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.

Actually, I've seen this...this *thing* (I just can't use the word "movie"!) in its MiSTified version AND its pristine original version. Either way, whenever you watch it, you have to gawk at the screen in disbelief, your jaw hanging open in shock, and throw your hands up in the air and scream "Why? WHY did Jerry Warren make this thing?" The depressingly lame attempts at comedy...the too-obvious sexploitation...the haphazard integration of stock footage from "The Mole People" and Mexican horror movies...all of these elements mingle into a sheer cinematic mess...

If you are brave enough to endure "The Wild World of Batwoman", check out the MST3K edition--Mike, Servo and Crow's banter almost make this film entertaining. Almost.

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!

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!