The Wild World of Batwoman

What do you get when you combine go-go-girls, seances, "happy" pills, hearing aids, bare midriffs, lecherous middle-aged men, "Oriental languages," chocolate milk, the Watusi, mad scientists, pool parties and government surveillance?

The Wild World of Batwoman, that's what!

Another flick that operates on an Ed Wood-level of competence, The Wild World of Batwoman is an odd hodgepodge of leftover plot points and cheap sets. It makes the 60s Batman television series look like Game of Thrones..

There's an odd opener of two blondes (one of whom looks a lot like Amy Schumer) and a brunette in baby doll nighties blathering about strawberry yogurt and vampires--apparently this bit was tacked on when the producers were sued for copyright infringement (Who knows why they wouldn't want their intellectual property associated with such a fine work of art as this?) and the movie had to be retitled She Was a Hippy Vampire, although this is all we will hear of vampires. Picking up scraps is part of the the aesthetic of The Wild World of Batwoman--the monster shots are cut in from another movie, there's also street footage of what might be Sweden.

Batwoman is played by une femme d'un certain age with a cockade of Siouxsie Sioux hair, a bustier and a Batman symbol drawn on her cleavage--with eyebrow pencil, I'm guessing. The Batgirls seem to be a random assortment of go-go dancers and cocktail waitresses who recite a lot of Girl Scout-like oaths and "fight evil with all sincerity." We see a guy get mugged, a Batgirl get roofied and kidnapped--the Batgirls' crime-fighting skills seem to be limited to the Frug, the Pony and calling for help. Compared to them, Yvonne Craig's Batgirl is Imperator Furiosa.

So, one of the Batgirls is kidnapped by a couple of motley henchmen and an inept mad scientist with the standard creepy deformed assistant. It turns out they are in the service of Batwoman's arch-enemy, Rat Fink--no idea if he's related to Ed "Big Daddy" Roth's Rat Fink or the Rat Pfink of Rat Pfink a Boo-Boo. Apparently he is trying to get hold of some magical hearing aid that can eavesdrop on anyone, anywhere. And it's also an atomic bomb. Or something.

You know the Ajax company that occasionally pops up in the Disney universe, employers of incompetent ghost exterminators and spluttering ducks? They are too high-end for The Wild World of Batwoman, hence they use the knockoff, factory seconds version...

So, there's much rushing back and forth and escaping and getting kidnapped. The mad scientist keeps dispensing happy pills to everyone, because somehow there's not enough footage of Batgirls (and the occasional hunchbacked assistant) endlessly go-go dancing in midriff tops. That's what the happy pills make you do: Gyrate like it's inpatient talent night on American Bandstand.

Then our plot takes another bizarre turn as suddenly Batwoman needs to contact the spirit world (by holding hands around a table, these folks being too cheap to spring for a Ouija board) to tell her where the bad guys' lair is. Which is odd, because Batwoman has already been to said lair, but "it was dark" and she just can't find it now. Huh? Is it in one of those subdivisions where all the streets are named for types of cacti and all of the houses look alike? Which is actually entirely possible--like the "torture chamber" of Olga's Girls was obviously someone's basement full of random stuff, the "lab" in The Wild World of Batwoman is clearly a garage down to the shelves of cardboard boxes and side door entrance.

The Wild World of Batwoman is dopey and illogical but amusing nonetheless. It's girl power at its goofiest--actually, Amy Schumer's next movie should be a low-budget piece of superchick schlock with Neil Sedaka's "Bad Blood" as a theme song. All the girls will be non-supermodels--Melissa McCarthy, Margaret Cho, Kristen Schaal, Niecy Nash, Jinkx Monsoon, Fran Liebowitz, holographic LaWanda Page. They can let Jennifer Lawrence be their Lena Dunham, maybe bring John Waters out of retirement...

The Return of Dr. X.

Every actor has something on the resume they're not exactly proud of. Elizabeth Taylor has Butterfield 8, Bette Davis has Beyond the Forest, Christopher Lee and Nicholas Cage have a few of their own. Hey, we've all taken a bad gig while struggling, or did it for the paycheck because we wanted a vacation or a dinosaur skull or a backyard water park. But there are some actors we consider beyond such things....

... like you'd never think Humphrey Bogart played a zombie or a mad scientist or a zombie mad scientist. But, well, you've never seen The Return of Dr. X. No relation to Dr. X.--it's not a sequel--or to The Revenge of Dr. X., which was written by Ed Wood and is only marginally worse.

So the upshot is that this really annoying intrepid reporter type--played by Wayne Morris as an annoying goofball dork with highwater pants and his fedora flipped up like a hayseed--is trying to interview a famous actress. You can tell she's a famous actress because she lives  in a luxury hotel, wears satin negligees and has a pet monkey and a indiscriminately foreign accent. She is played by Lya Lys, better known from her role in Bunuel's L'Age d'Or. Hey, surrealist manifestos don't pay the bills, aight?

However, when Intrepid Reporter gets to her suite, Famous Actress is dead. Stabbed. Intrepid Reporter prints the story that Famous Actress is dead. Doesn't tell the hotel manager, doesn't call the cops, just leaves the body and informs the authorities with a front-page headline. Of course, Famous Actress turns up, quite pale but very much alive and threatening to sue. But then another body drained of a rare blood type--the same as Famous Actress--turns up and Intrepid Reporter busts into the hospital where he makes friends with Random Doctor.

And just when Random Doctor sends off Intrepid Reporter with the orders to "come back when you sober up" (But he's not drunk; he's just stupid.), Random Doctor is promptly summoned to another hotel room with a dead body, this time "a professional donor," also of the same rare blood type. 

Another blood spot is found at the crime scene, but "It's not... human." Which leads Intrepid Reporter to figure it must be a -- "Gorilla murder... Aw, Mike, if you can figure that one out we'll have a front-page spread on every newspaper in the country for weeks!" (Gorilla murder, Donald Trump candidacy--tomato, tomahto, same difference.) But it's not gorilla, or even animal, so Random Doctor goes to visit a hematologist colleague of his, Dr. Flake. It is here he meets Humphrey Bogart as Kang, apparently Dr, Flake's Renfield figure.

Dr. Flake gives Random Doctor the brush-off and he leaves. Shortly thereafter, Famous Actress arrives, makeup gun apparently set on Three-Day Drunk Elvira, begs Dr. Flake and Kang for help and passes out. All of this is witnessed through a window by Intrepid Reporter.

Rosemary Lane pops up as Joan, Intrepid Reporter's girlfriend who is only present because apparently she's some kind of Uber. Also to prevent us from assuming the obvious about Intrepid Reporter and Random Doctor. (She doesn't and, yes, we've already assumed it about Flake and Kang as well.)

I didn't know Dave Vanian's dad was a butler but, really, it makes perfect sense.

Neither of these men are at all creepy. Which is why Famous Actress still has them for her doctors. And probably why Famous Actress winds up dead. Again. For real this time.

So, yadda yadda yadda, it turns out that Flake is doing experiments raising rabbits and humans from the dead. Among his experiments: Kang, who is actually the feared Dr. X. who was "that skunk who wanted to see how long babies could go without eatin'" and subsequently got the chair. There's some poking around in funeral homes and graveyards and they finally go back to see Dr. Flake who is all like "Hell, yeah, I brought an electrocuted baby murderer back from the dead and am now draining human blood to keep him alive. What?" Of course then Kang reappears and demands the vampire rolodex of people with the magic blood type he needs.  Of course one of them is Joan the Uber-Beard. And off we go...

Bear in mind that this film was released in 1939, long cited as the greatest year in cinema history. The year of Gone With the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, Ninotchka, The Women, Destry Rides Again, Laughton's The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Dark Victory ... and The Return of Dr. X. Ultimately, The Return of Dr. X. is an unremarkable C-grade horror movie that's not particularly horrifying at all. It's sole distinction is the slumming appearance as a zombie mad scientist sorta vampire from one of the most respected and iconic stars of all time.

 

* Also, i found out in the credits that it's apparently Dr. Flegg and his assistant Quesne. Whatever.
I'm sticking with Flake and Kang.

The Brain That Wouldn't Die

... because they handed me a barrel with a fish in it and i had one bullet left.

 "Horror has it's ultimate and I am that."

As the title subtly indicates, The Brain That Wouldn't Die is a movie of impressive schlockiness. Elvira has done it, Mystery Science Theater 3000 has done it. And, really, how can you not? It's an archetypal piece of bad 50's sci-fi. (Yes, i know, many date the film at 1962, but it took three years to find a distributor and it is so very 50's i'm dating it to then...)

So, here we go. Our main character is one Dr. Bill Cortner. His father is a famous doctor, he has a "secret mountaintop lab" and a short temper and another character warns him, "Don't try to play god." Yeah, we see where this is going...

And his fiancee, Jan Compton. She works as his nurse. A woman gainfully employed in a STEM field who admits that she likes sex. During the Eisenhower administration. Oh, uppity tramp is gonna pay for that...

The Brain That Wouldn't Die opens hauntingly with a black screen and a frantic female voice whispering, "Let me die. Let me... die." Then the mood is immediately broken with some cheap n' bombastic credits, followed by the cheap n' bombastic film. Fade in to several doctors working over a patient who dies on the table. The older doctor -- Dr. Dad -- declares the patient dead. The younger doctor -- Dr. Screwloose -- asks for a chance to do things "my way."

"Very well, the corpse is yours. Do what you want to do."

... just what everyone wants to hear! Dr.  Screwwloose  manages to shock it with electricity and tinker with the brain and bring it back to life. Then heand Dr. Dad argue science and ethics and transplants and bureaucracy ...
"The supervisor had it out with me. He thinks it's you who's been stealing those limbs from the amputee operations."

"So what if it is? I need limbs!"

Fortunately, Jan, the fiancee comes back to distract everybody with her wanton ways.

"When you two are married, it won't be fun to watch anymore."

"Well, I can promise you one thing: Your grandchildren won't be test tube babies."

Dr. Screwloose gets a message from "Carl" imploring him to return to the secret mountaintop lab immediately. Some kind of emergency. The Dr. and his fiancee race to the top of the mountain... oh, you see where this is going. What follows is seven-minutes that could easily be excised and presented as an avant-garde short film of the time. A montage of blurred trees, intercut signage, abstract framing, fumbling through smoke and climbing an endless staircase carrying a severed head. Exactly. Stan Brakhage and Maya Deren, eat your hearts out!

 ... yeah, severed head. His shitty driving crashed the car and got his girl's head chopped off and, well, you can see where this is going. Straight to the lab! Allowing The Brain That Would Not Die to kill another 5-6 minutes of running time on test tubes, beakers and furrowed brows. We also meet Dr.Screwloose's assistant, Carl, also once a surgeon, but he lost an arm in an accident. The Dr. "fixed" it, and now he has something that looks like a dwarf foot for a hand. You know, maybe there's a reason they don't let him do things "my way..."

Science!

So, it's sort of the plot of The Man With Two Brains or Frankenhooker. The Dr. manages to reanimate his fiancee's head in a cookie sheet full of jello with some phone cords attached. Jan in the Pan, as she will hereforth be known, is none too pleased with this development.

"I've had success with transplants before, now I'll do it for her."

Uh, success? The dwarffoothand and whatever that "thing" in the closet is that they keep alluding to -- that's success?

Oh, fuck... Yeah, it's bad in there, but Dr.  Screwloose is not gonna deal with that right now. Right now, "I've got to find her a body!" 

Preferably one with big boobs.

What is this place? It's some kind of dive bar, but has Italian restaurant tablecloths and random dancers is fancy showgirl outfits and the most incredible mural. Are you seeing that mural? It's dogs hanging out at a bar. It's like a cross between the mural at the Hard Hat, the mural at the Frolic Room and one of those paintings of dogs playing poker. The Dr. tries to score one of the strippers, but is driven off by a catfight. A catfight so incompetent and literal they show pictures of cats and have "meow" sound effects.

... and suddenly we go from Maya Deren to Doris Wishman!

Meanwhile, back at the lab, Jan in the Pan is awake and starts talking to the thing in the closet, which knocks once for yes and twice for no. Yes, i am telling you about the conversation between the head in the pan and the monster in a closet. Jan in the Pan and... let's call him Tom Cruise. Because they have telepathic conversations while the mad scientist is off trying to decapitate a stripper. Jesus, i love this film! It is the mitzvah of schlock!

But it takes Jan in the Pan about two minutes to break it down for Tom Cruise: "I hate him for what he's done to me. Together we could have revenge. Do you want... revenge?"
(Knocks once)

Jan in the Pan now apparently has psychic abilities that come from... being a head on a cookie sheet full of jello. No, really, the whole explanation is, well, duh, yeah, if they keep your severed head alive you become psychic.  Everyone knows that. And we've already established that Jan was a smart cookie even out of the pan, so...

"I shall create power and you shall enforce it!" What i don't get is how Jan in the Pan is supposedly the villain here. Mad scientist, doing horrible experiments on people, mutilates her, moves on to killing women outright and, well, she's gonna stop him by any means necessary. My inclination is to say, "Thanks, Jan, have at it!"

Meanwhile, back in the big bad city, Dr. Screwloose is still acting creepy and cruising for a woman who he can get along long enough to chop off her head and throw her body in the trunk of his car. Unfortunately, the damn women seem to keep traveling in pairs and packs...

But then he hears of a photographer's model, who works from her home. Alone!

... but she has a heeeedious scar. A scar the Dr. can fix. No, really! If she'll just come to his lab right now, tonight, he can totally fix it!

Meanwhile, back at the lab, Jan in the Pan is trying to bait/mindfuck Dwarffoothand Carl into letting Tom Cruise out of the closet. I gotta say, Virginia Leith does a good job for only being able to use her head to act.

... and then Tom Cruise rips his arm off. Ironically, the good arm. Still got the dwarffoothand!

In the meantime, Dr. Screwloose roofies the bikini model -- Because when you're going to have major surgery in the middle of the night, you and your doctor should always have a drink first! -- and carries her down to the lab, to prepare her for the cranial transplant operation.

In the end, Jan in the Pan and Tom Cruise -- the decapitated head in a cookie sheet of jello and the monster made out of random grafted amputation castoffs that lives in the closet -- save the day.

At the end of the movie, Jan in the Pan, Dr. Screwloose and Carl perish in the burning lab. Tom Cruise carries the scarred bikini model to safety and, i assume, a happily ever after... 

Tom Cruise was played by Eddie Carmel, who was the subject of a famous photograph by Diane Arbus. In monster form, he also looks curiously like a nasty, melted version Muno from Yo Gabba Gabba.

The Brain That Wouldn't Die remains a classic of sci-fi D-movie trash. it's cheap, it's ridiculous, it's entirely entertaining... well, most of the time anyway. And the lulls allow you to add your own commentary. So, watch the movie.  Buy the T-shirt. Make the dress. Build the model. See the musicial stage production. Listen to the record while leaning back on the throw pillow...