April 30, 2003
This isn't a movie, it's a test for eye strain.
I've seen this movie twice (which was an assault on one eye each), once on MST3K with Mike and the 'bots as a buffer and the second time without and I can tell you honestly that the movie was a struggle in any format. All I can tell you for sure is that somewhere in the world there is a couch with eight distinctive claw marks from my fingernails. I swore I would sit through this dreck no matter what. Of course, that was before I had seen it.
The movie comes billed as The Wild World of Batwoman and at times The Wild Wild World of Batwoman but was originally called She Was a Hippie Vampire after DC Comics threatened a gigantic lawsuit and the movie was shelved. But it doesn't matter what you called it, I mean after all, a turd by any other name.
The movie is a baffling ordeal. It involves a team of Go-Go dancing floozies who, we are told, fight crime (although they never actually do anything other then talk into their wristwatches) and work for a woman who looks like the coat check girl at Dracula's house. But mostly the lame plot is designed around endless scenes of half-dressed women doing The Jerk (the dance, not Steve Martin).
There are three establishing scenes, which have little to nothing to do with the rest of the movie. These scenes only serve to convince us that the Batgirls aren't so much crime fighters as they are a Go-Go dancing sorority with a minor sideline as a neighborhood watch. The first opening features a girl being initiated by having to drink blood and then some nonsensical babbling about yogurt, cherries and synthetic vampires. This is odd because the scene establishes nothing and these girls disappear from the rest of the film.
The second opening shows the Batgirls' involvement with fighting crime and their intense desire to stay out of the way: A man is shot by two muggers when he refuses to give up his wallet and two of the Batgirls (one of whom looks seriously drugged up) watch from behind two garbage cans and merely report it to their superior (thanks for nothing ladies). No actions are taken to help the poor guy, no actions are taken to track down the muggers and the scene is henceforth forgotten.
That takes us to the third opening, which forgets everything that has just happened so we can enjoy eight-hundred feet of film of women happily performing the aforementioned Jerk. The Batgirls wiggle and jiggle in a dance club (complete with so much Dutch Tilt that you almost need Dramamine) while one of their members is drugged and kidnapped. So, in the first five minutes we learn that the girls are crime fighters but also establish that they don't ever really do anything.
Then the movie unfortunately gets going into something resembling a plot.
Batwoman's arch nemesis contacts her and informs her that he has the girl's wrist radio and that he will return it when he is finished with it. His name is Ratfink (yes, Ratfink) an odd fellow who dresses like a Mexican wrestler and moonlights as a peeping tom (don't ask). He needs the wrist radio to finish his work on (I am not making this up) an atomic hearing aid! That's not a brand name, it is a hearing aid that runs on atomic power. Remember when they use to think that cell phones gave you cancer? Ponder for a moment the effects of an atomic hearing aid. Stop pondering, you'll strain something.
The girl is being held in the laboratory of a certain Dr. Neon, a nervous fellow who likes weird experiments that don't appear to have any useable function. His latest work: a happy pill that makes the subject start doing The Monkey. Yeah, uh-huh. Now I know why he works for a Mexican Wrestler.
Anyway the movie finds all manner
of opportunities to stamp "Wackiness Insues" onto it's tasteless
palette but it was completely lost on me. Somewhere in the middle of the
movie I became somewhat indifferent to the dancing girls, Batwomen, The
Monkey, Neon's monkey-boy Heathcliff, recycled footage from The Mole
Men, The unforgivable seance, the blatant continuity lapses, the films
complete inability to move from one bit to the next without a dance number.
I just didn't care.
There are no words to accurately describe how indescribably indescribable this movie is (no printable words anyway). Thanks to Mystery Science Theater 3000, The Wild World of Batwoman will forever be hailed as one of the worst movies ever made but I like to think that the movie has found it's place in movie history . . . right out there next to the curb where the big truck comes by on Tuesdays.
