl!

Daniel [oeconomist.com] said...

Watching the 1949 serial, Batman and Robin, persuaded me that Adam West was a far better actor than I'd previously recognized. His performance in the '60s movie and television series can be seen as a fine parody of Lowery's.

Anonymous said...

Look at this Batman cowl pressed his nose upward first picture)... I don't know if I gonna laugh or throw up.

Daniel [oeconomist.com] said...

noir62, it wasn't really that the cowl pressed his nose upward; in that second serial, the eye-holes were poorly positioned, and he had to tilt his head back to see! (The ears of the cowl in the first serial look entirely too much like horns, but the it's otherwise a better-looking design, and certainly more practical.)

Anonymous said...

The third photo...
Batman utility belt is almost right on his chest. Jeez!

Thomas Haller Buchanan said...

I think that's how their outfits would be in real life--dorky, awkward, ill-fitting. Ha, talk about 'striking fear into the hearts of men'.