Batman: A Nipponese Trap

 "I got out at the last minute..."

Eleven episodes in, and I really must praise the music. The opening music is pretty good, and I love the "sting" when the title is shown. I also have to praise the attention to detail with the "ghost train" into Daka's lair, with glimpses of exhibits showing Imperial Japanese troops up to various nefarious things. I say "praise", of course, but perhaps it's fortunate that said displays are not clearly lit, as the chances of them doing a racism are quite high, I'd say.

We don't start well: Batman escapes from the car by jumping out of the car, unseen, at the last minute. Not only this, but Bruce disguises himself as "Chuck White" again to trick Marshall, in jail, into revealing the location of another safe house... and also escapes being crashed into by a lorry at, you guesses it, the last minute. The concluding fight is a bit rubbish, too, with some hoods defeating Batman and Robin too easily before the inevitable explosion.

Still, Daka has the radium and we have some actual plot, as he's about to start constructing a mysterious weapon. Could stuff actually be... happening?

Batman: Flying Spies

"A pity Marshall was killed in that mine disaster instead of you!"

Yes, the above quote is how Daka speaks to his main henchman in this episode. In fact, he's pretty rude, uncaring and horrible to literally all his minions. This is, toput it mildly, a very toxic working enviroment. I strongly advise all Daka's minions to speak to their union rep. Bullying, toxic behaviour... and the place is a health and safety nightmare, let me tell you.

Anyway... again, no more racism than the usual, which is nice, relatively speaking. We've been strung along for a while now with Daka's need for radium, so now, suddenly, a plane is coming to deliver it, just like that. We have a blatantly rubbish cliffhanger resolution. Linda is pretty upset with Bruce for standing her up. Oh, and Bruce is pretending to be a hood cxalled "Chuck White" again, as a ruse to discover Daka's hideout.

It's all pretty good, to be fair, considering. The cliffhanger is excellent, although one can't help but remember the rubbish resolution at the top of the episode.

Next time, though, can we expect some slight plot advancement? Or is it too soon...?

Batman: The Living Corpse

 "Stop! Behind you! The Batman!"

This being a movie serial, with fifteen likely interminable episodes of set pieces and probable further racism, this instalment sees the plot, such as it is, suddenly changed without warning. Both Batman and Daka are given new missions.

For Batman, it's a letter from Uncle Sam, in invisible ink, sending him on a secret mission to protect a plane against dastardly agents of Imperial Japan. It's a nice little spy scene with a bit of comic relief for Alfred. But the minions of Tojo in Tokyo get their message to Dr Daka by more... unusual means. A coffin is delivered to a beach, with a corpse inside, dressed as a Japanese soldier. Said soldier is briefly brought to life in a scene literally ripping off James Whale's Frankenstein, and the revived corpse proceeds to deliver his verbal message and promptly snuff it again. Dialogue makes it clear that, being the oriental type, he's only too happy to die for the Emperor in place of, you know, just using invisible ink or many other methods...

Racism aside, and to be fair we've seen much worse in this serial, the episode ends with a nice little action set piece on a place, with our heroes engaging in fisticuffs as their plane is shot down by friendly fire. On and on we go...

Batman: Slaves of the Rising Sun

"You and all your Axis cronies... you're through!"

A lot happens in this episode between the two cliffhangers of the railway bridge and the van going off a cliff. One of Daka's hoods, having failred in his mission and turned agaimnst Daka, is foolish enough to stand right on top of the trap door and ends up fed to Daka's aligators in that spendid supervillain trope. Some sake is drunk. There's a fortune teller and a switcheroo, a car chase, Batman firing the radium gun.

But... well, again it's the staggering levels of racism, even taking full account of the context, that stands out here. I know we had one staggeringly racist line in the first episode, but this time we get "That's the kind of answer that fits the colour of your skin."

Yes. Really. That line is literally in this episode. Wow.

I'm lefdt wondering just how much more we'll see that's at this level. Jingoism, anti-Japanese sentiment, even a bit of mild xenophobia could be largely explained by the context. But this? Wow.

Batman: The Mark of the Zombies

 "I suggest that you adopt an attitude of fatal tresignation..."

This is the episode where, predictably, Linda's uncle gets zombified by Daka, in a suiably bonkers machine which reminds me of a pound shop version of the device from Bride of Frankenstein, a fairly recent film at this point. Daka is a properly moustache-twirling baddie and... yeah, even his henchmen are racist about him behind his back. I've learned, since last episode, that J. Carroll Naish was originally set to play the Joker, and you can kind of see with the costume and the hideout. Instead... oh dear. There's a danger of actually getting desensitised to the racism.

Awkwardly, though, this is actually pretty good for a movie serial.The cliffhanger resolution is actually ok. Daka's train robbery plan is cool, as is Bruce's plan to trap Daka with the newspsaper advert, which Daka sees through... only for the Batman to see through said, er, seeing through.

This is massively formulaic but, hey, it's a movie serial. So far, if it wasn't for the racism, I'd be quite impressed.

Batman: The Bat's Cave

 "Don't worry. They don't bite... unless I tell them to."

Thankfully, other than the actualmpresence and appearance of Dr. Daka, the racism isn't so foregrounded here, much as it is of course present. This continues, that rather large elephant in the room aside, to be a moderately superior movie serial. Yes, we're now moving into the plotless series of episodes and set pieces that charactyerise the genre, but there are nice little touches- Lewis Wilson's impressive performance as Brude Wayne, the cynicism of the police captain taking credit fot Batman's work, the nice little scene of Linda Page being gassed in a phone boogth.

It's fascinating seeing the early use of the "Bat's Cave", too- no gadgets, here: this is just a scary place full of bats aimed at scaring baddies. It's equally interesting seeing the first iteration of Alfred- yes, he knows that Bruce and Dick are Batman and Robin, but he's very much a figure of fun and the butt of the joke.

I hope to see more of this sort of thing, fun though the set pieces are. The cliffhanger is rather good, and in fact the production so far is rather good for a movie serial. But we've a long way to go...

Batman: The Electrical Brain

 "Listen, Daka, or whatever your name is! I owe allegiance to no country or order but my own! I'm an American, first and always, and no amount of torture conceived by your twisted oriental brain will make me change my mind!"

I last watched this over Christmas and New Year, 1990-91. Why not watch it again, now, for the firsttime since? The first screen appearance of Batman and a Robin for whom every day is a bad hair day. The first ever appearance, comics included, of Alfred and the Batcave, which is reveal to us from the very start in all ots awesome glory: a posh table, a chair or two, some bats flying about and some papier mache rocks. Bloody terrifying.

This is genuinely very good and engaging, though. Lewis Wilson is excellent as a Batman who, as Bruce Wayne, amusingly exaggerates his playboy persona for the benefit of his disapproving girlfriend, Linda Page, who- she being a woman and this being 1943- is a typist. There's a good explanation ("our special assignment from Uncle Sam") for Bruce not being in the armed forces. And the plot, involving radium in a safe, a radioactive ray gun, and sinister mind control, is excellent.

But- and yes, you knew this was coming: yep, the racism. You have to make allowances for the fact this is 1943, and this is Imperial Japan, merrily committing unspeakable war crimes as the movie serial is filmed. The yellowface is one thing- far from ok, but there's a context. But, I mean, we get the line "since a wise government rounded up the shifty-eyed J*ps", which is utterly mind boggling. Wow.

So yes, all very good... but the racism is really, really shocking, it can't be denied.

The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943)

 "It was English cooking..."

This is, of course, a wonderful film. But the wonder is that, for a British film with a military theme made in 1943, it’s strangely lacking in jingoism. Indeed, I understand Churchill tried to have it banned. I’m rather glad he didn’t succeed.

This film is at once superb and unique, fitting into no real genre. It’s all about war but is not really a war film as we know it. It’s as creatively and wittily directed as one might expect from Powell and Pressburger, with clever visual motifs abounding and a non-linear narrative which is human, cultured and above all realistic about war, and the essential similarities between soldiers who happen to be fighting on different sides but could easily have been friends if fate had not led them to try and shoot each other. 

Yet this is also a film about love, about forgiveness, about not allowing one’s opinions to become too reactionary as one gets older. It’s a film about the essential absurdity of Prussian duelling, about war versus sportsmanship, about the excitement of waiting for the next instalment of The Hound of the Baskervilles in Strand magazine. It’s also a film with quite a large part for an alarmingly young Private Fraser from Dad’s Army.

Most of all, it’s human and warm and funny and wonderful. If you haven’t already, watch it.

I Walked with a Zombie (1943)

"There's no beauty here- only death and decay."

This short film is an instructive reminder that, before 1968 and George A. Romero, zombies were a voodoo, Caribbean thing and not somerging that would ever be done without a Caribbean connection- and yes, this being 1943, there is indeed casual racism all over the place. But what's really surprising is that this isn't an action-filled horror film as such but a small-scale character drama. The zombie in question is just a catatonic woman who may have briefly died; she isn't after you, she doesn't want your brain, and it's even ambiguous whether anything supernatural happened at all. The character of Carrefour is scary to look at, but I wouldn't call this a horror film.

Still, once you accept that this is a simple drama about a burgeoning connection between a nice girl and a man from nasty slave-owning stock who struggles with his sadistic urges. There's even a nice twist at the end. Just be aware of the sort of film this is and be prepared for the cadual