Cast:
Katherine Victor (Batwoman), George Andre (Professor G. Octavius Neon), Steve Brodie (Jim Flanagan), Richard Banks (Rat Fink), Steve Conte (Bruno), Mel Oshins (Tiger), Bruno VeSota (Seltzer), Bob Arbogast (Voice of the Spirits in Séance), and Lloyd Nelson (Heathcliff) Written, Produced, and Directed by Jerry Warren.
Review:
You may or may not know about Jerry Warren. Well, he was a California native that wanted to get into the film business, and he even appeared in a handful of small parts in films of the 1940s. He became a filmmaker with Man Beast (1956), which he directed and produced. He would direct a couple of his own films before deciding to just simply buy and distribute films made internationally with re-editing (such as 1959's Space Invasion of Lapland). This was his penultimate feature, as Warren did one further film as director and producer of Frankenstein Island (1981) after spending the time between films on his ranch; in total, Warren was involved as director in some capacity (full or in segments) for eleven films. Katherine Victor had worked with Warren on films such as Teenage Zombies (1959) and Curse of the Stone Hand (1965). She was promised a movie with better production values to be made in color with her own boat. Bruno VeSota called the film script as "like memorizing a telephone book with pages picked at random". DC Comics sued Warren for "copyright infringement", since you know, the movie was made to try and capitalize on the Batman craze that happened with the 1966 series, but the lawsuit was won by Warren; he later released the film as She Was a Hippy Vampire. The film re-uses footage from No Time to Kill (1959) and The Mole People (1956), and you even get to see the batgirls get mated with mole people...nah, just kidding.
Victor has a costume all by herself: a bat insignia with cardboard cutout that is outlined in pencil and filled in with black eyeliner that is right on her chest to go along with a leotard, a domino mask, and feathers. You can see the enthusiasm on her face at being in a movie with no boat or the semblance of being anything other than incomprehensible. Incidentally, she served as a continuity director (among other roles) on a handful of animated films and cartoons released by Walt Disney Animation Studios, which probably means that any cartoon that she was a part of in some form was automatically better than this film. Hell, she could have done as little as provide someone with a piece of paper, and boom, that means she did more to making a useful product than what she does here. This is the kind of movie with "synthetic" vampires that drink smoothies for the introduction and wrist radios for the "Batgirls" that must deal with the acquisition of an "Atomic Hearing Aid". You get to see a seance to try and find the device that ends up seeing a "Chinese" spirit interrupting the ceremony. I think dubbing the film would almost make the film something worth understanding. At any rate, the Mystery Science Theater 3000 crew also covered the film. 70 minutes of mildly boring entertainment that may or may not work in the realm of subdued surreal crapfests, one where you can see a director-writer-producer-editor mishandle each category. You get to see an actor do a crappy attempt at an accent while playing a mad scientist. You get to see a bunch of dancing and a plot that moves like jello and feels like kitsch in all of the worst ways. In other words: things happen, and you just have to make sure you don't fall asleep when it ends in a mishmash of words. The fact that the movie managed to garner a 0 rating is not even a surprise, because giving the movie credit for anything seems like a bridge too far. Lousy acting, lousy action, lousy from top to bottom is the best way to describe the film. One can only wonder what other "films" came from Jerry Warren that could possibly top this one in rancid quality.
Overall, I give it 0 out of 10 stars.
Next Time: Warrior of the Lost World.
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