I've been reliving my fourth grade Saturday afternoons, thanks to Netflix and the DVD version of the 1943 Batman movie serial.
This serial was 10 years old by the time I saw it over several successive Saturdays at the Roxy Theatre in downtown Delphi, Ind.
My friends and I thought it was ultra cool. It looks silly and cheesy now, especially when you compare the costumes with the state-of-the-art stuff featured in the latest Batman film.
The serial has Batman and Robin acting as special FBI agents combating a WWII Japanese spy ring. Veteran character actor J. Carroll Naish, who earlier played the lead character in the Charlie Chan detective movies, is Dr. Tito Daka, the evil spymaster.
Daka operates out of a carnival funhouse and his secret lair includes a huge statue of the Buddha, an incongruity that was apparently lost on American audiences of the 1940s.
The Batman, as he is called, and Robin manage to get into big brawls in ever episode in which they are outnumbered and overmatched and generally get their asses kicked, ending the episode with a suspenseful cliff-hanger situation. Watching it now, it's hard not to see Batman and Robin as Halloween costumed morons who have absolutely no judgment when it comes to picking their fights.
And there are plenty of racist remarks that are hideously politically incorrect by today's standards, including a narrator's rant about what a great thing it was to round up all of the Japanese citizens and put them into internment camps for the duration.
But then it's just entertainment, isn't it?
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