Pure West

These immortal lines shall forever echo through my mind due to their unquestionable artistic brilliance: “Fetch me the Bat Anti-Shark Repellant Spray, Robin - hurry!”

This is Batman at its finest….well maybe not, but it thoroughly trounces George Clooney’s go at it. Adam West and Burt Ward were inspired as the dynamic duo. I may be too young to have been around when the original TV series first aired, but the reruns were one of the highlights of my youth. This is camp at its best, perhaps it even helped cultivate my love of campy movies that led to my love of the ever brilliant Evil Dead series and many other so bad they’re great movies.

This version of Batman’s world is basically the polar opposite of Tim Burton’s dark and grimy Gotham. Everything has a label with the prefix “Bat”, hard hits are emphasized with brass horns and a “Zap”, “Pow”, or an equally clever word, and nothing – absolutely noting – is more seductive than the Batdance, unless it’s one of the various Catwomen. I mean for the love of god they changed into their costumes by opening a secret door with a switch in a William Shakespeare bust and sliding down fire poles to the Batcave! There are few things cooler than that, unless you count being able to buy one of those functioning statues for yourself.

In a movie where the members of the United Nations get dehydrated into small piles of granular powder you know it is well worth what ever price it takes to own. Lets not forget that Batman: The Movie is also host to at least two of the most brilliant bomb scenes in the history of cinema. There is no excuse, go get this movie now, and if you already have it force everyone you know to watch it.