It's something to make you cringe at our cinematic history or to revel in how far we've come.

Columbia Pictures' Batman is just about as good as the next serial, which spells plenty of two-fisted fun.

15 episodes bolted into one for this full feature version as "Batman" (Lewis Wilson) and "Robin" (Douglas Croft) must thwack and pow their way to victory against the evil plans of "Prince Daka" (J. Carrol Naish). The Prince's dastardly plot involves using the now largely abandoned "Little Tokyo" area as a base for robotising some prominent scientists so he can complete his take over of Gotham City. Can our dynamic duo thwart his plan? The production is seriously stage bound, the constant fisticuffs are all too repetitive and Croft looks about ten years old. It might have worked better in an episodic format, but as a four-hour piece of entertainment it all just recycles itself far too regularly, with defeat for the Prince and his innumerable henchmen being snatched from the jaws of victory just once too often. There are some lighter moments as the caped crusaders regularly deliver the city's most wanted to the cops but the acting is pretty dreadful across the board. It was probably entertaining enough in 1943, but 80 years later it is pretty feeble stuff.

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