The Wild World of Batwoman

Wild World of Batwoman, The (1966)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

Infamous film from director Warren had the man sued by Marvel and this film, at one time, re-released as SHE WAS A HIPPIE VAMPIRE but it's the title here and the clear rip-off of Batman that has made this thing live for so long. The story is all over the place but we've basically got Batwoman (Katherine Victor) going after the evil Rat Fink (Richard Banks) who also had a nutty scientist (George Mitchell) working for him. I was somewhat shocked to see that this movie was ranked in the Bottom 100 at IMDb for several reasons. One is that this is the only Warren movie there. The second reason is that there are so many more movies out there worse than this one. I'm really not sure why this film has gotten so much special attention but I'm going to guess it's because Batman fans are checking this thing out and seeing a pure "Z" grade picture. I can understand someone familiar with "A" pictures to hate this. It does contain horrible acting, horrible direction, horrible outfits, a horrible plot and any other job title could have horrible before it. However, as someone who has seen many Warren film, this one contains something the others don't and that's an attempt at telling a story. Yes, the story is all over the place, makes no sense and at times will have you lost but at least it tries, which is a lot more than you can say for the director's other films. This one here also has more than just one long dialogue sequence after another. We've actually got quite a bit of action ranging from fights to some silly guns being waived around. Again, this isn't too common for a Warren picture. One of the silliest things here is the scientist who has created a "happy" pill that his girls to girls so that they will dance and do a few other things. These dances are so crazy that you can't help but laugh and the music they're dancing to certainly wasn't rock 'n roll from 1966 but seems to be about fifteen years late from its target audience. What's even sillier is the scientist who has an assistant who is mildly retarded due to an experiment that went wrong. The politically incorrect role was silly but at the same time it had me laughing. Again, all of these things make for an awful movie but at the same time they keep the film moving and make it rather fun to watch. If you're a fan of bad cinema then this here is certainly one of the all-time great bad movies. Warren would take a fourteen year break from filmmaking before jumping back onto the scene with the downright horrid FRANKENSTEIN ISLAND. It's really too bad he didn't go out with this sucker as it pretty much contains everything bad you'd expect from a movie like this. Just don't take it too serious, sit back and laugh.

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!

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.

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.