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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The Shape Of Monsters!

Finally at last got to see The Shape of Water. I wanted to catch this modern monster flick when it first dropped last fall, but it played nowhere near me that I could find convenient. So it swam away and I figured I'd have to wait for the DVD (which I'll snatch up posthaste). But by winning the Oscar this movie was given a new life in the theaters and finally stopped long enough in my vicinity for me to sample.

Of course this movie is an unofficial sequel of sorts to the classic Creature from the Black Lagoon. The "Gill-Man" in this Guirellmo Del Toro effort is visually distinctive enough to not violate any trademarks, but for any fan of vintage monsters the comparison is inescapable. The creature in this movie was found and captured in the Amazon where it was the object of mythic lore. Snatched and brought to the United States of the early 60's, this creature is treated like an animal in a test lab and subjected to physical abuse while scientists try to glean enough understanding of its biology to assist the manned space program.

The movie is a blistering indictment of a society ruled by the whims and privileges of white men and we see how others in the society (women in general, people of color, homosexuals, and those with handicaps) are belittled and demeaned by the ascendant order. (Michael Shannon is the villain of this piece and he's magnetic and comes damn near stealing the film.)

The romance which blossoms between the creature (Doug Jones) and a mute cleaning woman  (Sally Hawkins) desperate to connect with someone worthy of her attentions is a story which redefines and broadens the definition of what is properly human and acceptable in the spectacle of human society. The ascendant order fails because it is too blind to see the capabilities of those who live in their midst, a silent majority of another stripe which will we know in coming decades increasingly demand their place in the order of society.

But at its core this is a lovely romance, a love story for the ages. It's a fable of a woman who finds another to love, someone who understands her in ways others cannot, even those she calls friends. This is a story of outsiders and those who have become alienated from their worlds and who seek to connect with someone or something who will deem them worthy. It's no less than all of us deserve and this movie affirms that truth.

Highly recommended.

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The Creature Walks Among Us!

The Creature Walks Among Us is the third and final entry in the Black Lagoon trilogy and it's a though-provoking movie, if not at all times a particularly exciting one. As the title suggests the Black Lagoon gets visited one more time, and this trip they capture the Creature but he is horribly burned in the effort. At once to save his life and to satisfy calculating scientific curiosity the eggheads work to transform the sea creature into more of a human being-like creation. The have limited success.

The elegance of the first film is missing here as it was in the first sequel, but at least that one had the great Creature costume to gaze on. This one denies us that pleasure and instead we get the out-sized mutant who wears clothes and reminds me mostly of one of the Mole People from that classic Universal effort. The beauty of the Creature is replaced by a lumbering brute who is (by design) out of his element and clumsy. The point is intentional, but minus the underwater ambiance, this one loses the essence of the earlier efforts.

It makes up for it with a robust theme which suggests a lot about the inherently violent nature of man. We are presented with a truly villainous type  (the first out and out villain in the series) in the jealous scientist-millionaire played by Jeff Morrow. Morrow plays a wife-abusing lout who despite his monetary success feels threatened by every man and manlike creature he comes across. His beautiful wife (Leigh Snowden) seems dutiful enough and undeserving of the cruelty she suffers. The real hero played by Rex Reason is there to keep things from getting too out of hand, but by the end we are dealing with murder and more as the Creature's ferocity is unleashed.

The ending is elegant and thoughtful, but we are uncertain of what will follow. It's suggested the Creature returns to a sea no longer able to give him sustenance, but he's seemed doomed before. There will be no sequels, so we'll never know for certain, but he most certainly lives in our imaginations.

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Revenge Of The Creature!

Revenge of the Creature hit the movie theaters in 1955, hot on the scaly heels of the first Creature feature and this too was in 3-D, though that element was less impressive. The first movie was amazingly successful as it isolated our cadre of scientist-heroes in a remote lagoon to do battle with a deadly beast they were just beginning to fathom. The sequel flips the script and brings the Creature into the modern world, namely a film variation of Marineland which offered up its facilities.

We get the usual mish-mash of empathy and cruelty though a bit more thoroughly blended this time. None of the characters, led by B-movie idol John Agar are outright villainous but their callous treatment of the Creature is by any measure cruel and his eventual escape and deadly rampage is largely understandable if regrettable.

He cottons to another girl, this time Lori Nelson and Agar and John Bromfield are barely able to save her before the inevitable deadly denoument. The sequel is not as elegantly paced as its predecessor and the scenes at Marineland get a bit tiresome pretty quickly. The Creature roams about in the community a bit longer than seems logical, but eventually he is found and sent to what we presume is yet another watery grave.

That's not true of course as the third and final Creature movie will show. More on that later.

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Creature From The Black Lagoon!

Creature From The Black Lagoon was released in 1954 in glorious black and white and in 3-D no less. It must've been a sensation. Not only was this the last great Universal monster, joining the ranks of vintage types such as Dracula, Frankenstein, Mummy and Wolfman, but the Creature brought a whole new and modern vibe to the admittedly musty misadventures of Universal's monster crew.  Accounts are that the 3-D effects were sensational, though I have no real sense of that now. They did try to present these on TV many years ago in that format but it was a so-so result.

Adding to the zest of the new and quite impressive monster is a real babe in distress, the lovely Julia Adams looking beyond fetching in her (at the time) somewhat scandalous bathing suit. The scene in which the Creature and Kay (Adams' character) are swimming alongside each other (though she is unaware) is mesmerizing each time I see it. The way they add allure to that sequence is not matched by any movie since King Kong.  Also on hand are the usual gang of monster chasers including an idealistic hero (Richard Carlson) and an avaricious anti-hero (Richard Denning) who debate the merits of capturing or killing the Creature. Nestor Paiva as the boat captain adds some real salt to the roster which is a bit overcome by eggheads.

And I'm always impressed by the special effects. The Creature costume is one of the great accomplishments of cinema. I cannot think of another suit more convincing in all the years since. Sure there have been creatures created by other means, but no one wearing a suit was more menacing nor more absolutely realistic. There cannot be such a creature, but if there was one you can be certain it would look like this.

Creature from the Black Lagoon is a triumph from its' title to its eerie last scene showing the Creature sliding into the depths, seemingly dead. But of course he wasn't as the sequel will show. More on that a later date.

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Gill Men!

Here are some very different versions of Universal's number one aquatic creeper, the infamous Gill Man from his trio of 50's horror flicks.  Vincent Di Fate's rendition above is haunting, his Gill Man less human and more ferocious.

Bill Everett's lush lines make this my favorite of these five images. The water here has the viscous oily quality which makes almost a thing alive like the voluptuous dame and the growling monster.

Dave Cockrum's version is traditional and imbued with the dainty charm which Cockrum was able to invest all his drawing.

Art Adams offers up a somewhat different rendition here, a Gill Man of Might, with some mighty thick muscles. Not so much a swimmer as a lifter.

And here is the classic Basil Gogos portrait of Universal's last classic monster. The colors in a Gogos piece are beyond vivid, they are lurid and seem somehow unseemly. It's a perfect choice for this subject matter, giving the monster a noxious feeling of menace.

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Creature Features!

The Creature from the Black Lagoon was (as everyone already knows) the last great Universal monster. After a battery of gothic horrors like Frankenstein, Dracula, Mummy and Wolfman, Universal tapped into the romantic unknown of the Amazon to find a Creature to rival them.

Here are some comics covers featuring the Creature!





Or something very much like him.


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