Director: Rick Morales
Cast: Adam West, Burt Ward, William Shatner, Julie Newmar
Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure. I was right on top of getting this when it came out on disc.
Did I Like It: The one missing element of 1966 Batman TV series was its treatment of that singular villain in the Rogue’s Gallery, Two-Face. Harlan Ellison wrote a treatment for an eventual episode to feature the great bifurcated one*, and the name bandied about for the role was none other than a famous-but-not-quite-that-famous Clint Eastwood. Had NBC picked up the show, we might very well have seen that come to pass.
But forget all that. Eastwood’s not the man to play the role against West and Ward. If nothing else, putting James T. Kirk in his prime against the Caped Crusader was the best possible casting move in any direct-to-DVD animated film I could ever imagine.
…as I type that, it feels like damning the film with faint praise, but I assure you, it isn’t.
This film extends everything that worked (and a few of the things that didn’t work out so hot; sorry, Burt Ward) about Batman: Return of the Caped Crusaders (2016). It also manages to make more extensive use of Jeff Bergman’s narrator, doing his best impression of the late producer William Dozier. The manic humor may be diminished ever so slightly as the regular rogue’s gallery becoming supporting characters and the story desperately tries to give Harvey (Shatner) some pathos to play.
But these are extraordinarily minor complaints for a film which easily clears its modest goals. There was no reason to expect any more time spent with Adam West as Batman, to say nothing of seeing that version of the character venturing into previously untouched material. Were Mr. West still with us, I would have been up for a new bright, campy adventure with those two every year or so.
*It was produced as a comic book, that I had to spend a minute search for and plan on re-reading as soon as possible. It’s pretty unrelated to the story presented in this film, otherwise Ellison. just might have sued the production into oblivion.