PDNickz

The Quick and the Undead is, finally, the first movie to actually render its own storyline null and void. It is, essentially, one gigantic plot hole.

Aside from that, the acting was quite bad, character motivations nonexistent or unbelievable and there wasn't a single character worth hanging our hat on. The most interesting cast member (who had great potential to be a dark horse protagonist) got snuffed halfway through the proceedings.

What the Quick and the Undead DOES serve as is an excellent example of how to do good color-timing. It looked excellent, when you take into account budget considerations.

Unfortunately, it plays out like a guy got his hands on a hundred grand and watched a few westerns (most notably The Good, The Bad and The Ugly) and then just threw a bunch of elements haphazardly into a movie... "you know, they have movies where characters do THIS! Does it fit here? No, but who cares! They do it in other movies so I should do it here!"

Maybe a good view for burgeoning cinematographers and colorists (first-year film-schoolers). Otherwise, a must-miss.

A spectacularly funny throwback to the 60s-era Batman camp that we all know and love. Terrible acting and camera-work and lighting abound (one of my favorite scenes involves all three, perfectly combined to reveal what looks like a Lowell Omni aimed right into the set from outside... no pretensions with this production, my friends!), the editing is awful (including several pointless cross-dissolves and even a page-turn at the beginning...a PAGE TURN!)... just about every aspect of this video is just terrible, which is what makes it so spectacular.

Batman tied up with plastic chains and anally violated? Awesome! An incredibly fey heroin addict proclaiming that he'd "rather die" than go back to prison, charging at Batman with all the fury and might of a disoriented senior citizen? Brilliant! Batman hitting the floor like a sack of potatoes after taking a stun gun to his bat-codpiece (and, WHAT a codpiece, I might add!)? Hilarious!

I'm a little confused, though, as to why the makers of this particular video production would want to make it so uninteresting and almost bad to the point where I couldn't stand to watch it again. I prefer my camp to have some sort of rewatchability... the Death of Batman is just utterly unwatchable. Granted, on the initial viewing it is probably the funniest thing I've seen in a long time (I particularly liked how Batman is constantly followed by a smoke machine and spot kicker), but as soon as I tried to watch it again things like the horrible cinematography and the lack of sound design (and forget about a final mixdown) banged the nails in the lid on that one.

All in all a brilliantly bad endeavor, worthy of Adam West's nostalgic cavortings. Granted, if I made a movie like this with any sense of legitimacy about it and it turned out looking like this I would probably electrocute myself in the nuts, overdose on heroin and throw myself into the Los Angeles river.

But, thankfully, the Death of Batman is a movie completely aware of it's own pointlessness and revels in it. ... Unless, of course, it was supposed to be taken seriously. But, come on... no one could be THAT terrible of a moviemaker, right?