This was my schlocky movie of choice for Sunday. Sometime in the middle of Sixties Batmania someone threw together this outrageous rip-off, featuring the utterly bizarre Batwoman and her gang of nubile batgirls. They don’t seem to do an awful lot, for a bat team: they stand around pools in bikinis looking bored and perch on armchairs and settees in Batwoman’s front room, pledging allegiance to her in bored, self-conscious tones. Batwoman herself is a buxom matron with a hint of Woman’s Prison about her demeanour. She’s garbed in dominatrix ensemble, topped off with a hairy cape, a sparkly mask and a several examples of what they now called Fascinators stuck in her coiffure. Her bat sign appears to be drawn in felt tip, straight onto her ample chest. Various lackeys and mad scientists and villains appear. We’ve got monsters and strange hearing aids and curious plans to do with a variety of Cup-a-Soup that can loosen the inhibitions of even the most uptight soul and set them go-go dancing on the spot.
The film is just outrageous.
I realise that one thing I love about really badly made films and their amateur actors is how bad-tempered some of the acting is. I’ve noticed it in Ed Wood and John Waters, for example. And I love the way that films like this gleefully chuck everything into the mix: UFO’s, gorillas, magic pills, beach party musical numbers and curious soup. The final battle here is glorious: with the whole cast running crossly round and round the scientist’s laboratory after multiple versions of the lead baddy, Ratfink. No one quite seems to know exactly what they’re up to or why – but they’re having wonderful fun, and frowning with concentration much of the time.
Batwoman needs to come back, somehow. She’d give Bruce Wayne a run for his money. I love the way she has all these elaborate code names and numbers for things, and ends up reciting them into her various communication devices, disguised as junk jewellery. At times she looks like she wished she hadn’t even started with this whole, complicated superheroine malarkey in the first place. You can just about see her tutting and rolling her eyes under that mask all the way through.