In 1966 Bat-mania was sweeping the country. In January Batman debuted on ABC and audiences were tuning in to see Adam West and Burt Ward defeat the colorful rogues gallery of villains that threatened Gotham City each week.
The campy, silly tone delighted kids and amused adults. It was pretty clear that Batman was a huge hit and to capitalize on the shows popularity Batman was sent to the theaters for his first full-length motion-picture…in color!
With a bigger budget, lots more bat gadgets and a rogues gallery of villains, TV’s Batman made the leap to the silver screen!
West and Ward bring their popular dynamic duo to the big-screen to stop the Joker (Caesar Romero), the Riddler (Frank Gorshin), the Penguin (Burgess Meredith) and Catwoman (Lee Meriwether) from turning members of the United Nations to dust! Can this possibly be the more serious and less camp than the television show? Not likely.
Superhero Films – Chapter 2: Batman: The Movie from HaphazardStuff on Vimeo.
I remember the film being darker in tone than the TV series: One person gets frozen and shattered into little pieces, the dehydration gun, the dehydrated goons are disintegrated when hit…some of this clashed with the tone of the series, which had nowhere near as much death, and bizarre death at that.
It's funny how many go through a circle of thought with the Batman of the 60's. We love it as kids, hate it as teens, then come to love it again as adults. The Batman tv show and movie were the perfect storm. A once in a lifetime convergence of the swinging 60's, the comic book camp craze, and color television production at its most polished. Just compare this to, say, the 70's "Spiderman" show. The latter looks like a home movie.