Batman (1966-1968) - Page 2

Gorshin, Newmar et al get plenty of love, so I'll just mention how much I enjoy Neil Hamilton's performance as the hilariously closeted Commissioner Gordon. Admiration isn't nearly a strong enough word for how Gordon felt about the Caped Crusader. You know the fucker probably had a freaky Bats shrine in his apartment or something.

I loved this show in childhood, and fell out with it later, when I fell under the evil line of thought that grown-ups should want Batman to be all dark and gritty and shit. Then I grew up for real and got over that, and fell in love with this show all over again. It worked precisely because every cast member knew exactly what kind of show it was, and how to achieve that tone.

Here I would (ever so slightly) disagree. The show achieved most of its comedy through playing it completely straight, and rarely went into out-and-out nuts territory. The movie stepped right over this line, and started going for flat-out comedy over irony, and the final (half) season of the show followed suit. I feel that there's a definite tonal shift after the first two seasons.

I still enjoy the movie, and the final season, but the writing isn't as sharp. I've read before that this is where Lorenzo Semple Jr stepped off the project. Semple is the guy who went on to work similar magic on the 1980 Flash Gordon movie.

I have to confess, one of my dreams (that I have to acknowledge the 60's series as helping to inspire), distant and unlikely as it is, is to pitch DC comics an Elseworlds Batman mini-series that would be like like a Year One type of thing, very in continuity looking, but sort of a throwback as well, with the only difference being that Batman and Robin are actually gay.

I wouldn't play it as a joke (though it would certainly have a sense of humor), it would just simply explore that never-ending joke as this real thing between them and all that would entail.

If I thought I had the slightest chance of convincing enough people at DC to run with that, I'd bang that shit out in a heartbeat.

It always seemed to me that there was story potential for Bats realizing that everyone thinks he's a dirty old perv living with his teen boytoy, but that it actually serves to divert attention from his real secret. So he wants to subtly encourage it, while Robin chafes at being known as the world's most famous cumbucket.

It's not a conventional, or full (no obvious villain), Batman story, but I always thought it would be a funny way to address the obvious implications. Maybe something along those lines has actually been done; as a Marvel kid, only a few DC arcs ever made it into my consciousness.

Definitely! The first season of the show has its own thing going on.

Having seen the movie again because it was on FMC this last week. Am I wrong in thinking that the credit sequence used at the beginning of the film is pretty good actually.

The spotlight highlighting the villans who then turn to reveal themselves. Plus that bit where some guy just starts running with the spotlight on him. Something about that beginning I always liked.

I grew up LOVING this series (I was born in 1968, for reference); it would play in syndication in the afternoons, and I couldn't get enough of it. (And count me in the Newmar fans; I remember having a crush on her even at the tender age of 6). In fact, when I first saw Miller's "Dark Knight Returns," I couldn't stand it - the idea of Batman as some ultra-serious, nearly sociopathic asskicker just felt wrong. I was quite won over by the Miller series, and for a while hated the 60s TV show.

I'd like to revisit it now - while I'm not sure I'd like it all that much, it would be really interesting to watch it as an adult, see what it says to me about the characters and medium.

And I'd forgotten how much energy Gorshin brought to the Riddler. I can understand loving the character based on his performance; manic, campy, captivating and funny. Agreed that Gorshin's Riddler was far more interesting than Romero's Joker. I don't think, though, that the character as shown in the comics is all that interesting - and I think Nolan was absolutely correct in not using the character for TDKR. He would have ended up, I think, as too close to Ledger's Joker.

And didn't Egghead end up hatching a dinosaur egg on the show once? Now that's awesome.

I think the movie is generally in the same spirit of the show with the exception of the odd choice to play the scam romance between Bruce Wayne and an in disguise Catwoman as something that seriously got to Wayne. The movie's tone is quite consistently campy like the show, but when Wayne goes on the date, it seems to be genuinely striving for a romantic vibe. Then when Catwoman's mask falls off at the end and Batman realizes that she tricked him as Bruce Wayne, there's this weird little brief dissolve flashback to the song he heard on their date. It's an embarrassingly obvious way to try to convey his heartbreak and one that's hard for me to buy after getting so used to he and all of the other characters being played only for laughs. That bit always felt off to me. Really corny in a bad way and out of sync with the rest of the movie.

I believe the Batman and Robin gay undertones were addressed in "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay", where if I recall correctly (been awhile since I read the book) a comic book writer is actually questioned in court about the suspiciousness of all these superhero and sidekick associations. I thought it was an interesting way of demonstrating how homosexuality-fearing people of the time period could be seriously worried about the potential of comic books with such content to 'corrupt' young readers. If the movie ever gets out of development hell, I wonder if this will be included in that adaptation.

I remember some cable network rerunning these when the Tim Burton BATMAN film was coming out and I got hooked. I think I had read a few Batman comics & loved the SuperFriends cartoon (I was 7-8) but these shows were my heroin. I found the box set online for $50 and bought it last summer. It is constantly in my rotation of "shows to put on in the background or when I'm bored".

And yes, the IMDB trivia for this show is a must-read.

Curiously, it's not limited to Batman. Story goes that Richard Donner had to trick Gene Hackman into shaving HIS mustache to play Lex Luthor.

And if we're posting .gifs...