Batmania - Holy Bat Babes!

Bat Woman  (La Mujer Murcielago)is not really all that bad of a movie. I'm not saying it's necessarily a "good' movie but it is entertaining and works harder than many lower budget films to keep the audience occupied as the minutes roll along. As the poster above atests this movie was produced in Mexico in 1968 or thereabouts as a later entry in the "Batmania" which swept much of the continent for a brief but all-encompassing time. 

It's star is a beautiful Italian actress named Maura Monti and watching her fetching figure prance around for much of the movie in a bikini variation of the classic Batman outfit is nigh near enough to warrant watching the flick on its own. 

She's stunning and waltzes around in the skimpiest of fighting togs without the slightest sense of self-awareness that might make it seem peculiar. The movie is goofy but not unlike the TV show that spawned it, it's a goofy satire that doesn't wink at the audience all that much. 

Bat Woman is a crimefighter and a spy who also wrestles quite successfully. When she's not in the ring and not training she shifts around town in a nice little sports car looking for villainy. She finds it in this movie aboard a floating lab called "Reptilicus" owned by a properly mad scientist and who along with his grungy assistant Igor are killing wrestlers to get a precious gland to help them make a race of undersea fish men. (Actually the creature seems more crablike to me, but it's still a decent suit all things considered.) The scientist named Williams howls and yells and his minions try to do their best to do his worst but in the end as we all know he will meet defeat at the hands of the sexy Bat Woman. 

I've been wanting to watch this one for years and at long last got hold of it alongside another Mexican wrestling movie called Panther Women. The English dub is pretty decent though the occasional shout out of an off-screen voice to offer translations of street signs and such is jarring at first. Bat Woman is brave and smart and despite doing some inexplicably stupid things is worthy of the name. 

The Wild world of Batwoman is a movie like few others I have seen. It's on one level a farce, a laughable and clumsy attempt to piggyback on the surprise success of the 60's Batman TV show which itself was satire. Produced by Jerry Warren, a huckster movie maker who according to many who knew him was singularly unconcerned about the quality of the work he generated. His focus was to grind out a movie as quickly and as cheaply as possible and dump it into the market to gather who shekels it might before word got out. Hopelessly incompetent, the utter sheer badness makes it nonetheless on one level a compelling watch.

I first learned of this movie a few years ago and saw some of it online. But a few weeks back I had the chance to snag a copy and I did, along with some other Jerry Warren outings (coming attractions). The movie just sucks, that is unless you like to watch Go-Go Girls. If that's the case then have I got a flick for you -- this is besotted with Go-Go Girls who never miss an opportunity to shake and twist and fall into the hedonistic throes of 60's dancing. 

Big hair and sleek asses bounce and bounce as these "Bat Girls" perform in anticipation of Bat Woman calling upon them to foil the plots of the villain called Rat Fink. This baddie, clothed in all black from head to toe employs two dopey thugs and a mad scientist named Neon to operate his schemes which seem not to really have much point to them. They kidnap people for random reasons and threaten crimes which seem not to offer much chance of profit, but it does get Bat Woman into the fray. 

This ain't a good movie, it's a really badly made movie, but so badly made that it's incredibly fun to watch. 

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