"It's a Bird...It's a Plane...It's Superman" (1975)

I hate Superman. The big showoff. I like monogrammed shirts as well as the next guy, but that big red 'S'? Superman? Heh. Anyone without a last name has gotta be a little weird.
--Max Mencken

The 1960s Batman TV series, it seems, is having a resurgence in popularity as of late. Not only did DC Comics launch a new Batman series last year that's based on the show as well as a new line of action figures and toys, but it looks as though after all these years it will finally be coming out on DVD sometime later this year.

For fans of the show, the comic, or just lovers of "adventure, escapism, unadulterated entertainment, the ridiculous and the bizarre", that is very good news indeed. Adam West's Batman will always hold a special place in American pop culture, not only for its continuing influence on present Batman incarnations, but also as being the gold standard in superhero camp. From its eccentric supervillains to its Batclimb cameos to its Bat-gadgets to its Bat-fights and everything else in between, it's a silly, lighthearted superhero romp that's still fun to watch almost fifty years on.

And though many since then have tried to mimic its charm, most have not even come close. Not even the Man of Steel himself.

This TV special is based off the Broadway flop It's a Bird...It's a Plane...It's Superman, penned by Charles Strouse and Lee Adams It first debuted at the Alvin Theater on March 29, 1966 and closed  three and a half months later despite positive reviews and three Tony Award nominations, but since then it has been revived in theaters across the country, including an updated version performed in Dallas in 2010.

As for the TV special, it aired on ABC's Wide World of Entertainment on February 1, 1975 as an attempt to make back the money it lost on Broadway, but not without some changes to the original script - the show was edited to run in the time allotted, some of the villains were changed from Chinese acrobats to Mafia men, and the musical numbers were updated to sound more 70s-like. Par for the course for most of the TV specials I've reviewed, it has only aired once and has not been rerun since.

I haven't seen the musical myself, but if it's anything remotely like this, then I'm not so sure I want to now.

We begin by meeting our principal cast and learning where they stand on this whole Superman issue:

Kenneth Mars a.k.a. King Triton plays Max Mencken, Daily Planet columnist and smug egomaniac who is decidedly anti-Superman, likely because comparing himself to the Man of Steel makes his penis shrivel.

Lesley Ann Warren a.k.a. Miss Scarlett a.k.a. Cinderella plays Lois Lane, who is (obviously) pro-Superman to the point where she gets all giddy just talking about him.

She is also perpetually high.

Loretta Swit a.k.a. "Hot Lips" as the luscious Sydney Carlton, another reporter who is Max's girl Friday and madly in love with him. She's sort of a Superman-centrist.

David Wayne a.k.a. The Mad Hatter as Dr. Abner Sedgwick, professor at the Metropolis Institute of Technology, mad scientist and part of a fringe group of anti-Superman radicals who sees the Man of Steel as a roadblock on his path to world domination.

I'm guessing Lex Luthor was busy.

And finally David Wilson, who will probably never work in Hollywood again, as Clark Kent, mild-mannered reporter for the Daily Planet (and a COLOSSAL mega-dork) who is quite pro-Superman, since...well...he IS Superman.

Oh, yeah, and the unmistakable voice of Gary Owens narrates.

The plot of this special is divided up into chapters, so we'll analyze it in the same manner:

Chapter 1:
WHO HE IS AND HOW HE CAME TO BE

Not much to this part, really. It covers Superman's origin--infant survivor of the destruction of his home planet Krypton, flown on a rocket to Earth, lands in the heart of the clearly labeled "Good Old U.S.A.", found inside a rocketship in the middle of the Kansas wastelands by the couple from the American Gothic painting, develops superpowers, and finally grows into manhood and becomes the legendary SUPERMAN!!

FASTER THAN A PLASTIC SPEEDING BULLET ON A WIRE!

MORE POWERFUL THAN A DRAWING OF A LOCOMOTIVE!

ABLE TO LEAP TALL SUPERIMPOSED BUILDINGS IN A SINGLE FRAME!

Then we get a song about how the people of Metropolis say they need him because he saves their babies from a fire, saves their relatives from muggers, gives the orphans Christmas turkey and flies the policeman's asthmatic son to Albuquerque for no other reason than that the song needed a word that rhymes with "turkey."

Looks like Gerber baby foods learned their lesson after that one marketing fiasco.

Chapter 2:
MERCHANT OF DOOM

Clark Kent settles in at his job as reporter at the Planet and is ignored by everyone around him, including Lois who sits in the desk across from him. And it seems that all the paper ever prints is news about Superman--if it's not Lois writing headlines about him (and singing about how he never tells her he loves her and just saves her all the time in something rejected from Grease) it's Max writing some Fox News-style smear column about him (this time it's about how he disrupts commercial airline flight paths).

Meanwhile, at the Deserted Warehouse deserted warehouse, a convention of Italian mobster stereotypes (three of whom are the nefarious Batman villain False Face, notorious movie biker Eric Von Zipper and...Al from Happy Days) discuss "rubbing out" Superman. Then they sing about how America is such a great place to be a mobster in and how it would be a better one if Superman were dead.

Wow. We've only had three songs so far and already I hate this.

Are they reciting the Pledge of Allegiance or pulling out their guns all at once? The answer isn't worth knowing.

Dr. Sedgwick visits the Daily Planet to quite casually inform them that a death ray he has created at the university has gone crazy and Metropolis is, in fact, doomed. With his superhearing, Clark Kent learns of this, transforms into Superman and heads out to destroy the device, with Sedgwick anticipating he will fail and die in the attempt."Will Superman make it in time?" asks Gary Owens.

Chapter 3:
SUPERMAN MAKES IT!

(Dude! Spoilers!)

Superman...uhh...makes it. The death ray is destroyed and the city is saved. Who makes a friggin death ray, and WHY?

Sedgwick rues this setback, and monologues to the audience why he wants to get rid of Superman: to rule the world. And why does he want to rule the world? Because he want to obliterate Sweden. And WHY does he want to obliterate Sweden? Because he has been snubbed for the Nobel Prize for ten straight years and is a bit of a sore loser, vowing revenge on the entire Nobel Prize committee. In fact, he even sings about it.

Just before his song ends, Gary cuts in and asks "What is the one terrible thing that Dr. Sedgwick will have before he dies?" (What do you think he's been singing about?)

Chapter 4:
SEDGWICK'S REVENGE

(Is this for real?)

Sedgwick finishes his song, which Max overhears, and the two of them decide to team up and destroy him. Then Max takes advantage of the Daily Planet's criminally lenient sexual harassment policy and tries to musically hit on Lois after blowing off another date with Sydney, but Lois rightly brushes him aside to continue brooding over Superman.

"Wanna see how much faster than a speeding bullet I can be?"

Chapter 5:
THE NET TIGHTENS

The mobsters continue discussing rubbing out Superman, making unfunny jokes, mimicking bad Three Stooges visual gags, and finally decide to visit Sedgwick for advice on how to rub out Superman, while he and his new friend Max scheme to make Superman destroy himself.

Meanwhile, Sydney musically hits on Clark, with the musical's most popular song "You've Got Possibilities", which is the least worst song in the whole special and perhaps the only thing that has survived this special.

"Will Clark Kent find happiness with a new love?" asks Gary Owens.

Chapter 6:
CLARK KENT FINDS HAPPINESS

(If you're not gonna take this seriously, why should I bother?)

Clark is happy.

Sedgwick decides to give Superman a chance to disgrace himself at a thank-you-for-trashing-our-death-ray ceremony by staging a calamity. Then they both sing a song about being partners with romantic overtones. I'll say no more about it.

Then the mobsters bust in and ask Sedgwick to rub out Superman. How convenient. Henchmen.

The Three Stooge-fathers.

Chapter 7:
OH CLARK, HAVE YOU BEEN THERE ALL ALONG?

The above chapter title has been a running gag throughout this musical so far. It's what Lois keeps asking Clark whenever he speaks to her.

Anyway, it turns out Clark and Sydney weren't compatible after all, but at least Sydney's little song gave Clark the self-confidence to talk to Lois. Though Lois is slightly disappointed that it's Clark falling for her and not Superman.

In song.

Apparently they had to CUT SOME SONGS OUT to make this special run in the time allotted.

"Wanna see how much faster than a speeding bullet I can be?"

Anyway, while Clark Kent is ironically sent out to cover Superman's big ceremony, Sedgwick, Max and the thugs plot to plant a huge cartoon-sized bomb at city hall to go off during it.

"Will Superman fall into this dastardly trap?"

Chapter 8:
SUPERMAN...TRAPPED!

Superman's big ceremony arrives, and Sedgwick is there to heap false praise on him to a crowd of energetic students. It turns out he's having a laundry named after him. That's gratitude for ya. You'd think he'd get a statue or a plaque or something, but a LAUNDROMAT? Wow.

While he's there, a news bulletin somehow interrupts something that's not on television to report that Metropolis City Hall has blown up. Max is on hand in the newsroom to angrily blame Superman and generally heap abuse on him for not being there to stop it. Needless to say, the crowd instantly get word of this and turn on their hero pretty quickly.

"Think of me the next time you want to clean skid marks off your tighty whities!"

Chapter 9:
GET LOST, SUPERMAN

As Max gloats about the Man of Steel's downfall as if his manhood grew an inch or three--

Okay...Max...can you bend steel bars? Do you have X-ray vision? Super hearing? Can you even FLY? What makes you think you could possibly compete with Superman? I mean, what's YOUR superpower? Smarminess? Obnoxiousness? Having an ego the size of Krypton?

Anyway, as Sydney sings another song of unrequited love, the mafia clones sneak in, kidnap him and steal him back to MIT, where Sedgwick reveals that he has a computer that can deduce the true identity of Superman. After some comic misunderstanding where Sedgwick is convinced that it's Max, eventually they all come to realize that it is, in fact, Clark Kent.

Chapter 10:
CURTAINS FOR SUPERMAN

Cut to Clark Kent's apartment where Superman is...depressed. He sings a sad little song about how depressed he is while somewhere in Germany, Friedrich Nietzsche proceeds to turn over in his grave.

"And none of the other kids would play with me, and...once I accidentally used my X-ray vision on my fifth-grade teacher..."

Sedgwick pays him a surprise visit, sits Superman down and plays psychiatrist with him, i.e. emotionally kicks him when he's down by saying his X-ray vision makes him a pervert, claiming all the good he does covers up guilt for leaving Krypton to explode by being a baby in a rocketship at the time, and finishing up by saying that all his superpowers make him a unloved freak. Supes by this time is too depressed to even wonder how he figured out where his alter ego lives when he and Max invite Lois over to drive the final nail in the coffin by saying she's in love with Clark Kent before getting kidnapped by the mafia clowns.

The next scene has Superman in red cape and blue tights clutching an anchor and proceeding to jump off a bridge.

Some Übermensch YOU turned out to be.

"Is this finally the end of Superman?"

Chapter 11:
SUPERMAN TRIUMPHANT

(Uhh...a guy is attempting suicide here, this is no time for spoilerific chapter title jokes, however weak)

Superman's suicide attempt fails ("super-lungs"...ha ha) and he just pulls himself out of the river when he is greeted a pair of students from the laundry ceremony who teach him that there's nothing wrong with being a freak, and some of history's greatest figures were freaks, like Michelangelo, Christopher Columbus and...Abraham Lincoln.

Yes, they're actually calling Abraham Lincoln a freak. For his Emancipation Proclamation. Because in their words, "freeing the brothers was the freakiest thing of the 1800s". They actually say that.

Also, I guess it's worth mentioning that these kids are named Jerry and Joe, an obvious nod to Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, the creators of the Superman comic.

"Why are we taking hostages again?"
"I dunno, boss--we started with the dame and then I guess we got carried away..."

Segdwick and Max celebrate Superman's self-destruction by strapping Lois to a chair with a bomb for no reason. Well, actually, the bomb is there to destroy any incriminating evidence against Sedgwick for driving Superman to suicide; as to why they dragged Lois in and tied her to it, your guess is a good as mine.

Then Sedgwick double-crosses Max and ties HIM to a chair which somehow detonates the bomb under Lois' chair from so much as a sneeze.

Then Sedgwick gets double-crossed himself when the mafia guys tie HIM to a chair as well.
 
Anyway, to finally put an end to this farce, Superman busts into Sedgwick's lab, engages the mafia guys in a lame, one-sided onomatopoeia-laden Batfight while singing a song about regaining his self-confidence, rescues Lois and leaves the remaining two malcontents to their apparent deaths when Max hiccups and blows the lab sky-high. Don't worry--in the next scene it turns out the explosion just turned them into good guys and even made them forget Superman's true identity and everything goes back to normal.

"I'm a good guy now. This is my good guy face. I love being a good guy."

Wow. This...is...stupid. Really, really stupid. Not even on the same level as Electra Woman and Dyna Girl, where it's stupid but watchable. Or the Flash Gordon movie, where it's stupid but at least has Brian Blessed and Queen and everyone's at least enjoying themselves.

I think one of the reasons that Batman '66 works well is that it's a show with energy. It's a lighthearted superhero romp that keeps its foot firmly on the gas pedal right up until the final Bat-punch. Every time the Joker comes on screen or the Penguin whips out a gas-spraying umbrella or the Riddler starts giggling maniacally, it adds to the whimsy.

This Superman special doesn't have the same energy. In fact, it doesn't have any energy at all. I wasn't really expecting anything from Alan Moore, but from its Roy Lichtenstein knockoff sets to its bottom-of-the-barrel production values to its lackluster writing, it isn't really all that exciting or compelling or even entertaining. Plus, none of the jokes are funny, most of the characters are annoying, including Superman and ESPECIALLY Max, and as for the songs...well, okay, that "possibilities" song was all right, but the rest of them are pretty forgettable.

In summary, if you think Adam West's Batman is too silly, too ridiculous and too corny for your taste, watch this special and see everything that Batman COULD have been...and thankfully wasn't.

Where's General Zod when you need him?

Flash Gordon (1980)

Pathetic Earthlings...who will save you now?

Flash Gordon is a product of the science-fiction/fantasy/adventure craze that hit the comic pages in the 1930s. Created by cartoonist Alex Raymond and first published by King Features on January 7, 1934, Flash Gordon was one of many comic adventure stories inspired by and created to compete against Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, but since then has taken on a life of its own, having been reprinted many times under many publishers, adapted into a number of TV series courtesy of the DuMont Network, the Filmation cartoon studio and the Siffy Channel, and has recently been featured in the works of Seth MacFarlane, a guy who's somehow made a lot of money by trying to pass off pop culture references as jokes.

Though, to be honest, MacFarlane was not referencing the comic itself, but rather the 1980 movie based off of it.

The one produced by Dino De Laurentiis, the Italian film producer who gave us Barbarella, the 1976 King Kong remake, and both Conan the Barbarian movies, riding the wave of sci-fi/fantasy movies inspired by the original Star Wars.

The one screen-written by Lorenzo Semple, Jr., who also wrote the first Batman movie. No, the FIRST Batman movie.

The one with the kick-ass theme song performed by:

Of course it's not like there's another Flash movie out there. Apart from the serials.

Once upon a time, there was a nice, kind, benevolent emperor named Ming (played by Max von Sydow of The Seventh Seal and The Exorcist) who ruled a very far-away planet called Mongo. One day he happened upon a planet named Earth, and decided he likes it so much he wanted to play with it, with earthquakes, hurricanes, and somehow triggering nasty volcanic eruptions to terrorize the population.

Oh, did I say "nice, kind and benevolent?" I meant "horribly, horribly evil."

Looks like a cross between Bruce Willis, Fu Manchu and Queen Amidala.

Meanwhile, somewhere in the barren wasteland of somewhere in the United States, a plane is boarded by Melody Anderson playing traveling journalist Dale Arden and the star of this movie, nude Playgirl centerfold Sam J. Jones as Flash Gordon--in the original comic a polo player from Yale University, in this film star quarterback of the New York Jets.

Ming sends in a plague of "hot hail" (couldn't it just say meteorites?) which pummels the plane and somehow makes its pilots disappear, leaving Flash and Dale to try and keep the plane in the air, but despite their best efforts, it crashes into the greenhouse belonging to one Dr. Hans Zarkov (played by Topol, whom I remember as one of James Bond's allies in For Your Eyes Only), an ex-NASA scientist who believes that these disasters are the cause of an alien invasion, an extraterrestrial force that is slowly pushing the moon towards the Earth.

Zarkov doesn't seem to mind that Flash and Dale have crashed an airplane into his house. In fact, he even invites them to fly his new rocketship with him to investigate these alien goings-on. At gunpoint, mind you, but, hey, at least they get to ride a rocket.

Okay, so which one of you is Flash?

The rocket takes them all to Mongo, where they are promptly captured by stormtroopers and brought before Ming. The fuehrer decrees Flash to be executed, Dale to become his new concubine, and Zarkov to have his mind wiped for entry into his secret police, and then...a football game breaks out between Flash and Ming's soldiers. Yeah, a football game. Flash plays quarterback, Dale plays cheerleader, and Zarkov reveals that he was a first-round draft pick for the Kansas City Chiefs by accidentally braining Flash with a forward pass.

At Flash's execution, however, he is rescued at the last minute and smuggled from his coffin out of the palace by Ming's daughter Aura (Ornelia Murti) who, I've gotta be frank here, is a TOTAL SLUT. I'm not just saying that, she is literally a tease. She already has a relationship with Prince Barin of Arboria (played by another Bond actor, Timothy Dalton) yet she seduces the royal surgeon to smuggle Flash out of Ming's palace during his execution, and while teaching Flash to fly the airship that's taking him to freedom and teaching him how to telepathically contact Dale and tell him he's alive, keeps trying to put her tongue down his throat.

Hey, hands on 10 and 2, buddy.

Anyway, Aura drops him off at Arboria, which looks a lot like the Ewok village from Return of the Jedi, and returns to the palace to be interrogated and tortured. And Prince Barin proves himself to be most hospitable to Flash by locking him in a cage and dumping him in a swamp, daring him to stick his hand in a hollow tree stump that is home to a poisonous stinging thing, and then saving his live from a carnivorous plant...so as not to be denied the pleasure of killing him himself.

Eventually everyone gets abducted (including Dale, who escapes Ming's palace with a very-much-not-mindwiped Zarkov, and Zarkov as well) and taken to the airborne kingdom of Sky City, home of its ruler Prince Vultan (played by BRIAN BLESSED, who has since become the most notorious actor in this film) and his army of Hawkmen (no relation to the DC superhero). And Vultan's first official act is to have Flash and Barin fight to the death on a rotating spiked platform.

But not before Dale is briefly reunited with Flash and hurriedly pops the question to him, after knowing him for just the span of a few hours, most of which she spent unconscious flying in a space capsule.

I don't think he expects you to talk.

The battle comes to an end when in a show of good sportsmanship Flash saves Barin from falling to his death, much to Vultan's disappointment, but word has gotten out that Flash has survived and it isn't long before Min's mingions...Ming's mingings...minmingminamin...the baddies turn up and recapture everybody. Except for Vultan and the hawkmen who fled at the arrival of Ming, and Flash, who rejects Ming's offer of a kingdom of his own after seeing how he turns everybody's neighbors against each other as insurance against a possible owverthrow of government and is left for dead at Sky City as it is to be demolished.

Having conveniently found a vehicle he can ride to escape just as Sky City is destroyed, Flash must now rescue Dale from marrying the universe's biggest prick, somehow save Barin and Zarkov from execution, and though I personally don't think she deserves it, stop Aura from being exiled to the coldest, iciest, most uncomfortable part of Mongo. Tall order for a first-string quarterback.

"Errm...which one of you is the bride again?"

Luckily a newly reformed Aura escapes her own exile and frees Barin and Zarkov just as Ming's army notices that Flash is not quite dead again and sends some army guys to make him not not quite dead again. Flash thinks to the newly-displaced Vultan, and together he and the Hawkmen launch an invasion of Ming's palace and stop the wedding. This includes a flying laser battle fight scene on Ming's battleship Ajax, complete with THE BEST MUSIC YOU COULD POSSIBLY SET TO A FLYING LASER BATTLE FIGHT SCENE.

Have a listen:

Queen could make a FAMILY REUNION sound epic.

Anyhoo, long story short, Barin manages to lower the palace's lightning field, allowing Flash to suicide-plunge the Ajax into the exact spot where Dale is becoming Ming's new sexual playthi--marrying the bastard, and without even bothering to wait until the "speak now or forever hold thy peace" part of the ceremony, finally crashes, skewering Ming on the long pointy end of the vessel, where he eventually...makes himself evaporate.

Oh, yeah, and the Earth is saved somehow, I guess.

Barin and Aura become the new Emperor and Empress of Mongo, Vultan is named their new general, and a big thank-you party is thrown in Flash's honor as he, Dale and Zarkov contemplate getting back to Earth.

Meanwhile, an unknown hand picks up Ming's ring in the final shot, setting up a possible sequel that never happens.

Earthling drivers.

It's very easy to dismiss Flash Gordon as comic book camp but, let's face it, it is. Any movie where half the characters dress in silly costumes and act like they're supposed to be taken seriously IS camp in its purest form. It was written by the guy who wrote the 1966 Batman movie, and knowing the sort of material he came up with for THAT feature, of course it would be a tad theatrical. Plus, anybody who could get BRIAN BLESSED to dress up in feathery shorts and wings with no shirt on...do I HAVE to spell it out for you people!!

Don't give me that look. It's not necessarily a bad thing to be overly theatrical. Adam West's Batman is regarded not just as a TV classic, but as a major influence to certain elements of the Batman comic we know today. And Electra Woman and Dyna Girl gets a pass because, well, it's Sid and Marty Krofft and I wouldn't expect anything more or less from them. Not sure what was the deal with Supergirl, though...

I enjoyed Flash Gordon. It was very entertaining. The visual effects were nice to look at, the action was pretty good, there was obvious attention to detail paid to its source material, and, of course, the soundtrack was kick-ass. And if no one else, at least Brian "GORDON'S ALIVE?!" Blessed appeared to be enjoying himself, even if his outfit wasn't doing him any favors.

That is the face of a man whose place in pop culture has just been cemented.

Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959)

Greetings, my friends. We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives. And remember, my friends--future events such as these will affect you in the future.

There are bad movies, and then there are bad movies.

Some movies are made with the sole intent to cause physical and mental pain to its audience. Some movies are made by directors and film crews with very dim outlooks on life and very low opinions of humanity. Some movies are torturous to sit through in ways that violate the Geneva Conventions. Some movies exist only to insult your intelligence, diminish your sanity, and suck your very will to live.

Then there is that special kind of bad movie, the "so bad it's good" type of turkey. It's the unnatural phenomenon where a film is just so inept, so terrible, so incompetent on every imaginable level that it somehow transcends all logic and criticism and actually becomes quite entertaining. They're been called guilty pleasures, unintentional comedies, and have sometimes been considered art films. People not only love them, but make them cult classics and recommend them to friends.

You know which ones I'm talking about. Snakes on a Plane. The Room. Reefer Madness. Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. Every movie Troma Films has ever made.

And this week, we're looking at the granddaddy of them all...

Who better to school us all in how not to make a movie than the grand cheese master himself, Edward D. Wood, Jr., writer, producer, director, known transvestite, lover of angora sweaters, and the self-proclaimed master of "suspension of disbelief"? A man who loved movies and loved making movies, even though he wasn't very good at it. An icon of overzealous half-assery who combined the acting talents (or lack thereof) of horror legends Vampira, Tor Johnson, even the great Bela Lugosi (sort of), put together shoddy reusable sets complete with identical shower curtains, banged out a script in no less than five minutes tops, dressed half the cast in shiny bathrobes, and then blindly chucked the footage in the editor's face with the words "go nuts", and STILL came up with a film that is less than the sum of its parts.

Crackpot psychic The Amazing Criswell opens the film by talking (or reading off cue cards) about the future, where you and I will spend the rest of our lives, and where future events such as these will affect us. He then goes on to talk about "what happened on that fateful day" and then confuses us further about punishing the guilty and rewarding the innocent before finally settling on "GRAVE ROBBERS FROM OUTER SPACE!"

Up in the skies, two men pretending to be airline pilots while sitting in a mostly empty room on boxes are freaked out by a shot of a hubcap hanging from a string.

Meanwhile, following a funeral service for the wife of an elderly gentleman, two gravediggers are burying the coffin when they are suddenly attacked by the very woman they were just burying.

Grief-stricken and despondent, the widower sadly leaves the house they had shared for so many years and walks a lonely, lonely path...into oncoming traffic.

And at HIS funeral, little do his mourners know that as they walk out of the world's smallest mausoleum wondering why his wife isn't entombed in there with him, HER CORPSE IS WATCHING THEM.

And it just gets better from here.

"The incidents, the places, the future...where the hell am I going with this?"

That evening, one of the pilots, a man named Jeff Trent, tells his wife Paula about the flying saucer he saw, saying it looked like a giant cigar (a giant hubcap-shaped cigar, I'm sure) and after he radioed it in, the topmost army personnel were upon him as soon as they landed and made him and the co-pilot swear to secrecy. He can't even admit he saw the thing (even though he just did). Suddenly a bright flash and a huge gust of wind knocks them both backward as a spacecraft has just landed in a cemetery conveniently next to the house, and just as conveniently where those two gravediggers were killed.

As the wind knocks the police around flimsy grave markers, one Inspector Clay (Johnson), who had gone off on his own with a flashlight, encounters Lugosi (or was it the director's wife's chiropractor? I can't be sure) and Vampira and is promptly murdered. ("And somebody's responsible!")

Soon after, Hollywood and Washington, DC are visited by similar sightings of hubcaps wobbling about on strings ("Visits? That would indicate visitors!") and the army's only solution is to shoot off pop caps at them. (How hard is it to hit them? They're just dangling up there.) As the army men ponder just what it is they're shooting at and what it is they're covering up, the aliens return to their space station and set about implementing "Plan 9", which is the regeneration of the newly deceased through stimulation of the pineal and pituitary glands in hopes of gaining the people of Earth's attention.

Plan 8 involved the saucers flying low over major cities with the aliens leaning out the windows waving and yelling "Hey! Look over here!"

Well, as Trent leaves to play pretend airplane pilot again, Paula is left all alone to touch his pillows in her sleep (make of that what you will) when Lugosi/Chiropractor Vampire Guy comes into her bedroom for some reason and chases her out of the house and into the cemetery, where he, Vampira and now the newly resurrected Inspector Clay wander around aimlessly while the girl runs around screaming. Shots alternate between soundstage and outdoor film, actors run across the same part of the cemetery several times over and the time of day changes completely at random until Paula is finally carried off the movie by a passing motorist. The dead reconvene at a waiting space vessel which takes off just as the cops arrive.

Wait, the detective and the dead wife come back as zombies, but the old man comes back as a vampire? How does that work?

Yeah, if I had to wear that, I'd want to choke myself, too.

Meanwhile, at the Pentagon, Colonel Thomas Edwards, Chief of Saucer Operations (as if there were such a position in in the Army, at least to my knowledge) is briefed by a chain-smoking general about the radio signals the aliens have been sending them all this time, and then plays him one which they have translated via their new "language computer." The speaker identifies himself as Eros, a soldier from some unnamed planet within the galaxy who describes his race as advanced eons beyond humans, calls they "stupid" for thinking they were alone in the universe, states that they have come to save their planet from their "ancient, juvenile minds" who keep devising new ways to blow themselves up, and states that the Earth's big guns scare them and that humankind will be destroyed if they refuse to acknowledge their existence.

Not one for diplomacy, are we?

When did Ann Coulter get a dye job? And when did Glenn Beck shave his head?

Edwards is sent to California to speak with the Trents when the aliens come back, send their vampire to attack them and then promptly vaporize him with their Decomposing Ray.

You know, I'm beginning to think these cries for attention are signs of a deeper psychological problem.

A trip back into the cemetery to see where this ray came from sees Monster Clay kidnap Trent's wife and Eros invite them inside their spaceship so they can show them that they're holding Trent's wife captive. He then goes on to reiterate that they are on a mission of peace by admonishing them for their primitive wars, calling them "idiots" with "stupid minds" who will just keep killing each other, and states that mankind must be obliterated before they stumble upon a new type of explosive--a "Solaranite" bomb which would harness molecules of sunlight or whatever as an explosive that would set off a chain reaction and destroy the universe.

Oh, nice use of tact, Eros. The aliens from Independence Day have better people skills.

"You're all big jerks who are stupid and your big ugly faces are as dumb as a butt!"

Anyway, police reinforcements arrive to incapacitate Clay with a stick to the back of his head and save Trent's wife, a fight breaks out on the spacecraft between Trent and Eros that destroys Eros' ham radio equipment and sets off a fire, Trent and the army guys escape just as the flaming ship takes off and explodes in midair, and the remaining zombie creatures instantly decompose where they stand.

Then Criswell comes back daring us to prove that what we just saw didn't happen (we can) and warns us that people whom we don't even know have passed us by in the street may be from outer space, and mentions something about laughing at vitamins and television and outer space before ending with "God help us in the future," not telling us what any of this even has to do with the future.

"YOUR mind's stupider!"
"Nuh-uh, YOUR mind's stupider!"
"YOUR mind's stupider times ten!"
"YOUR mind's stupider times a hundred!"
"YOURS time a thousand!"
"YOURS times INFINITY!!"

Plan 9 from Outer Space is a quandary among bad movies. Is it a bad movie? Undoubtedly. Did it look like they only had a special effects budget of twenty dollars (adjusted for inflation)? Absolutely. Does the plot make as much sense as a 27-dollar bill? Of course. Could a hyperactive six-year-old have written better dialogue? Again, the answer is yes.

Is it the worst movie ever made, however? Surprisingly no.

There ARE bad movies out there. Movies that make you cringe, movies that make you hurt, movies that make you want to find the nearest bridge and jump off it. I've done a few on this blog already--Supergirl, Volcano, The Giant Spider Invasion, and maybe some others I can't name off the top of my head. To list Plan 9 from Outer Space among those titles just seems...wrong.

Don't get me wrong; it is NOT a good movie. It tries hard to tell a suspenseful science fiction story and fails spectacularly in every category. But I'm certain there isn't a director alive who goes into any movie project with the sole intent of making an absolute stinkburger. Sometimes watching these cinematic failures are like staring at a train wreck. You can't look away. And over the years people continue to not look away at epic fails like these. And they keep telling other movie buffs to not look away. And eventually they gain legions of fans, attract new generations of film lovers and develop a cult following, and nobody ever looks away.

I guess my point is...the worst movie ever made is NOT the worst movie ever made.

"A MOVIE THAT IS SO GOOD I WAS HAPPY TO DIE FOR IT!" --Bela Lugosi

"Electra Woman and Dyna Girl" (1976)

The one thing you couldn't possibly have in your utility belt, Batman...a woman's intuition.
--Yvonne Craig as Batgirl

Few shows on television are stranger than those on the resumes of Sid and Marty Krofft.

Back in the 70s, these two brothers were the kings of schlocky television. Their first major TV job was designing the sets and the puppets for the live-action segments of Hanna-Barbera's Banana Splits Adventure Hour before finally breaking out on the Saturday morning scene in 1969 with the landmark series H.R. Pufnstuf, which would be the first of many low-budget puppet shows and special-effects-heavy spectacles over the next decade. Many people claim that the Krofft brothers were quite literally "puf'n stuf" when they came up with it, but despite what that Mr. Show sketch would have you believe, they both firmly deny any drug influence.

They are also known for producing a number of celebrity-based prime-time variety shows which were mostly hit-or-miss. While they did produce song-and-dance extravaganzas for Donny and Marie and Barbara Mandrell and her sisters with some success, they were also responsible for turning The Brady Bunch into a variety show. Then in 1980 they took NBC president Fred Silverman's newest favorite non-English speaking pop duo from Japan and produced Pink Lady and Jeff, a program that TV experts and viewers unanimously agree is one of the worst shows ever made.

I'm too young to remember watching these when they first came out, but I did watch a lot of Nick at Nite growing up, and I have come across one or more of them on several occasions. I cannot possibly think of very many things outside of the Internet that are crazier or cheesier or more fun to laugh at than a Sid and Marty Krofft production. One show of theirs I actually do have respect for is the original Land of the Lost, which comparatively speaking is very well written with an interesting premise and good use of continuity, but apart from that, they have made some of the outright CAMPIEST televisual offerings in human history.

Case in point:

In 1976, ABC Saturday morning launched The Krofft Supershow, which consisted of three Krofft series hosted by Kaptain Kool and the Kongs, a band headlined by a guy who thought it was cool to put glitter in his hair and talk like Fonzie. One of the motives behind it appeared to be to promote the new "World of Sid and Marty Krofft" indoor theme park that just opened in Atlanta (which, not unlike most Sid and Marty Krofft creations, didn't last long--it closed after six months). It was the usual Krofft fare for the time--kids running from some crazy scientist bad guy, kids who befriend genies and anthropomorphic cars, Billy Barty...I think Bigfoot was on it at one point.

If you were just entering puberty at the time, perhaps the thing you remember most was a corny little superhero saga titled Electra Woman and Dyna Girl. It only lasted for one season of the Supershow's two-season run, but out of everything that was featured on it, including the Kongs themselves, this show is perhaps the most remembered. Matter of fact, not unlike what they did with Land of the Lost in 1991, they tried to revive it with a pilot episode in 2001 which never got off the ground.

The premise is very simple: soap opera actress Dierdre Hall and average Josephine teenager Judy Strangis star as ace reporters Lori and Judy for Newsmaker magazine who wrote stories on...pretty much anything going on in town. But whenever trouble strikes, any time, anywhere in...wherever this show takes place, they hurry down to the Electrabase deep below...wherever they live and become super crimefighters Electra Woman and Dyna Girl! With the assistance of some guy named Frank Heflin (veteran actor Norman Alden) manning the highly-advanced computerized Crimescope, and since this was the era of the Parents' Television Council when you couldn't punch somebody in front of somebody else's kids, our heroines use their over-sized calculator watches--err, all-purpose Electro-Comps to thwart crime and stop the forces of evil!!

...that's pretty much it.

I bet a lot of seventh-grade boys grew up on this...in more ways than one.

You know what this show is, he asked between fits of stifled laughter? This show is an exact carbon copy of the 1966 Adam West Batman TV series. I MEAN that. It has EVERYTHING down. There's a "stately Wayne manor", there's an Alfred character, there's a Batcave, there's a Batmobile, there's a Bat-this, Bat-that, Bat-everything, there are the ridiculously costumed bad guys, there's the seemingly inescapable death trap cliffhangers...hell, the sidekicks even have catch phrases (Dyna Girl shouts "Electra _____!" at random points in each episode, similar to Robin's "Holy _____!"). The only differences between these two shows are a few cheesy video effects, a third of Batman's budget, nowhere-near-as-competent writing, and on this show, the villains's costumes are twice as ridiculous.

Seriously, you think 1960s Batman villains looked comical? Check out this show's rogues' gallery.

Meet Glitter Rock, a green-afroed evildoer who controls his victims subliminally through his rock music:

Gene Simmons had more dignity than this guy.

The Spider Lady, master of disguise:

So that's how Tiffany Bolling got her role in Kingdom of the Spiders.

And finally, the Empress of Evil, who...is...just evil.

Must have been while Barbara Gordon was going through her "goth" phase.

Apart from their questionable taste in costumes, the bad guys are pretty generic. The show only had a handful of episodes during its one-season run, so we don't get much in the villainy department between them outside of the generic "try-to-take-over-the-world" plot. Par for the course for a Krofft show, the acting is far from Shakespearean standards--Dyna Girl in particular sounds so unbelievably perky it's almost annoying. At least it's an action show, so they spare us the usual canned laughter for every non-joke.

I could pick from dozens of other things to nitpick about this show. For instance, why are Lori and Judy wearing their Electra-Comps, an IMPORTANT PIECE OF THEIR SUPERHERO COSTUMES, in broad daylight? That's like Bruce Wayne wearing Batman's utility belt in public! Anybody could glance at it and say "hey, that guy's wearing the same utility belt as Batman! You don't think..." What's the point of a secret identity if you wear part of your alter ego's costume WHERE EVERYONE CAN SEE IT!!! Also, what's the deal with Frank? The only time we ever see him is when he's manning Crimescope at the Electra-Base or showing off his latest Electra-Comp attachment which will become conveniently useful for our heroines in today's escapade. Is he supposed to be their butler? Does he LIVE down there or something? Also, we all know that Dick Grayson was Bruce Wayne's ward--how did Lori and Judy come to live together? Are they mother and daughter? Aunt and niece? Did Lori adopt Judy after her parents died? I WANT ANSWERS DAMMIT!!

Sorry, I'm rambling here. When you see as many Krofft shows as I have, you tend to ask a lot of questions.

Looks like Deep 13 before the Mads moved in.

Electra Woman and Dyna Girl tries so hard to be the women's lib version of Batman and manages to out-camp it in EVERY conceivable fashion. No big feat, considering the shoestring budget and slipshod writing with plot holes you could sail an aircraft carrier through. It's no stranger to the 1970s mentality that you could throw any child-safe idea on the screen no matter how corny and kids would park their keisters in front of the tube every Saturday morning and eat it up, commercials and all.

However, not unlike the original superhero show that's ten years its senior, it is so incredibly corny that it manages to be a lot of fun to watch and poke fun at. Anyone who thinks Adam West and Burt Ward running around with their underwear on the outside looks stupid, dig this show up and see how much worse it could have been. Have a laugh or two at it along the way.

In any case, at least it's not Lidsville. *cringe* That show will take you to some strange places.

How does a show that only lasted eight episodes get a cult following?
Well, it helps if the main characters look good in spandex.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)

A mental mindf*** can be nice.
--Dr. Frank-N-Furter

I love October. I don't know what it is about it, but it has come to be one of my favorite months of the year. Maybe because you know it's officially fall, but it isn't too cold outside to actually enjoy it. Maybe because by the time it rolls around, football season is in full swing, and basketball season's not too far away.

But I think that a lot of it has to do with that most wonderful time of the year which we lovingly refer to as HALLOWEEN. I love Halloween. As a kid you go door-to-door every year for free candy, but for adults there's scary movies on TV, the occasional costume party, and the perennial excuse to eat as much candy as you please.

Plus it's the only holiday stopping all the big box stores from putting up their Christmas decorations in September.

And as a special Halloween treat, we're going to look at a movie you probably dressed up to see last night. And I ain't talking formal wear.

Known as The Rocky Horror Show when the original musical debuted in London's Theater Upstairs in 1973, The Rocky Horror Picture Show was conceived by its author Richard O'Brien and director Jim Sharman, who also served as screenwriters. It initially came out to empty movie theaters during afternoon and early evening screenings, but eventually found an audience via midnight showtimes and word of mouth. The film boasts the longest theatrical run in motion picture history and has gained a tremendous cult following to the point that midnight moviegoers dress as characters from it and bring special props. Fox STILL hasn't pulled the film since it first went to theaters. It is that huge.

After the pair of lips from the movie poster sings about old sci-fi movies during the opening credits, we cut to a chapel where we find our hero and heroine, a pair of dullards by the names of Brad and Janet (Susan Sarandon and Barry Bostwick, not respectively) who no sooner come out of a friend's wedding than Brad musically confesses that dammit, Janet, he loves her. Then we see an expert criminologist (two-time James Bond actor and one-time Blofeld Charles Gray) who would like, if he may, to take us on a strange journey...

Cut to the dead of night, where the pair, now engaged, are driving through some deep dark woods in the middle of a rainstorm, with President Nixon's resignation speech playing over the radio. When their car has a blowout and with an unusable spare tire, they hike through the downpour to the gates of a castle and find a light over at the Frankenstein place. At the door, they are greeted by the castle handyman Riff Raff (played by O'Brien) and domestic Magenta (Patricia Quinn) who invites them inside, and they're in luck: the Master is throwing a party tonight...which takes us face-first into the film's signature tune, "The Time Warp", as performed by a menagerie of fancy-dressed but otherwise freaky people.

At least they're not from Texas.

Janet considers leaving when our master of ceremonies finally arrives - Dr. Frank-N-Furter (played by a quite flamboyant Tim Curry in his film debut), a Frankensteinesque mad scientist but otherwise just a sweet transvestite from transsexual Transylvania (wait, so is there a section of Transylvania where the drag queens hang out?) The good doctor invites them upstairs to his laboratory, where he shows everybody his latest creation: claiming to have discovered the "secret to life", he giddily presents a mummified body floating in an aquarium which he brings to life right in front of his audience. His creation, Rocky Horror as he is christened (Peter Hinwood) runs around the lab singing, and despite an interruption by Meatloaf riding around on a motorcycle wondering whatever happened to Saturday night which is swiftly quelled with a pickax, Frank is quite, erm...excited, to say the least.

Brad and Janet are shown to separate rooms for the night, where Frank pays them both a...very special visit. Then Janet wanders up to the laboratory and finds Rocky, whom she proceeds to pay...a very special visit. All of this does not go unseen by Riff Raff, Magenta and groupie/tap dancer Columbia (a squeaky-voiced "Little Nell" Campbell). A third visitor comes to the castle, rival scientist Dr. Everett Scott (Jonathan Adams), Brad and Janet's old science teacher. He's looking for his nephew, ex-delivery boy and Rocky's partial brain benefactor Eddie (Meatloaf, his bloody corpse lying in a deep-freeze chamber with pickax holes in him). Then Janet and Rocky are found naked in his birth tank.

This makes for a very awkward dinner...especially when they find out they've been eating over Eddie's decorated corpse.

She would do anything for love...yes, even that.

After a chase scene and some petrification, we come to the floor show, where everyone is dressed in French undergarments and forced to perform cabaret with Frank. Riff Raff and Magenta interrupt the proceeding dressed in flashy comic book supervillain costumes and announce their return to their home planet of Transsexual in the galaxy of Transylvania (oh, so THAT'S what he meant, I didn't think this film took place anywhere NEAR Transylvania)...THEIR return, not Frank's, who ironically has just sang about going back home. They then shoot Columbia, Frank and Rocky with a trident anti-matter laser gun before making the entire castle lift off the ground and into space. Brad, Janet and Dr. Scott are left crawling on the ground to sing one last song, the last verse of which is provided by the criminologist as he turns the lights out and exits.

Good grief, these fans are hardcore.

Rocky Horror Picture Show is an eccentric and highly sexualized salute to 1950s sci-fi and horror films with catchy songs and crazy characters. Fueling this energy are the maddening performances of the effeminate Tim Curry as well as Richard O'Brien, whose sly alternating between sounding like a deranged Igor and screaming at the top of his lungs makes Riff Raff my favorite character in the entire movie.

It is all these things and more which has given it the cult status it so deserves, why movie theaters still play it thirty-five years after it came out, why the fans dress up in the Frank and Rocky get-ups, bring props to throw at each other during certain scenes, dance the Time Warp, sing the songs and reenact scenes from it in Fox sitcoms.

Just one of those things that you could only see happening in the month of October.

Err, you got some broccoli between your teeth there...

Batman (1966)

FOR THE FIRST TIME ON THE MOTION PICTURE SCREEN IN COLOR! Adam West as Batman and Burt Ward as Robin together with all their fantastic derring-do and their dastardly villains, too!

The Caped Crusader. The Dark Knight. The Dynamic Duo whenever he's paired up with Robin. He has been given a number of titles, but everybody always refers to him by one name:

Since his debut in DC Comics in 1939, Batman has gradually worked his way into the pop culture psyche. Generations of children, comic nerds and TV and movie patrons alike have seen the many exploits of the vigilante alter ego of Gotham City's millionaire playboy Bruce Wayne in everything from comics to movies to cartoons.
Currently the Batman we know lurks in the shadows and talks like Don LaFontaine with a chest cold, but before he was all dark and moody and Christian Bale, he was lighthearted and frivolous and Adam West. This Batman could be seen every week on his self-titled TV series which debuted on ABC in 1966. This being the Caped Crusader's very first foray into television, it was a very straightlaced interpretation of the original comic book serials, including hokey dialogue, saturated colors, tilted camera angles and the trademark fight scenes with comic-style onomatopoeia splashed onto the screen. It also featured a wide variety of famous or soon-to-be-famous guest stars--Burgess Meredith, Art Carney, Liberace, Vincent Price, Roddy McDowall, Eartha Kitt, future Bond girl Jill St. John, and even Bruce Lee have all appeared on the show, and those are just some of the ones who didn't pop out of a window while the Dynamic Duo were "climbing their Bat-ropes".

The original Batman and Robin.

Many fans of the more recent moodier Batman have disowned this series for its light-hearted, campy tone without taking into account that it was a more important part of the DC Comic character's history than they realize. Sales of the comic were slumping in the mid-sixties to the point where DC was considering canceling it altogether, until the show's success temporarily made the character popular again, so suffice to say we might not have had Batman TODAY if not for this show. Other notable changes this show made to the Batman canon were: the villain Mr. Zero changing his name to Mr. Freeze, the Riddler going from a minor bad guy to a regular member of the "rogue's gallery", and Alfred the butler becoming a permanent fixture after he was killed off in the comic prior to the show's debut.

The show was quite popular back in the day--popular enough to last 120 episodes in just three years, and in fact so popular that as logic dictates, they just had to make a movie out of it. Originally, series producer William Dozier wanted to make the movie first to hype the TV show, but 20th Century Fox abstained, citing that the movie would be no guarantee that the show would be enough of a hit to cover the budget costs, so the movie wasn't greenlit until after the show's first season. The film wasn't a major box office success, but became profitable on matinee screenings, television and home video markets for decades to come.

The movie starts out with an SOS sent to Batman and Robin (played by West and Burt Ward, respectively) from a yacht in the middle of the ocean belonging to British inventor Commodore Schmidlapp (Reginald Denny in his final film role). They head out to the sea in the Batcopter, with policemen saluting and a rooftop aerobics class cheering them on as they fly by, but when Batman descends a rope ladder hanging over the yacht to rescue the Commodore, the yacht disappears and he is attacked by a shark! Robin comes down the ladder to hand Batman some "shark repellant bat-spray", even though there's no one else flying the Batcopter, which helps him to shake off the shark before it explodes.

Yes, you did read that correctly. The shark explodes.

We next see Batman and Robin at Commissioner Gordon's (Neil Hamilton's) office, where after a brief press conference, they deduce that the "ship" was a decoy to kill Batman while the real yacht and everyone on board was abducted someplace else, undoubtedly by one or more of Gotham City's four most dangerous criminals: the Penguin (Burgess Meredith), the Joker (Cesar Romero), the Riddler (Frank Gorshin) and Catwoman (Lee Meriwether substituting for Julie Newmar from the TV show). They return to the scene of the "disappearance" where they find an illegal buoy carrying a secret projector with a high-powered lens, but before they know it, Penguin, Joker and Riddler, standing by in a war surplus penguin-patterned submarine (which the Pentagon sold to a Mr. "P. N. Gwynn"--no relation, I'm sure) activate a high-powered magnet inside the buoy, trapping the Dynamic Duo by the metallic objects in their utility belts and leaving them open to a bombardment of torpedoes! Batman is able to deter two of them by using his Bat-radio to reverse the polarity and send out energy waves, but when a third one comes--CONFOUND IT, THE BATTERIES ARE DEAD!

Luckily they manage a last-minute escape thanks to the off-screen arrival and noble sacrifice of a passing porpoise, but just then the Riddler launches a Polaris missile which leaves a pair of riddles written in the sky, which confirm Gotham City's worst fears: all four super-criminals have come together to form the United Underworld, a ghastly organization out for nothing less than global conquest.

A superstitious, cowardly lot.

Their next plan to kill Batman and Robin involves using Catwoman's incognito identity--Miss Kitka, a reporter from the Moscow Bugle who attended the press conference--to lure an unsuspecting billionaire to be used as bait in a trap which will catapult the Caped Crusader into the arms of an exploding octopus (What is it with the exploding sea creatures?). Billionaire Bruce Wayne is snared after he and Kitka enjoy a romantic rendezvous, but they're left wondering why Batman hasn't shown up yet. Luckily Bruce manages to escape, and now knowing of the criminals' hideout returns as Batman to round up the gang, but all that he finds is a comically sized cartoon bomb waiting for him. This leads to one of the funniest moments of the entire movie, as Batman runs throughout the pier trying to throw the bomb someplace safe but keeps running into things he'd rather not see blow up, like nuns, a woman with a baby carriage, an oompah band, some butane tanks, and even DUCKS off the side of a pier.

*sigh* Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb.

Poor Batman. No one will play Hot Potato with him.

He eventually does gets rid of the bomb while ducking behind some iron pipes. Just then the Penguin appears disguised as Commodore Schmidlapp in a new scheme of his: using the Commodore's latest invention, a dehydrator, he changes five guinea pig henchmen into dust and smuggles them into the Batcave to rehydrate them and kill Batman or ransack the place or something. Batman and Robin, aware of his ruse, play along and take him to the Batcave, but the Penguin's plan fails when he accidentally re-hydrates the guinea pigs using heavy water from the Batcave's water dispenser, which turns them to antimatter at the slightest touch! (Can that really happen? I'm not an expert on it or anything.) After this, the Dynamic Duo continue to pretend to be duped and allow him to steal the Batmobile so they can follow him in the Batcopter to his new hideout. Another of Riddler's skywriting missiles accidentally shoots them down onto a display at a conveniently located foam rubber wholesalers' convention, forcing them to continue the chase on foot to stop the villainous foursome from carrying out their ultimate plan: to dehydrate the nine members of the United Nations United World Organization's security council and hold them for ransom!

Gee, thanks. Never would have known they were guinea pigs.

Our heroes arrive at the UN UWO building, but they're already too late--the meeting room is empty, the entire security council has already been dehydrated, and their captors have made their escape in Penguin's submarine! Batman and Robin give chase in the Batboat, and after evading the Riddler's surface homing missile, use the Batcharge launcher to fire sonic charges at the submarine and bring it to the surface. Once it comes about, another onomatopoeia-laden fistfight ensues, during which the entire gang is rounded up and Catwoman's ruse as Miss Kitka is exposed to a heartbroken Batman/Bruce. The Dynamic Duo are just about to call it a day when Commodore Schmidlapp, who had been traveling in the sub the whole time, stumbles in, trips and accidentally shatters the glass vials holding the nine dehydrated security council members!

Batman may be in "tip-top condition", but Robin looks like he's about to pass a kidney stone.

The whole world is on pins and needles as Batman and Robin work tirelessly to filter the council members' powdered forms into individual vials. Robin comments that it might be in the world's best interests to try and alter the dust samples to make them better people once they are re-hydrated, but Batman rebukes that it wouldn't be right, using the Penguin's dehydrated guinea pigs from earlier in the film as an example of what might happen. With the President and the entire world watching, Batman and Robin successfully rehydrate the council members back in the meeting room--well, not quite successfully, as they all seem to be speaking languages completely different from their native tongues. Batman remarks that this "mixing of minds" might do the world some good, and with that he and Robin climb down their Bat-ropes out of a window as Commissioner Gordon and everyone else in the room ogles in bewilderment.

Well, any landing you can walk away from...

Right after the series was canceled, DC Comics quickly revamped Batman to distance him from the show's nature and return him to his roots as an avenger in the shadows. Circulation was down through the 70s and much of the 80s before Tim Burton's 1989 movie and Warner Bros.' 1992 animated series came along and helped shape him into the Batman we know today, despite a brief return to camp with Joel Schumacher's much-reviled Batman and Robin in 1997.

So maybe Adam West's Batman isn't as cool as Michael Keaton's or Christian Bale's or even George Clooney's--well, okay, maybe George Clooney's--but it was the sixties. Back then you had sitcoms about witches and genies and Martians and cavemen and Hollywood movie monsters living in suburban American homes and rednecks moving to Beverly Hills and millionaires, movie stars and professors stranded on deserted islands. Much of the media at the time was grounded in wild and fantastical ideas, and as a result the Batman of its time was brightly-colored and flamboyant. Naturally this exuberance is reflected in the movie, which acts as an expanded episode of the show with bigger production values.

Am I defending this movie? ...Yes. Yes I am, and also the TV show from whence it spawned. They may be ridiculously camp, the acting may be a little over the top and there might not have been very large budgets attached to them, but that's what makes them FUN. You don't need barely lit sound stages and actors who sound like they've been smoking cigarettes since grade school to make a fun movie. The performances are very enjoyable to watch, particularly Frank Gorshin's Riddler, my favorite villain from the series, and the story and art design is just so over the top that it allows you to just turn your brain off and soak in the silliness.

The opening credits include a dedication to "lovers of adventure, lovers of pure escapism, lovers of unadulterated entertainment, lovers of the ridiculous and the bizarre...to fun lovers everywhere", and anyone who goes into this movie should just treat it as such and roll with it. Both the film and the series are recommended to any non-discriminating Batman fan who just likes to watch something fun.

After all, it's not who he is underneath, but what he does that defines him.

I want me one of those umbrella jets.