The Wild World of Batwoman

Tom Servo's final comment on this movie. This movie bad. This movie VERY bad! There isn't one shred of plot to be found. There's dancing, some good guys, some bad guys, and something very bad that can't really be called acting. This movie hurt me and I think it hurt others as well.

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.

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.

What the...? This is one dreadful film. I watched it but there absolutely nothing that made any sense. I saw the MST3K version after watching "Manos" the Hands of Fate a night earlier. That movie is obviously worse than Batwoman but has a fairly straight forward narrative. Batwoman has none. What is the deal with this bunch of garbage? There is this old gal that wears a mask for no good reason and leads a bunch of dancing broads.

After this all is up for grabs. The film goes every direction while making no sense at all, if it was to confuse it's audience at all times. Although the handling isn't as bad as Manos there is no redeeming quality to this picture. The comments on the MST3K version are priceless though, from quoting Doors and Who songs to rants on dreadful scenes, this version is amusing although the movie is a disaster.

And what is the story about vampires that starts the picture? There is reference on vampires what so ever in the continuum of the film. A true travesty, this excuse for a film. I thought it might be a wise decision to see this film being not that sober, but it didn't help that much. It is really beyond help!

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.