Theatrical Release Date:April 15, 1943 Release Date:October 18, 2005 Availability:Usually ships in 1-2 business days Shipping:Expedited shipping available Shipping:International shipping available Condition:factory sealed! 1st class shipping!
Editorial Reviews:
Product Description Relive the adventures of gothams greatest superheroes in the thrilling 1943 series that started it all! join the superheroes for all 15 episodes of crime fighting adventures. Studio: Sony Pictures Home Ent Release Date: 07/22/2008 Run time: 260 minutes
Come, Robin, let's change clothes behind that tree!December 23, 2008 Bereft of the budgets and storytelling ingenuity Republic Pictures brought to their chapter plays, Columbia's first stab at DC Comics' Batman franchise is a drab, exceedingly repetitive bore, with J. Carroll Naish's "oriental" villain Prince Tito Daka dreaming up some of the most inane--and easily survivable--traps for heroes Batman (Lewis Wilson) and Robin (Doug Croft), who change clothes so frequently in odd places together (in the backseats of cars, in alleyways, even behind trees!) that it's not surprising Frederick Wertham would later blow a head valve over this stuff. Hell, Bruce Wayne's "excuses" for missing time with girlfriend Linda Page (Shirley Patterson) are almost brazenly gay, even for the period. The cliffhangers that cap certain episodes--usually after yet another poorly staged fistfight between the heroes and Daka's goons--are woefully underrealized (a car wreck is heard but not seen, as is a building explosion), usually with the heroes simply emerging in the next episode from wreckage we never saw happen. Skip this one.
THE MOST INTENSE NOSTALGIADecember 9, 2008 1 out of 2 found this review helpful
I couldn't resist buying this 2 diskette set because I'm as much a Batman nut as I was when I first saw this serial. Call it morbid curiosity, but I wanted to see how far from the original Bob Kane creation the newer, glossier and far higher tek versions with their psychological pretensions have come. Well, not much, I think. Batman's wrinkly knit cotton tights and high-waisted satin trunks have certainly been replaced by flashier and more realistic physique-dramatizing materials. His new costumes are body-moulded, and he wears codpieces now, and yes, Virginia, his cuirasse even has nipples.
RACEISM = SEXISM? In the late '30s and early '40s even arielists in the Circus didn't wear tight tights. When this film was made it was generally considered pornographic to show the male body. (Actors like Clarke Gable and Franchot Tone, when they had to be seen shirtless, had their chests shaved.) So-caled Physique photography was not available publicly, but was sold under the counter. Trousers were usually very loose and cut so as to disguise the buttocks, and to completely obliterate any sign of the male sexual organs. Bulges not allowed! Notice that the only nearly-naked man in the film is a kind of animated statue in the House of Horrors railway. Hokey? Yes. He appears to be an aboriginal of some sort: notice the spear and the large, bushy trunks of fur. The actor's skin has been painted a dark color, and greased to show his muscles. It looks as though he's wearing a wig too. He is obviuosly part of the Japanese-run Gang, and may be a Pacific Islander or a New Gunea headhunter or an Australian Aboriginee. He is not by any stretch of the imagination to be considered White.
Racism in the USA was institutionalized, secure and an integral part of the propaganda of War. Remember, that in the very first chapter of this Serial, we are advised that our effort to destroy the Japanese is based on their intention "to free America's enslaved races." The Blacks, in other words. And freeing the Blacks would undoubtedly lead to the collapse of the United States of America and all it stood for. This was the same rationale for much of the anti-Soviet propaganda of the '50s; the Russians, working with and through our unpatriotic, Pink-O Labor Unions, intended to enlist Blacks into their Worker's Army, and thereby destroy the fabric of the United States of America.
I was taught to read and write at home, by my Aunt, and by 1937 I could read, and read everything I could get my hands on. My first comic book was a Detective Comics BATMAN, and I kept it for a long time and built my comic book collection around it. I believed Batman utterly. The Playboy type was a very important male icon, and Bruce Wayne was a kind of re-affirmation of William Powell (Who, as The Thin Man drove a Lincoln V 12 convertible). Bruce Wayne or Batman's first car (in the comics) was a slightly modified Dusenberg coupe, but I didn't think that too far fetched because there was a Dusemberg convertible coupe I passed every day on my walk to school, so I knew such fabulously powerful cars actually existed. (Batman probably gave up the big D when gas rationing was inroduced.) Here, in the '43 serial, he's driven around in a black '38 Cadillac 4-door convertible wih sidemounts and a canvas top. It yelled speed, which you needed obviously, if you were chasing crooks. Probably it was a V 12 (I don't think Cadillac produced V 16s anymore by then, though they are included in the 1939 line-up.) The cops had V8 Fords, and Daka's gang in this one sped around in a Packard Eight sedan. Boys were expected to know these things: it was part of the package. It was crucial because civilian car production had stopped for the Duration of the War, and the war would end, one day, and then the cars of our dreams would roll off the Detroit assembly lines.
Boy actor Douglas Croft, who got the enviable job of playing Robin, wore his thick, curly hair in a Freddy Bartholemew cut, as did the rest of us with that kind of hair. And, he wore a suit and hat because we all did unless, god forbid, our parents didn't have enough money to dress us decently. The Depression was only just beginning to end thanks to Total Mobilization for the War Effort.
All the crooks wore well-pressed suits and hats. DId you notice that no matter how hard they fought and slugged one another, or when or where they fell, their hats remained on their heads? They only removed their hats, with deliberation, when they entered the Boss' office or presence. That's the way it was then, for everybody.
Aided by a noisy sound effects staff, the fist fights were punctuated by very loud, percussive socks, pows and bams as fists struck jaws. This was before the days of Asian Martial Arts instruction. White or European men did not move their bodies about in fighting outside of the Marquis of Queensbury rules. That was manly. They used their fists, not the sides of their hands as "Orientals" did. And, they did not kick. That was decadent and probably queer.
European actors made up to play Asians were standard in action and adventure movies. Peter Lorre, Boris Karloff and of couse Werner Oland (As Charlie Chan, stellar sleuth of old Honolulu) among others did it in countless films. Asian men did not play asian men. It was forbidden. Asians could only play villians or soldiers who died when Americans shot them. In DR. NO, Sean Connery's first Bond film, No is played by Joseph Wiseman, an actor I mistook for Jeremy Brett, the English actor famous in later years for his brilliant portrayal of Sherlock Holmes. The best of all Sherlocks. As No, Wiseman too was asian, though he establishes himself as the son of a Chinese serving girl and a German missionary. This unhappy fact established the man as Eurasian, which would have made him profoundly sinister and untouchable. (Interbreeding between Europeans and Asians was loathed.) Tradition.
There were no Asians in my Chicago neighborhood when I was a child, and I only met my first Japanese in the '50s as a College student. He and the remains of his family relocated to the mid-west when they were freed from internment in one of the concentration camps in Nevada, Utah and Arizona. He was born in California and lived with his family in a possibly Japanese or even an integrated Nesi neighborhood until the directive came from Washington and they were all rounded up and put on trains and taken to their GI housing in the desert. He talked very little about his family, Jun did, but it seems his father didn't survive the incarceration and/or the shame, and it was only his mother and a sister who survived. Like most of the Japanese who'd been imprisoned, they were never able to return to their farms or businesses. Everything had been requisitioned and sold off to non-asians who profited greatly -- in California, Texas and elsewhere.
A far as I can tell, the original film I saw has been faithfully reproduced in this twin disktte set. That the film is gritty, grainy, streaked and often too dark is a mark of its authenticity, for that is exactly the way I remember it. Fifteen cents for a Monday-thru-Wednesday tripple feature with newsreel, comic short, serial chapter and at least one Western. Baby Ruth for a nickle. Big bag of popcorn for a dime. And you could yell at the screen.
World War II BatmanSeptember 8, 2008 0 out of 2 found this review helpful
Oh yes, this looks like it was made in 1943, and all I can say is, if you are a Japnaeese American or a German American, you will not like this at all.
Uh...Um...ok...so...August 10, 2008 1 out of 3 found this review helpful
If you like Batman...and I mean a lot, then this is a good buy...but only if you want to see what Batman was like back in the days when we were still fighting Hitler. I would have given it one star if it were something other than Batman. The acting was terrible, the camera work was horrible, and they were so damn racist back then (but then again, it was the 40's which explains all of those set backs). I wanted to give it 3 stars, but I just doesn't deserve it...at all. Oh, and Robin is a creepy looking kid.
Batman- The Complete 1943 Movie Serial Collection........August 5, 2008 2 out of 3 found this review helpful
I've seen, practically, every live-action version of Batman, in some capacity. That is, except for the 1943 & 1949 movie serials that followed the debut of the comic in 1940. So, it was with alot of excitement to get my hands on Batman-The Complete 1943 Movie Serial 2-disc DVD Collection. This is the very first film version of Batman ever made and, I must say, certainly fits the mold for the comic at the time. While politically incorrect, it is still a must-see for Batman fans. Keep in mind, though, that this was filmed during World War II and was made on a meager budget. Batfans will be disappointed that no villains from the comic are in the serial or no Batman's gadgets & whatnot. Directed by Lambert Hillyer, the serial stars Lewis Wilson, Douglas Croft, and J. Carrol Naish. In this serial, Batman and Robin go up against the likes of Dr. Tito Daka(a man obsessed with destroying Gotham City). It's up to them to stop his evil schemes of electronic zombies, alligator-infested pits and more.
My personal take on the collection? Well, I really enjoyed it myself. The serials' plot devices and action were a little tamer than the 1949 serial but I really enjoyed it. Back in those days, Columbia wasn't known for making good serials but this is one of their better ones of the day. I'm really glad I added it to my collection of all things Batman. However, I wish they had added some extra features of some sort to it(audio commentary, etc). It would've made this collection a little more inviting to me.
