Cast: Katherine
Victor, George Mitchell, Steve Brodie, Richard Banks
Director: Jerry
Warren
Genre: Action /
Comedy / Adventure
The next movie on
our list is the rather familiar sounding The Wild World of Batwoman,
(1966). Now, the first thing I thought was that this must be a
spin-off set in DC’s Batman universe, however, I would be wrong
in that assumption.
The Batman comic
was very popular by the mid-60’s and the classic camp TV Series had
just started. Seeing the popularity of this franchise, director
Jerry Warren thought he could capitalise on this by making his own
bat-based superhero movie.
Words like
‘copyright’ and ‘intellectual property’ are not in Warren’s
vocabulary and so he went off to make his own version using a female
superhero imaginatively called Batwoman. DC was obviously a bit
miffed by this and took Warren to court claiming plagiarism. The
judge was having none of it and believed there was no similarity and
that the movie could go ahead. He then promptly collected his white
stick, his Labrador and shuffled gingerly out of the courtroom.
And so thanks to
that judge, we have this movie on our list but thanks to fate, we
could not find a copy of the original, so we had to watch the MST3K
version!
As usual when we
have to watch the MST3K version, I’ll begin with a short review of
that episode.
It’s a Mike
episode and includes a short film called ‘Cheating’, which is
about a young lad called Johnny, who cheats on his Algebra test at
school. It appears 1950’s USA was a tough place to grow up because
once Johnny is found cheating, he is completely ostracised from
society. No second chances here, he is thrown out of the student
council, loses all his friends and dies alone in a crack den with
Herpes, (I may have made the last bit up). All in all it does seem a
bit harsh for cheating on a worthless Maths test!
The riffing is
solid in this episode and good throughout both short and main
features although I think it’s during ‘Cheating’ that some of
the best gags come out. It’s on YouTube and I recommend you check
it out.
Anyway, back to
our main feature, The Wild World of Batwoman…..
As the opening
credits role, we are now told that this movie is called The Wild Wild
World of Batwoman. Less than a minute in and the movie is
promising us 1 more ‘wild’ than originally advertised. Surely
this is a good omen and we are about to enjoy an action packed
thriller of a movie?
Supervillian Rat
Fink, (Richard Banks), has decided to steal a hearing aid. This is
no ordinary hearing aid however, as it is atomic powered and can
listen in on any conversation in the world! The device is made by
global idiots ‘Ayjak’ and Rat Fink obviously did not do his
research because the device is incredibly unstable due to it’s
power source, (Plutonium), (is eavesdropping on someone’s mundane
chatterings about The Great British Bake Of really worth slowly
frying to death?)
Rat Fink decides
to force his arch nemesis and ‘hero’ of the movie, Batwoman,
(Katherine Victor), to do the dirty deed for him and so promptly
kidnaps one of her crew, (known as Batgirls). Batwoman is in a right
old pickle when Ayjak then ask hers to protect their hearing device
and to stop Rat Fink in his tracks! (what is a girl who is ripped of
from a successful comic book franchise to do?).
There’s also
apparently a love story between kidnapped Batgirl, (Suzanne Lodge)
and one of Rat Fink’s henchmen, Tiger, (Mel Oshins) and a
background story about mad Professor Octavius, (George Mitchell)
creating a cave full of monsters. But they appear to be glued into
the movie as an afterthought when Warren realised the main story was
not up to much…….
Will Batwoman
help Rat Fink? Can she save the kidnapped Batgirl? Does Warren rip
off anyone else’s work in this movie? Watch The Wild (Wild) World
of Batwoman to find out!
In answer to the
last question, yes he does. The beginning of the movie is lifted
directly from another movie, which explains why you never see those
characters again and why the incident is never mentioned, (it doesn’t
explain why it’s in the movie, however!). Shots of Professor
Octavius’s cave full of monsters are actually scenes from The Mole
People (1956). Whilst the ending is a mixture of The Monkees and
Scooby-Doo.
It seems Warren
is a habitual ideas thief, but he has no idea how to bring other
people’s ideas together to make one coherent unit. What we end up
with is a poorly made confused mess.
It should come as
no surprise to me how bad the acting is, considering how far we are
into our list, but I must say I was knocked over by how piss poor
the ‘actors’ in this movie were. According to Wikipedia,
Batwoman herself, (Victor), said that learning the script was like
memorising from a telephone book and her delivery certainly sounded
like she was reading one out. I know she had nothing to work with,
but at least show some emotion, even if it’s annoyed at being put
into such a lame movie!
Prof Octavius is
supposed to be from Germany, (I think), but his accent covers
Germany, Austria, Eastern Europe, the UK and eventually Pakistan!
IMDb may answer
why some of the cast were such bad actors. They claim that the
Batgirls were actually recruited from outside a Strip Club which had
just burned down. That explains why blonde Batgirl who, to show
surprise, opens her mouth, puts her hand in front of her mouth, looks
at other Batgirl, closes mouth, then opens her mouth, puts her hand
in front of her mouth, looks at other Batgirl, closes mouth and so on
about 20 times.
It also explains
why the majority of the supporting cast are just asked to wear
bikinis and wiggle their bottoms to 60’s surf music, of which there
are probably more scenes than our other recent bottom wiggling movie,
The Girl in Gold Boots, (see review here).
It doesn’t
explain why, during one scene in which an Ayjak representative is
chatting to Batwoman, the Batgirls are fighting over a horseshoe!
The reason for this is because of crap direction and for that, we can
point the blame back at Mr. Idea Thief himself, Warren.
Warren wrote,
produced and directed this movie, so he really is the only person who
needs to be held accountable. As per the above example, the
direction sucked and another example can be found with that same
scene. Characters inexplicably move positions between cuts, lighting varies wildly and it’s
hard to tell if this is the same day, let alone the same
conversation.
There’s also
the small matter of the kidnapping at the beginning of the movie,
which takes place in a bar, or at least I think it does. One minute
one Batgirl is at the bar talking and then the next she is
being carried out and the bar behind has been trashed. This may have
been a poor edit on the MST3K version, (I don’t think it was), but
there appears to be an entire fight scene which was taken out, (and
might have made the beginning of the movie at least a little
interesting).
As I said
earlier, this is a confused mess. Batwoman is actually supposed to
be a vampire as well, which was a total surprise to me as I did not
clock this during the movie, (I only found out by reading afterwards
and learning that the movie would later be re-released as ‘She Was
a Hippy Vampire’. Come to think of it, there’s no mention she’s
a hippy either!).
If she is a
vampire, why on earth does she not just bite Rat Fink and save us the
pain of this movie? (Maybe he is just a big clove of garlic under
that Balaclava?).
This is a truly
awful movie which has no idea of what it is meant to be. It sounds
bad, (like it was recorded in a wind tunnel with a sponge), looks
bad, (cellotaped scenes from other bad movies) and probably smells
bad, (it certainly does stink).
But for all of
these faults, I can exclusively reveal that this is not the highest
bat-based superhero on our list.
But more on that
later……….
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