The Wild World of Batwoman

The pointlessly-named Batwoman (Katherine Victor) and her bevy of Batmaidens fight evil and dance.

Long story short, I do not really know what this movie was about. Batwoman (who has nothing to do with bats) has a crew of brain-dead, go-go dancing girls who allegedly fight crime, but really just dance. They face off against a scientist who has a pill that... wait for it... makes people dance. It is just really, really bad.

The only redeeming quality is the makeup effects on the mole people, but surprise -- they did not even do the effects. They just stole footage from another movie! And there is no surprise they got sued by the Batman people... I mean, this was clearly an attempt to cash in on his name.

If possible, I would give this movie a .5 rating, but only because the actors showed up and said their lines. This movie is so wretchedly-bad, even MST3K's usually-entertaining riffing cannot redeem it in any way... an astounding achievement. There's no point in describing a plot line, here. Boring cannot begin to describe how uninvolving and dumb this cinematic horror truly is. I found myself even snoozing through the MST3K version. Even making fun of it was dull!! It makes the Batman TV series of the same era (an obvious non-coincidence) seem like Emmy-Award-winning landmark television. Maybe the cast of "The Wild World of Batwoman" were all high on something while putting this celluloid fecal matter together. I guess you could call it a soporific masterpiece, as or more effective as any known sleep aid, including Ambien, Trazodone, Sominex, Nytol, Sleep-Eze, Melatonin, Tryptophan, 10 shots of whiskey before bed, a blow to the head with a blunt instrument, etc., etc.

If "Manos, Hands of Fate" is the worst movie of all time, "The Wild, Wild World of Batwoman" is easily the most confusing. Let's see if I understand: there's this fortyish woman in a leotard that doesn't quite fit with a strange mask over her face, and she seems to be a receptionist or something for some R&D company who holds seances on company time while government auditors watch; and she has these nubile sorority babes as disciples who wear radio watches and dance and wiggle a lot; and there's this Dr. Claytin Forrester-lookalike mad scientist and his lackey who acts like a monkey and a couple of goofy guys who drool over the sorority babes and bump into each other while wearing stupid phoney beards; and somewhere in there there's a nuclear-powered hearing aid, and a guy who dresses like Zorro, or the Masked Marvel, and some mole people and a beach party and a dumpy looking scientist, ...

Nope! I still don't get it!

Nothing in this movie makes any sense at all. And I don't just mean that in the "Hey, it didn't explain how she came to that conclusion" sense; I mean, the events in this movie are just randomly strung together, as if the editor had just taken the snippets of footage, tossed them in the air, and pieced them together in the order they fell. It's fun! Kids, try it yourself! You can't do a worse job than these guys!

There's a drug that makes scantily-clad women dance all the time. Everyone breaks for milk and cookies in the middle. In the climax, the villain "Rat Fink" spontaneously creates copies of himself, and the clones, Batwoman, and her henchmen chase each other around a round, 5'-diameter table for about five minutes. If you want your head to explode, brother is this the movie for you!

Good lord a'mighty! Is this thing dull! The director made a slapstick film that takes itself deadly seriously. Huh?

And the Batwoman is more of a what-is-it. What's that on her head? And what's with the very large and strategically placed pin on her- um- bosom? Isn't that painful? Does her mother know she goes out like that in public? Is this where Janet Jackson got the idea?

One wonders with what inducement she collected about her her teenage minions. I gather the recruitment speech went something like this:

"As part of my entourage, you will be working to save the world from the criminal element. But I'm not going to give you any training, so you're not going to be very good at it. And I don't accept any girls that are any too bright. Furthermore, no fun will be allowed. You will be forced to recite ridiculous, meaningless formulae and must do so without cracking a smile. By way of relaxation, you will be forced to sit around the living room listening to me playing funeral dirges on the organ. Well? Who's with me?"

Come to think of it, no wonder they're such pushovers for the happy pills! I'd sure be popping happy pills if I was stuck in that organization!

Oh, extra bonus: totally random footage from The Mole People stuck in for no conceivable purpose.