Title: Batman
Chapters: 15
Company: Columbia
Release Date: 1943

Cast: Lewis Wilson
Douglas Croft
J. Carrol Naish
Shirley Patterson
William Austin

Plot: Japanese prince and scientist, Dr. Daka, works secretly from within America's
borders during World War II to bring down the United States' government. He has a
machine that is able to turn men into powerful zombies under his control. Working
with him are several "dishonored" Americans, criminals who are specialists in various
aspects of technology and industry. Costumed crime fighters (and secret agents working
for the U.S. government), Batman and Robin, attempt to put an end to Daka and his gang.

I wish this serial were good, but it really isn't. However, it is the very first serial
that I ever saw as a child (my Dad had an abridged version of it on Super 8mm film), so
it did leave a favorable, lasting impression on me. But, even back then, I didn't need
to hear my older brothers sneering and laughing at it to realize how stupid it often was:
for example, the scene with the slow-moving electrical sparks running along a metal wire.
Despite all of that, I managed to be impressed. I particularly liked the "Make the
change," scene, where the criminals release a gas that changes the color of their car,
rotate their license plates to different plates, and turn around and head back towards
Batman who is chasing them. I thought that was the coolest thing ever, and it started
me plotting up ways that I could use something like that myself. Luckily, Batman saves
the day in this serial, so that probably steered me away from a life of being a science
criminal.


Okay, so, if we can look beyond the baggy costumes, floppy capes, silly devil's horns,
the lack of a Batmobile, the presense of utility belts but never using anything out of
them, a mostly-out-of-shape Batman who speaks with a--I don't know--Boston accent?,
the war-time propaganda and racism, and the fact that Batman and Robin can't even
handle three normal criminals at once, what do we have?

Well, we have the first time Batman was ever done up on film. And, unlike most serial
adaptions of comic book characters, not that much is changed about the character: he's
Bruce Wayne, who pretends to be a do-nothing playboy. Batman is aided by a young boy,
Robin, who is his ward Dick Grayson. Linda Page, his girlfriend/fiance in the serial,
comes from the earliest Comic Books, and, like in the comics, she's disappointed that
Bruce is basically a coward and a layabout. And Bruce and Dick have a butler, Alfred,
who knows their identities and helps them the best he can.

Plus, this serial actually inspires the comic books to change to become more like it:
Batman gets a Bat's Cave, Bruce and Dick go through a grandfather clock to get to the
cave, and Alfred becomes a skinny butler with a pencil-thin moustache. I enjoyed
William Austin as Alfred: he's comical, a bungler, but fun and determined to help.
And he's given plenty of opportunities to help out: driving the car, wearing various
disguises, playing parts in setup stings, and even getting into a few of the fights.

I am surprised, though, that Batman and Robin are such poor fighters, especially as
this is a Columbia serial--and their serial heroes normally can lick a dozen men
blind-folded. Plus, the dynamic duo aren't very dynamic, and they appear to be
lacking in most forms of athleticism and agility. On occasion, though, Douglas Croft
as Robin, manages to do quite well, especially when you see him running forth grabbing
a thug, or pulling a nearby blanket, coat, or curtain over their heads.


My favorite scene has a henchman swing at Robin--who moves out of the way--and the criminal
punches the wall instead. That looked pretty good. In fact, Robin looks good. Having an
actual 15 or 16 year old play the part gives the serial some needed realism.

And, really, Batman's costume isn't that bad. From the right angles, Lewis Wilson makes
a convincing comic book hero, and does well also as Bruce Wayne. Shirley Patterson does
well enough as Linda Page. I probably would be too harsh, though, if I said I didn't see
much difference in her performance before and after they turned her into a zombie.


To be fair to Shirley Patterson, I'm sure that she did everything they told her to do.
I got more enjoyment out of watching the smaller character roles played by Charles C.
Wilson (Police Captain Arnold who takes credit for Batman's exploits) and Charles
Middleton (who plays the dour, strongly-independent radium miner, Ken Colton, but who
is better known to serial watchers as Ming the Merciless from Flash Gordon).

But for me, this movie is all about J. Carrol Naish as Dr. Tito Daka. Despite being
Irish himself, Naish spent much of his movie career playing Latin, Arab, and East
Indian characters. Here, he protrays an evil Japanese prince and represets, obviously,
the "Yellow Peril." Propaganda or representative of the legitimate American attitude
towards the Japanese during World War II? Oddly enough, I didn't much notice the racist
remarks as a kid, but I cringed mightily when I watched it about five years ago. This
time around, well, I laughed, and I laughed hard. I'm sorry. It's comical; it's so bad
and over-blown, I think you have to laugh at it. It'd be wrong to do anything else.


Dr. Daka has some nice toys: radium gun (that blows things up, but which requires
plot-driving radium ventures), and his electric-brain-zombie-making machine and
radio headset control caps. Really, with these items, you wonder why he didn't do
much better. His zombies were super-strong, and that gun blasted apart things like
they were cheap props in a low-budget serial. Daka should have just turned his whole
crew into zombies and just started killing everyone wholesale. And, despite the
promise of having recruited experts in various scientific and industrial fields, all
Daka seems to use these guys for is so that he can explain to them the virtues of
the superior Nipponese and the greatness of Emperor Shōwa Hirohito. Meanwhile, of
course, he wants to steal some great new America plane prototype.

All in all, I'm mixed on this one. It feeds my nostalgia, and it's Batman. But, if
this were anything other than a Batman movie, it wouldn't be worth much.

They weren't even trying with that Robin Mask. I don't care when this was made, I'm sure they could have done better than that.

Is this better? It's from the Batman and Robin serial of 1949.

The costume in the poster looks good.

In the poster,Batman looks almost nude.
Saw this years ago on AMC back when the channel was watchable.They were showing it at the rate of 1 or 2 chapters per week,and even at that rate it was slow going.There was one cliffhanger where Batman survived a plane crash just because he's Batman.Adam West would've revealed his survival was due to some goofy gadget, but this Batman wouldn't even deign to explain.
The most memorable bit was where it was shown that Batman and Robin kept their costumes in a file cabinet! (Or it might've been in the Batman&Robin sequel,I can't remember)But it's a lot of film to sit thru to get at that little bit of comedy.

I find most of the Columbia serials that are 15 Chapters long tend to crawl a bit. It must
have been hard padding some of these out.

Likewise, Columbia serial heroes are tough, so a couple of the cliff hanger resolutions
in each movie are that the hero just "shakes it off." I read an online review somewhere
that expressed the difference between Columbia and Republic serials as being the
hero in the Republic serials actually has to be shown jumping out of the car BEFORE
the crash.

The costumes in the file cabinet (underneath Batman's drawer full of criminal suspect
photos) was shown in the second serial, Batman and Robin.

Title: Batman and Robin
Chapters: 15
Company: Columbia
Release Date: 1949

Cast: Robert Lowery
Johnny Duncan
Jane Adams
Lyle Talbot
Ralph Graves
Don C. Harvey
William Fawcett
Rick Vallin
Michael Whalen

Plot: Batman and Robin go up against the Wizard, a masked criminal mastermind
who has a device able to control cars, trains, and even crowbars remotely.

Here's another mini-review: Robert Lowery serves as Batman in this second serial,
and again, really isn't well-suited: with his pot belly, he's more of a "Fatman,"
and I liked the previous Batman outfit better than this one; the cowl is particularly
silly looking. There really is only one good angle for it, and that's shown in this
photo below:


The Metal utility belt has been replaced with some sort of yellow buckled sash. But
that doesn't stop Batman from taking a full-sized blow torch out of it. Even worse,
they then show him tucking it and the hose "back in" once he's done using it. That
thing is huge! And then, in the next scene, it's gone.

This Robin is older, wears tights over hairly legs, and--was that a bald spot I saw
in a couple of scenes? I get the impression that maybe the low-key fighting action
in this serial might be because of the sock-like shoes he's wearing. Robin
prances about sometimes and other times looks like he's afraid of slipping. In
one rather silly scene, he's fighting in his bare feet.

Lyle Talbot does a good job as Commissioner Gordon, and I enjoyed Jane Adams as
Vicki Vale. She helps the story along, has a brother tied in with the mob, and--
as Batman states--takes a lot of pictures that no one ever sees." Look beyond the
fact that Gordon shines the Batsignal in broad daylight and only Vicki seems to
notice that Batman is driving Bruce Wayne's car, and this isn't too bad.

Still low budget, but marginally better than the first serial in some regards.

I preferred Prince Daka to the Wizard, but that has everything to do with the acting.
The Wizard is pretty cool dressed all in black, and has hypnotic eyes. Not a dreadful
serial by any means, but defintely evident that the cliff-hanger chapter play was on
life-support as an artform.

Frank Miller said this is one of his favorite versions of Batman.

Which serial?

Yeesh, those ears. What, cardboard wasn't invented yet? Starch?

I think the first one? The one where he fights the Japanese spies or something; he even said it influences DKSA.

Yeah, that's the first one against Prince Daka.
DKSA, huh? I have tried to put that comic out of my mind.
I may have to revisit it just to see if I can see the Batman serial influence.

I'm a huge fan of DK2, it's not as good as DKR of course, nor was it anything like it so I'm not sure if it's fair to compare them. I definitely wasn't a fan of the art for the most part, but the writing is pretty sharp once you get yourself in the right mindset.

Haven't seen these serials, but have long since wanted to check them out.