Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)Before the big glossy Batman movies and the campy 1960's television series there was this little masterpiece. It starts strong with the spooky music over the opening credits. Lambert Hillyer was an experienced B-movie director but this was his first and only serial. He makes it an enjoyable adventure with an unusual sense of humor for a serial. Note the banter between Alfred, Batman, and Robin in the third chapter after Alfred fires a few shots with his eyes closed.
The film has been criticized as racist, which it certainly is, rife with comments like "Since a wise government rounded up the shifty-eyed Japs..." and "your twisted Oriental brain." But that's exactly the way it was at the height of World War Two, so this is really a historical document of the pervasive attitude at that time. The War was still unsettled in 1943, and people were terrified of the Japanese threat. The serial has also been issued in a cleaned-up version, but this one is much more realistic even if it wouldn't be acceptable today. Just try to enjoy it for what it was.
I particularly like Lewis Wilson when he's Bruce Wayne, with his tongue-in-cheek portrayal of a lazy playboy, even though in his Batman guise he displays a bit of a gut that kept him out of the 1949 sequel. He's really a cool dude for 1943.
J. Carrol Naish was a great character actor, garnering two Oscar nominations in a long and distinguished career. He specialized in foreign dialects, and as Dr. Daka he does his best Peter Lorre imitation. Any villain would kill for that living room with the built-in alligator pit.
Douglas Croft (nee Douglas Wheatcroft, 1926-1963) was a successful child actor in the early 1940's. The year before he played Robin in this serial he was in both "Pride of the Yankees" and "Yankee Doodle Dandy," playing Lou Gehrig and James M. Cohan, respectively, as a boy. Not much is known of him as he dropped out of acting later in the decade, and died at the age of only 37.
Shirley Patterson (1921-1995, later known as Shawn Smith) was Miss California of 1940. After this performance she played in B-Westerns opposite Charles Starrett, Johnny Mack Brown, and others. Even Charles Middleton, that all-time favorite serial villain, puts in an appearance starting in Chapter Six, but this time he's on the right side of the law as Dan Colton, who has discovered a radium mine and of course Daka needs radium for his nefarious schemes.
As usual with Columbia serials the fights and the chases don't measure up to Republic's standards, and in general the cliffhangers aren't as good either. But the way Batman escapes from the old room-with-sharp-blades-closing-in routine at the end of Chapter 13 is a classic. The Chapter 14 cliffhanger isn't bad, either.
Be sure to watch for a cameo appearance by Bob Kane, the original creator of Batman. He's the young man who plays a newsboy who sells a newspaper to Bruce Wayne early in the first chapter.
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See how BATMAN really began. BATMAN started it all, and it's now available on DVD for the first time ever! Watch as mild-mannered Bruce Wayne (Lewis Wilson) becomes Batman, the classic superhero who, with Robin (Douglas Croft), protects Gotham City from the evil schemes of Dr. Tito Daka (J. Carrol Naish). Packed with adventures involving a radium-powered death ray, a deadly alligator pit, electronic zombies, and even the original Bat Cave, the BATMAN 2-disc set is a must-own DVD for any fan of the Caped Crusader!
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