This series was definitely not meant for adult consumption. Even kids can look at this and feel insulted.Lets start with the size of Robin's head. Who can look at this guy and think with a head like that, a mask can conceal his identity?Neither of the "dynamic duo" attempts to disguise his voice.Vicky and the Police Commissioner must be two of the dumbest people on earth.Batman literally strands a man out in the middle of nowhere, somehow convincing him it's his civic duty to give a masked vigilante his car. When was the last time 2 guys wearing masks talked someone out of their car without threatening to kill the owner of the vehicle?At one point Bruce gets kidnapped and forced to drive 2 of the criminals, in his car, to a certain location. Bruce says to them, "So this is where we're going..." and rattles off the address. The 2 idiot bad guys don't get that the car has to be bugged.The plot, a giant remote control device that can control any randomly selected vehicle and is powered by diamonds is stolen. The villain and/or thief is a man wearing a mask with eye holes so small an ant couldn't through them.I don't get all the positive reviews because this was a really bad series.

I really wish I had seen this as a kid because I'm pretty well convinced I wouldn't have fallen for any of the goofy gimmicks on display here. Don't get me wrong, these Columbia serials have a special place in the minds and hearts of Batman fans like myself, but they do take a special effort to get through. One is always on the fence on how liberal one's use of the fast forward button ought to be, in my case I have to breeze through each of the opening chapters to get to just the right spot to see what kind of red herring the last one offered before a car went over a cliff or some building blew up.Robert Lowery and Johnny Duncan seemed like pretty good choices to portray the costumed heroes; Lowery managed to distract me a bit with his uncanny resemblance to Johnny Weissmuller, and it eventually dawned on me that he portrayed Big Tim Champion in the 'Circus Boy' TV series of the mid-Fifties. How he dealt with the Bat-Mask I'll never know, the protruding nose and ears might have been menacing to crooks but they seemed rather silly looking to me. Perhaps to further a connection to Batman's namesake, I thought it interesting that the script often called for him to swoop down from an elevated position with outstretched cape to simulate a flying bat.One of the funniest things throughout the entire serial occurred when Batman needed a blow torch to cut through some wall or other, and he just so happened to have one under his cape. Throughout the story there are a myriad of credibility defying devices introduced that boggle the mind like a remote control machine that stops automotive vehicles in their tracks, invisibility rays, and a tele-viewer the Wizard is able to use to see virtually anything the script calls for.More than anything, what blows my mind is that at one time, grown men saw fit to write, produce and act in these stories with virtually no self-conscious embarrassment over how dumb they looked. Take for example any scene in which more than one thug or henchman was involved in which they consistently crossed paths wondering what to do next. And was it my imagination or did every uniformed policeman in the picture look like he was already past retirement age? Well look, I don't want to rain on anyone's parade here. Early serials like this were an interesting attempt to get super-heroes from the comic pages onto the big screen and were wildly and successfully accepted by young matinée fans of the day. And if you missed an episode during any fifteen chapter run it's not like it would have been the end of the world. You just picked up the story in mid stream the following week and you'd be back on track in no time.

There is not a better example of a typical 40's/50's cliffhanger matinée serial than this underbudgeted Batman entry. And, you're either going to embrace all it's flawed charms or not. There's no in between.First,let me tell you where I'm coming from. I loved the Batman 60's TV program for all it's campiness, and I am still amazed at Burton's first Warner Bros. Batman blockbuster with Keaton/Nicholson which incredibly and masterfully convinced us to suspend disbelief and take the masked crusader seriously. The '49 Batman serial, while closer to the TV version, than the high budgeted movie spectacular, for me, is somewhere in between. The reason is, that I saw this serial for the first time as an 8 year old matinée movie goer in Florida during it's first release.It was much different then, and I'm not convinced that in spite of the advancements in production values and special effects that it was any more fun or magical to be a movie kid today as it was in the 50's. We all see movies through our own set of filters and if your's are the Matrix and video games, you will probably not be a fan of Batman '49.We were not blind or stupid, we saw the flaws and didn't care. We also saw the adventure and embraced it. For all it's lack of high production, this Batman and Robin was a whole lot of fun. And in running the VHS or DVD versions, I'm transported back to a simpler time, and, more importantly, am convinced that this example of matinée fare is typical of what my generation of baby boomers learned from the movies about right from wrong and good from evil.

I remember this being shown in serial version as a black & white fill-in for a 70s youth culture show in Australia. It was actually a music and pop culture show, and this was done as a novelty bit; but I thoroughly loved it; and avidly followed the adventure every week. I wish some younger kids shows of today had the guts to try something like that, and reinvent the classic stories.I especially remember the submarine going to the hidden lair of the villain.And also Batman and Robin riding around in the standard convertible. For a while, I started to doubt this version existed, since it never got mentioned in any discussion of Batman.It's this version that caused me to be rather dismissive of the more campy over-the-top TV series (starring Adam West and Burt Ward) that everyone is so fond of now.