There are some movies that are such dumb fun they’re impervious to criticism. In fact, scratching too hard at them — tugging on this loose end or poking at that plot hole — does yourself a disservice more than it does the film. Why break the spell? Batman: The Movie (1966) is one such flick, in all of its “Some days you just can’t get rid of a bomb!” lunacy. And so is the day-late Mexican Bat-mania cash-in The Bat Woman (1968), which somehow bests the Adam West supercamp masterpiece in its nutty absurdity. Maybe because no Caped Crusader in West’s Gotham fought crime in a bikini.
Directed with puckish ingenuity by René Cardona, The Bat Woman (released in Mexico as La mujer murcielago), is a copy of a copy of American comic books and the TV Batman Pop Art aesthetic. Wealthy socialite Gloria (Maura Monti) trained herself to be a superior athlete — and ultimate luchador — and uses her prowess to fight crime as the Bat Woman. Not because she’s avenging her murdered parents, mind; she just feels compelled to use her wealth to help her fellow man. And her superior skills are needed in Acapulco after a series of luchadores are found dead under mysterious circumstances (they had pineal fluid extracted from their brains).
The Bat Woman is a legendary figure, as much for her crime fighting as her skills in the ring, and she causes quite the stir when she comes to Acapulco. Notably, the commotion is because Bat Woman has simply arrived — not because she parachuted in wearing her superhero costume: blue mask with Bat-ears, blue scalloped cape, blue two-piece bikini, blue elbow-length gloves, calf-high boots. (When she’s wrestling she’s adds a gray body suit, clearly a bootleg sweatshirt-sweatpants Batman costume minus the Bat logo.) Soon, she’s waist deep in a mad scientist’s plot to combine human glandular juices with fish DNA to reverse engineer evolution and create a race of aquatic gill men.
I use that term intentionally because the thing the scientist creates — in between chewing scenery with lines like “Then my vengeance will be terrible! Terrible!” — is clearly riffing on Creature from the Black Lagoon with just enough tweaks to be unique-ish. The Bat Woman’s monster is red, crab-like, with a head calling to mind a castoff from Land of the Lost, and clearly a person in a rubber suit. The design is luridly horrific and hilarious in equal measure. The perfect ‘50s B-movie creature.
Except this is a movie from 1968, so Pisces, the name the mad doctor gives his monstrosity, feels anachronistic. And so does most of the film.
Adam West the pioneer
Bat-mania began when Adam West’s Batman premiered in 1966. It burned hot and bright, creating a cottage industry of merchandise, injecting new life in the moribund comic book industry, and inspiring copycats at home and abroad, from Green Hornet to The Bat Woman. But Batman: The Movie, released after the first season, and a longer second season led to a bracingly fast Bat-burnout. By the time the third season (and series) finale aired on March 14, 1968, people were done with Batman.
The Bat Woman premiered in Mexico on March 12, 1968. Bad timing for a Bat-cash in. But you have to admire how slavish Cardona and his crew were to replicating the Batman vibe. Bat Woman’s costume — well, the cape and cowl, anyway — is a dead ringer for West’s. She drives a big black convertible with a red stripe down the middle and big tail fins. (The only thing missing is an atomic battery and turbine.) Many of the sets, from the mad doctor’s lab to Acapulco’s police chief’s office, feel like they could’ve been rolled out of the show’s studio. The way fights are staged and shot — from a little distance and a slight elevation — recall West’s Wham! Pow! Biff! punch-em-ups; the slight Dutch angles when characters are in close up and the blocking of conversations seem like direct homages. And larger points of the plot, like the mad doctor doing his mad experiments from a fortified yacht (named Reptilicus, just in case we’re confused if a bad guy lives there), recalls beats from Batman: The Movie.
That this all exists in a kind of Pop Art milkshake of Frankenstein, Creature from the Black Lagoon, and James Bond, among other reference points swirled into a luchador genre picture should make The Bat Woman an unwatchable mess. It’s anything but.
Oh, it is a mess. The pacing is terrible, for instance, especially around fights and chases, which are so shaggy that they grind the movie to a halt. It’s only 81 minutes, with credits, and can often feel much longer. And there are some very confused gender dynamics at play. Bat Woman is sexy and powerful and seemingly meant to be leered at by men, in the film and in the audience. But she isn’t. (At least not in the film; I can’t vouch for viewers.) She’s also kind of dim, by no means a great detective or secret agent, making a lot of sloppy decisions and overlooking clues as obvious as a Batsignal. Yet she bravely survives multiple Pisces attacks and an attempt by the mad doctor to turn her into a Fish Woman and heroically saves her friends over and over again. But the film ends on her jumping into the arms of her two male colleagues, shrieking about a mouse in her apartment, as the men laugh and say, “Women!” Are we supposed to make something of any of this? Probably not. It likely all felt like cheeky irony scaffolding a cheeky genre picture. Still, it’s hard to not notice.
Mostly, though, The Bat Woman is incredibly fun to watch. It’s bonkers and goofy and stupid with the broadest kinds of archetypal characters acting very, very big. It’s a salve for those of us utterly exhausted with how grim and self-serious superheroes — on film and in comics – have become. And like all great camp, everyone involved is taking this so, so seriously. Not because they think they’re making Art but because it’s the only way to sell something so absurd. Adam West knew this when making Batman, and Cardona and Monti know it, too. After all, how sincerely can you take a film when the crimefighter is a bikini-clad, mask-wearing socialite who’s also a luchador superstar in a world where every word of that description makes total and complete sense?
Only the most lumbering bumbling mind-controlled Fish Men allergic to fire and fun could leave this movie without a spring in their step. The Bat Woman is pure joy.
The Bat Woman is included in the series “Spectacle Every Day: Mexican Popular Cinema,” screening at Film at Lincoln Center through August 8. Visit filmlinc.org for information and showtimes.
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