Friday, March 13, 2020

James Batman (1966)

This is a very strange film that spoofs not only James Bond but Batman as well. An evil communist organisation called CLAW is seeking to take control of every freedom loving country in the world (or Asia at least), threatening the countries with destruction if they don't obey. To combat the evil doers secret agent James Hika (Dolphy) along with Batman (Dolphy again) and Robin (Boy Alano) are sent in...

It is basically a low budget wind-up and ruthlessly takes the piss. The action is frequently quite lame, punches are visibly missed, sets are flaky, the plot is rather confusing.

However it is undeniably entertaining if only from the sheer weirdness of it all. It isn't all that far away from a mid-20th century movie serial at times in terms of tone, film quality and nonsense. The real James Bond and the TV version of Batman didn't exactly take themselves seriously either, this just takes it on another level. It is not all fun though, some of the content is rather dark, very much of it's time shall we say?