Batmania - BatFink!

BatFink is a delightful and actively funny cartoon from 1966 and a bit of 1967. It consists of one hundred four and half minute episodes in which we follow the titular hero and his numbskull associate, the oafish "Karate" as they attempt to defend the city from a teeming band of villains eager to plunder and then to kill the hero who attempts to bring to justice. It's a brilliant send-up of both the Batman and Green Hornet television shows and hits hilarious and absurd moments from each show. 

The animation on the show was beyond primitive, but that wasn't the point. Just like the earliest Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons it's the words and not the pictures which moves the dial. This cartoon is properly satirical, poking fun not just at the two shows that inspired it but the whole genre of pop culture hero fiction. As we learn in the final cartoon BatFink was a normal baby bat who grew up exposed to radiation and became super strong as a result. Later while saving his mother from some villains his wings were damaged and a young boy named "Karate" found and took him to his blacksmith who fashioned for the brave bat "wings of steel". These wings and his ability to send a sonar signal became his tools to battle evil. Karate became the driver of the "Batillac" (A modified VW Bug) and also BatFink's fighting partner with a sleeve filled with an endless array of gizmos. 

Typically, a villain would perpetrate a crime and the police chief would contact BatFink and away the duo would go to intercept. They would find the baddie, confront them, get in a dangerous and deadly dilemma at which point the cartoon would freeze and the Narrator would question if they would survive. A few seconds later they did and defeated the villain to boot. This scenario was played out time and time again with many entertaining twists on the basic structure. There was a wide array of villains with few repeats but there was one villain who dominated the scene and appeared in probably half the episodes at least and that was the "Maddest of Mad Scientists -Hugo A-Go-Go". He was constantly showing up with new gadgets to bedevil Batfink and Karate. Like the villains on Batman, no jail seemed able to hold but for a few moments.

The show was produced by Hal Seeger, the same outfit that had produced Milton the Monster a year before. The work here is quick and effective and above all as funny as it can be. I'd never seen BatFink before I took a tumble and picked up the DVD set from Shout Factory. It's got no extras, but it does have all one hundred episodes and those speak for themselves. 

Rip Off