Okay, here's the scoop. It was released in 1943 starring Lewis Wilson as Batman and Douglas Croft as Robin. Yes, ric, it was a Flash Gordon-esque serial with cliffhangers at the end of every chapter. The whole Batman story was redone to have Batman and Robin be secret government spies (it's wartime, you know), but they still wanted Batman to have that vigilante image, so he was avoiding the cops the whole time. They faced off against Japanese spy, Dr. Tito Daka (J. Carroll Naish), who had rounded up an organization of crooked businessmen who had been "dishonored by America" (i.e. captured and sent to prison) in order to colonize America once Japan won the war. He had an electronic laboratory that he used to convert people into zombies, making them superstrong and unable to think without Daka's orders over a special microphone. His secret weapon was a cool-looking (for the time) radium gun, and a lot of the movie was spent trying to track down new sources of radium.

It is very campy now, but it's not purposefully campy. But by the 1960s, it was considered campy. Movie execs put it together in two parts (1-7 and 8-15, just like my tapes are divided) with redone narration and some censored lines but visually unchanged and entitled it "An Evening with Batman and Robin." Apparently, William Dozier saw this, and it gave him his impetus to create the 1960s Batman TV series.

And it did have some Japanese-bashing lines, although I haven't heard most of them, just heard of them. Like the original narration talked of Japanese internment like this: "... the wise government having rounded up the shifty-eyed Japs," was changed to, "... the wise government having rounded up the immoral hoods." Seems just as bad to me. Other lines by characters have been obviously redubbed since they sound nothing like the actor, but that just adds to the hilarity. Another racist gem is when Robin tells Daka, "You're as yellow as your skin!" which has also been censored out. To be honest, though, their treatment of the Japanese seems a lot more generous than cartoons of the time with the buckteeth, high-pitched, glasses-wearing Japanese soldiers fighting Bugs Bunny. I mean, Daka is cold and calculating and intelligent. He kills people, including his own men. I mean, I know ruthless isn't exactly a positive thing, but it's a much better villain than a bumbling idiot.

The cliffhangers range from pretty cool to kind of lame. Lame being when the cliffhanger ends with Batman being in a plane that crashes. How does he get saved? Well... it just shows him walking out of the plane unscathed in the next chapter. Most of them involve Batman ending up in some mortal peril and Robin coming in to save him at the last second. My personal favorite just for the craziness of it is the next to last chapter where the following episode takes about 5 minutes to explain how Batman didn't die.

Most people who have watched it with me have found it hilarious. I take it seriously most of the time. I've been watching it since I was 6, so I find it really enjoyable. When I watched it again this past summer, though, I finally caught onto some things. My personal favorite line is when Batman and Robin are interrogating some hoods in the Batcave (complete with bats held up by strings) when Alfred comes on over the PA system and says, "Batman, I want you." Seriously. He says that!

I'll come back and post some pics in a minute. But I'd recommend buying it and hoping that the uncensored version is finally released. To be honest, I was surprised that they were going to release it at all since Columbia is owned by Sony now, so kudos to them!