Mystery Science Theater 3000 - The Wild World of Batwoman

Mystery Science Theater 3000 - The Wild World of Batwoman

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DVD Reviews of Mystery Science Theater 3000 - The Wild World of Batwoman

DVD Review: "Like a Warhol movie, only it's weird..."
Summary: 4 Stars

The only thing that makes The Wild World of Batwoman barely tolerable is Mike and the 'bots. I will say that this movie has everything from vampire women who drink synthetic blood, go go dancing (and lots of it), an atomic powered hearing aid, a mad scientist who has a thinly veiled homoerotic relationship with his hunchback assistant (see their poignant kiss near the end), happy pills, mole men, an evil masked villain named Rat Fink, a secret laboratory, an underground city...yes, this movie seems to have everything except a discernable plot.

Maybe I can sort it out...let's see...there's a costumed crime fighter named Batwoman who doesn't really fight crime, and she has a cult of vampire women who drink synthetic blood who act as her operatives, assisting her in her non crime fighting. Then we have an evil masked villain named Rat Fink, and obvious rip off of Ray Dennis Steckler's Rat Pfink a Boo Boo (1965). This guy looks like a lame Mexican wrestler, and his only real power beside coming up with extremely elaborate yet pointless schemes is the ability to duplicate himself, with the aid of a machine. He has a mad scientist working for him, whose biggest accomplishment is the invention of a happy pill (Prozac?) and also creating a race of mole men. He has an extremely annoying hunchback assistant with the mental capacity of a grape. (He's not really hunchbacked, as he just walks around hunched over most of the time) Rat Fink is also saddled with a couple of henchmen that, in comparison, make any of the henchmen from the campy 60's Batman TV show look like friggin' Einstiens.

Anyway, seems Rat Fink wants to steal an atomic hearing aid (!?) from the Ayjax Development Company for some diabolical purpose. Batwoman has been hired to guard it, but fails miserably. Batwoman and her crime fightin' beauties mount a plan to recover the device, and the movie ends.

There's a ton of irrelevant stuff (I really wanted to see where the whole mole man/underground city plot threads were going), but once the extraneous padding is removed, the movie is probably only about 15 minutes long, instead of it's 70 minute run time.

Mike, Crow, and Servo do an excellent job providing much needed humor to yet another unwatchable movie, and while not among the best of the episodes, it certainly holds up well. I agree with other reviewers that this particular episode probably wouldn't be the best place for the uninitiated to start. A better introduction, in my opinion, would be Hands of Manos, or maybe the slightly more palatable Cave Dwellers episodes.

Along with the movie, this disc contains a short called Cheating, and the boys do quite well giving it the treatment it deserves. Also, available on this disc, is the unmystied version of the movie (no commentary by the boys). One interesting aspect I've noticed with a number of the early releases by Rhino of this series is that there didn't seem to be a lot of consistency from the release of one episode to another. From the menus, features, even to the packaging, nothing was really set in stone. This disc contains a postcard of Joel (or Mike) and the 'bots, while others didn't. After many of the episodes available were released in single disc format, Rhino elected to release what they had left in a set format, providing more standardization. Not a complaint on my part, as I am happy to even see this at least some of the episodes available on DVD, but it always struck me as odd.

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