D: Lambert Hillyer / 20m

Cast: Lewis Wilson, Douglas Croft, J. Carrol Naish, Shirley Patterson, William Austin, Charles C. Wilson, Gus Glassmire, John Maxwell

Trapped inside a wooden crate, Batman seems doomed to be fed to Daka’s crocodiles, but when the crate is dropped into their pit, Daka and his goons are surprised to learn it’s one of their own who’s inside the crate. With help from Robin and a handy Morse Code device in his utility belt, the Caped Crusader has switched places with Daka’s unlucky henchman, and has trailed the crate to Daka’s lair. Using Alfred as a diversion, Batman and Robin sneak into the Cave of Horrors that serves as the entrance to Daka’s hideout. Overcoming several of the villain’s henchmen, and while Robin ties them up, Batman is apprehended by two of Daka’s zombies and forced into Daka’s laboratory, where he is strapped to a chair and threatened with being turned into a zonbie. Meanwhile, Alfred finds himself apprehended too: by a policeman who takes him to see Captain Arnold; soon he’s returning with more police (well, three of them) than you can shake a Japanese spy ring at. But will they be in time to save Batman from having his secret identity revealed and being turned into a zombie…?

And so, we reach the end of Batman’s first screen appearance, thanks to those good folks at Columbia, and the efforts of a cast and production crew who you could argue were suffering from serial fatigue from the very outset. It’s been a very patchy affair, with chapters that failed to advance the (very basic) plot, and performances that could provide the dictionary definition of perfunctory. The direction was inconsistent too, with Hillyer seemingly engaged in some episodes, and treading water in others (along with everyone else). In short, when Batman was good, it was really good, and when Batman was bad, it was really bad. Seventy-five years on, it’s not a serial that’s stood the test of time, but as a curio it has its good points, and is worth seeking out if you’re a fan of the Caped Crusader, or if you’re a fan of the serial format. Be prepared though to wade through some very tortuous moments in order to get to the good stuff, and then repeat as often as the script deems it necessary – which is a lot. Surprisingly, this was Columbia’s largest-scale serial production to date, but watching it, you have to wonder where the money went to.

And sadly, the problems that have plagued the serial throughout the first fourteen chapters are still present in the last, and are exacerbated by the need to wrap things up. The radium remains completely forgotten, the references to Daka as a “Jap” are rehashed (three times by Batman, who can’t refer to him in any other way), Daka’s zombies continue to hang around like glorified human ornaments, and the fight scenes are as clumsily choreographed as ever – but are now much shorter as Daka’s men prove to have glass jaws all of a sudden. Aside from being tied to a chair for a few minutes, it’s all too easy for Batman, and Daka’s fate is sealed with a minimum of (ironic and appropriate) fuss. If there’s one positive aspect about the whole thing, it’s that Robin gets to save the day not once but twice, but even then he remains as invisible as ever. If you watch each chapter closely, you’ll find that Batman is always referred to in the singular, and there’s no mention of Batman and Robin. Perhaps it’s an oversight, perhaps it’s deliberate, but it is indicative of the lack of care taken in the script, something that happens a lot, and which, sadly, stops this particular serial from scaling the heights of some of its predecessors.

Rating: 6/10 – narrative short cuts and the need to wrap things up neatly leads Chapter 15 into a dramatic cul-de-sac that sees what should be an energetic and exciting finale become something of a chore to get through; historically important for being the character’s first screen outing, Batman isn’t the best example of the Forties serial format, and it’s only sporadically rewarding (oh for the heyday of Chapters 6-8), all of which ensures that this particular episode fits right in in the overall scheme of things.

D: Lambert Hillyer / 16m

Cast: Lewis Wilson, Douglas Croft, J. Carrol Naish, Shirley Patterson, William Austin, John Maxwell, Warren Jackson, Gus Glassmire

Saved by the timely intervention of Robin, Batman escapes the room full of spikes, while Linda is turned into a zombie by Daka. Batman and Robin look for another way into Daka’s lair, their opponent discovers his trap hasn’t worked. Taking no chances he detonates charges set into the roof of the entrance and collapses the tunnel. When the Dynamic Duo realise what has happened, they determine to find out where another entrance might be located. As they return to their car (with Alfred waiting as patiently as ever), two of Daka’s henchmen spot Robin getting into it. They follow the car and force it to pull over. Bruce wrong foots them, and when the henchmen drive off, it’s they who are followed. When they are pulled over, a brief fight sees them captured and taken to the Bat Cave. Alfred finds a note from Linda asking Bruce to meet her at an old house. Suspecting a trap, Batman enters the house alone, and is soon overcome by two of Daka’s men. Carried out in a wooden crate, Batman remains in it all the way to Daka’s lair, where the crate – with him still in it – is dropped into Daka’s crocodile pit, sending him to certain death…

The penultimate chapter sees the serial keeping to the idea of Batman taking the fight to Daka, but not with the same intensity or determination as in Chapter 13. That said, he’s still more proactive than he’s been for most of the serial, although in doing so, Robin continues to be sidelined: when Batman goes to the old house, Robin has to wait in the car! The increased sense of urgency about the narrative still throws up the odd anomaly, though, with the capture of Daka’s men and their subsequent incarceration in the Bat Cave – alongside the still restrained Bernie (Jackson) – proving as unnecessary as the death of Marshall in Chapter 12. Both these sequences serve only to stretch the running times of their respective installments, and with The Executioner Strikes replaying around three minutes of Chapter 13 at the beginning, the need for so much filler remains disconcerting. The whole approach seems to support the idea that the writers didn’t have a great deal of time to put everything together, and as a result, the serial’s structure has no choice but to feel haphazard.

This episode also highlights other ways in which the narrative appears to have been made up from chapter to chapter. Daka’s pursuit of radium – given so much emphasis during the serial’s first half – could be regarded as forgotten or surplus to requirements  now, seeing how unimportant it’s become. Elsewhere, Linda’s involvement in the plot to trap Bruce Wayne doesn’t make sense (she has to arrive in a crate but can leave on her own two feet), and it’s troubling that a note can be left for Bruce at his home when neither Daka nor his men have any idea where Bruce lives in the first place. As we get nearer to the culmination of the whole saga, the writing has become noticeably lazier, and the urgency of the material is proving to be unequal to the task of papering over these obvious cracks. Hillyer is still plugging away, doing his best, almost refusing to let things get the better of him, but he’s hamstrung by the increasing paucity of the material. And even the nature of Batman’s intended demise, normally the source of mild conjecture as to how he’ll escape certain death, is here rendered moot by a narrative sleight of hand that won’t fool anyone, and which means there’s no need to ask, just how is Batman going to survive this time…?

Rating: 6/10 – the inconsistency of the serial as a whole is rendered vividly by the events of Chapter 14, and the misplaced energy employed in presenting them; with just the final episode of Batman left, there’s continued momentum but sadly it’s at a disservice to the story and the characters.