Wednesday, April 15, 2015

Batman the Complete Season One

This was my birthday present to myself, since it was on sale and I had a $10 GC, it cost a whopping $7!  While I would love to get the complete blu ray set some day, this will do for now.  I'm really happy the entire series is out on DVD now, as it's something I never actually thought would happen, what with all the rights being tied up with a gazillion different companies.  But here we are, so let's be happy with it, since it's pretty great (what I've watched so far).

And what I've watched has just been the first two episodes, with special guest stars Frank Gorshin and Jill St John.  The clarity of the picture is amazing, I never noticed Batman's beard stubble in the second episode before.  This pilot episode is a bit different than what people expect from the series, since it hadn't gotten into it's routine yet.  There's no bat fight in the first episode.  Bruce mentions his murdered parents more than once as well in this two parter.  There's some genuine pathos and some great cinematography as well present here.  I'd like to have seen more of this as the series progressed, but that wasn't how it was done back then.

There are extras present as well, though I've not seen any commentaries from Adam West.  They have the "Batman vs..." next week bumpers, and the bat arsenal on the first disc, which is really cool, and each episode starts out with "Batman... in COLOR" as well, which was important for people to know back then.  I love that sort of thing, it's on the Spider-man 60s cartoon set as well.

It's been so long since I've seen these episodes that it's like watching a new show.  They were so chopped up in syndication that it was hardly worth the time to view them.  There are a lot of little bits I don't remember at all, and I find myself laughing at some of the lines that I never knew were funny before.

I'm glad they started out with the Riddler.  Gorshin was great in this roll, just amazing to watch him embrace it.

Dacya was non-plussed by her being used as a stand for the DVDs.

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