The Return of Batman

In a college town, who today outdraws Dr. Strangelove, outclocks Gone With the Wind, and breaks all known records for popcorn sales? It's not a bird or a plane but, of all things, Batman. The 1939 comic-strip creation of Bob Kane, which Columbia Pictures filmed in 1943 as a 15-episode serial, has now been spliced, end to end, to produce a 248-minute marathon of fist fights, zombies and ravenous alligators. Last week it was packing the house at an off-campus theater near the University of Illinois, and Columbia plans similar orgies in 20 major cities.

Time was when no Saturday-afternoon kiddie movie was complete with out a Batman-and-Robin episode. Children roared their approval as the "dynamic duo" burst through windows, grappled with thugs and wrestled with wild animals in their lengthy pursuit of the evil Japanese Dr. Daka. Batman fell into cinematic and literary obscurity during the comic-book cleanup of the '50s (in 1954 Psychiatrist Fredric Wertham compared the relationship of Batman and Robin to "a wish dream of two homosexuals living together"). But in the Great Society, everyone lives better, and Batman and Robin have recently been rehabilitated into high-camp folk heroes.

Neanderthal Roars. Some oldsters come because "I saw one episode when I was eleven and wanted to know how it came out"; the majority are meeting the movie Batman for the first time. In either case, the reaction varies in pitch from light snickers to Neanderthal roars. Audiences giggle at Veteran Overactor J. Carroll Naish's portrait of Dr. Daka, boo the opening episode's racist slurs: "A wise government rounded up the shifty-eyed Japs." But by the time Batman lies trapped in a pit with knife blades converging on him, the audience stops laughing, starts chanting: "Kill! Kill! Kill! . . ."

Richest sources of comedy are the stars, Batman (Lewis Wilson) and Robin (Douglas Croft). As Socialite Bruce Wayne and his ward, Dick Grayson, the two actors draw sneers every time they appear in their '40s street clothes (huge, wide-brimmed fedoras, oversized suits with cantilevered shoulders); when they change to their fighting costumes (masks, jersey pajamas, capes, Jockey shorts and boots), Wilson and Croft prompt more laughter than any other pair since Laurel and Hardy.

Their puffy, unathletic leaps are a satire of comic-book prowess, and the plots are at the same level. Why should Batman's badly produced, amateurishly acted one-reelers do so well 22 years after they were released? Offered one Columbia executive: "Comic-book heroes are the only heroes we have nowadays." Said one Batfan: "It's pop art." Says another: "Where else can you get entertained for four hours for a buck and a quarter?"

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