Batman

1943 - 15 Chapters

The serial starred Lewis Wilson as Batman and Douglas Croft as Robin. J. Carrol Naish played the villain, an original character named Dr. Daka. Rounding out the cast were Shirley Patterson as Linda Page (Bruce Wayne's love interest), and William Austin as Alfred the butler. The plot involved Batman—as a U.S. government agent—attempting to defeat the Japanese agent Dr. Daka, at the height of World War II.

The film is notable for being the first filmed appearance of Batman, and for debuting story details that became permanent parts of the Batman mythos. It introduced "The Bat's Cave", and its secret entrance through a grandfather clock inside Wayne Manor. Both departures subsequently appeared in the comics. The serial also changed the course of how Alfred Pennyworth's physical appearance would be depicted in later Batman works. At the time it was released in theaters, Alfred was overweight in Batman comics. After William Austin's portrayal in these chapter plays, however, subsequent issues of the comics portrayed him as Austin had: trim, and sporting a thin mustache. The serial was commercially successful, and spawned another, Batman and Robin, in 1949. 


Plot

Batman and Robin struggle against Dr. Daka, a Japanese scientist and agent of Hirohito who has invented a device that turns people into pseudo-zombies, and has a base in a Funhouse of horrors, in a Japanese area of the city. Daka makes several attempts to defeat the Dynamic Duo before finally falling to his death when Robin hits the wrong switch, opening a trapdoor to a pit of crocodiles.

Cast

Lewis Wilson as Batman/Bruce Wayne
Douglas Croft as Robin/Richard 'Dick' Grayson
J. Carrol Naish as Dr. Tito Daka/Prince Daka
Shirley Patterson as Linda Page
William Austin as Alfred Pennyworth
Robert Fiske as Foster


Chapter titles

The Electrical Brain
The Bat's Cave
The Mark of the Zombies
Slaves of the Rising Sun
The Living Corpse
Poison Peril
The Phony Doctor
Lured by Radium
The Sign of the Sphinx
Flying Spies
A Nipponese Trap
Embers of Evil
Eight Steps Down
The Executioner Strikes
The Doom of the Rising Sun