REVIEW - James Batman (1966)

James Batman

Philippines - 1966

Directed by - Artemio Marquez

Starring - Dolphy, Boy Alano, Shirley Moreno, Ven Medina

B&W - 94 Min - NR

Long before Turkish cinema or Bollywood gained notoriety for their shameless, cheap, unauthorized rip-off movies based on cinema of the western world, there was the Philippines, and boy have they produced some humdingers in their time. One need look no further than James Batman for the proof of how brazen Filipino cinema could be. It's the only movie I'm aware of which features a buddy team-up of James Bond agent 007 and the Caped Crusader himself, Batman. Before I go any further, let's just sit back for a moment and reflect on the possibility this film presents us with. Batman. And James Bond. In the same fucking movie. Yeah, I got a boner from that idea, didn't you?

The story involves the insidious CLAW organization, a crime syndicate hell bent on world domination. CLAW gatecrashes a conference of goverment representatives and more or less tells the world they're going to hold them for ransom for one hundred billion dollars (/pinky to mouth). So concerned are the international big-wigs with CLAW's nefarious activities that they call in not only the world's greatest secret agent, but also the Dark Knight of Gotham. Damn. That's when you know you've got some credibility as a group of villains. If you threaten the world and the good guys call in Cody Banks and Shadowcat, then yeah, you're a laughing stock - but two A-list heroes like Batman and Bond? You've made the big time. You should buy a hollowed out volcano and celebrate.

Batman's new transmitter-in-a-fork allows him to quickly communicate with copyright attorneys.

Unfortunately, the movie doesn't exactly live up to its spectacular premise (really - how could it?). James Batman is more of a tongue-in-cheek spoof of both the old Batman television series starring Adam West and some of the more outlandish aspects of the early Bond movies. The leading man is Dolphy (aka Rodolfo V. Quizon), otherwise known as the undisputed king of Filipino comedy, who pulls a Peter Sellers by taking dual roles of both main characters. I'd never seen a Dolphy flick before now, but he comes across as a genuinely funny actor, excelling at slapstick and physical comedy, as well as the deadpan delivery. Instead of accentuating his main asset though, director Artemio Marquez seemed to want his film to be just as much an action movie as it is a spoof. Marquez's hamfisted technique and the extremely limited budget sadly let him down.

These action scenes, clearly an attempt of one-upmanship over the television series, are not only absurd, they're incredibly tepid. Watching both Adam West and Burt Ward jive around wiffing bad punches at Frank Gorshin and Cesar Romero worked because of the iconic score playing in the background, the liberal use of colorful onomatopoeia, and the fact that despite how silly things looked, the TV show actually had a fight choreographer around to supervise things. Watching Dolphy as Batman and Boy Alano as 'Rubin' flail around with three rejects from the Crazy 88 squad to out of tune Batman muzak? Not so much fun. The absolute worst part of all this is that these fight segments last an eternity, or what seems like an eternity. It feels like a good fifteen minutes or so could have been cut from this movie and it wouldn't have damaged anything.

Penguin Tai chi.

So does Mr. Kiss-Kiss Bang-Bang fare any better than Bats? Not particularly. Bond obviously gets more action with the ladies (including one scene that, if I didn't know any better, looked like it was borderline attempted rape), but instead of yawn inducing fight scenes, he gets betrayed by an attempted beach-side conquest and has to run from the Penguin and his goons whilst in the buff, culminating in a scene where a rubber centipede bites him on the ass. It's every bit as goofy as it sounds, although at least Dolphy is capable of eliciting a few chuckles with his wacky facial expressions.

Without question, Dolphy is what saves James Batman from being a total wash. He has some pretty good comedic chemistry brewing with his sidekick Rubin (why change Robin's name if you're blatantly going with James Bond and Batman as character names, by the way?), and of course, his interplay with himself is absolutely hilarious (both main characters are pulling a Bugs and Daffy routine for the first half of the film). One minor nitpick about the dual roles is that Batman does occasionally appear out of costume, making it momentarily confusing if the character is meant to be Bruce Wayne or James Bond (to be fair, they've saddled Bond with the most hideous suits possible in this film, whether by poor fashion sense or an intentional piece of comedy, none can say).

This never happened to the other fella...

Is it worth the trouble of tracking this somewhat rare film down? Eh... probably not. Even if you're that enamored with either one of the title characters, there are far better spoofs for you to seek out. And for the cult movie buffs out there this is an amusing curio, but nothing that will really set your world on fire.

2 / 5