Alyas Batman En Robin (1991)

1991 – Alyas Batman En Robin/"Alias Batman And Robin" (Regal Films)

[Release date 6th April 1991, original title “Batman En Robin”]

Director Tony Y. Reyes Story/Screenplay Joey de Leon, Tony Y. Reyes Executive Producer Lily Monteverde Line Producer Tony Fajardo Production Co-ordinator Douglas Quijano Music Mon del Rosario Cinematography Oscar Querijero Editor Eduardo Jarlego Production Manager Eddie Castillo Production Controller Josie Bracamonte Production Designer Melchor Defensor Assistant Director Eddie Reyes Studio Manager/Post-Production In Charge Warlito M. Teodoro Post-Production Cooordinators Ligata Tan, Enrique Santos, Romalo Co Dubbing Coordinator Edna M. Pacardo Sound Effects Roel Capule Sound Supervision Joe Climaco Publicity & Promo Alfie Lorenzo, June T. Rufino Video Editor (Magnatech) Rolando Ortega Dubbing Supervisors Vangie Labalan, Lucy Quinto Publicity/Promo Assistant J.P. Pelgone Art Director Nancy Arcega Continuity Director Gerry Reyes Propsman Tikboy Estrada Setman Lito Torres Makeup Artist Baby Saro Schedule Master Wendell Dacillo Gaffer Rey Trinidad Special Effects Linda Torrente Assistant Editors Rico Salas, Tony Acurin Production Accountant Luz Veras Production Secretaries Theody Vidal, Aurora Elambayo, Angel Torres, Cirillo Santillo, Gina Elba Murro, Lina Mendoza, Emma Vitalicio, Helen Maglinao, Nilda Bibat, Kyna Jimenea, Jocelyn Matibag, Eva Castillo, Mariz Ortega, Margie Villalon Promotion Coordinators Armichel San Pascuaz, Marilou Billones, Sally Ojalo, Raquel Gacho Dubbing Looper Rene Lamis Assistant Sound Editor Ernesto Sagoisag Layout Artist Vic Delotano Sound Technicians Carlito Alagon, Louisito Maziza, Jay Baltera, C-Ger Ramirez, Marvin Flores, Alex Napiza, Anaclito Teope, Jun Galeon, Mido Lontag, Danny Gamba, Victor Elbo, Louie Galang, Marcelino Liwag, Romeri Castanares, Rudy Carnates, Lauro Frany, Raffy Casimsiman, Jebs Endozo, Rod Lontoc, Nestor Loyosa, Henry Bitana Lights Caretakers Boy Anao, Benjie Binavides, Cris Holgado, Vicente Bocino, Beben Casimsiman Catering Nene Fajardo

Cast Joey de Leon (Batman/Bruce), Keempee de Leon (Kevin/Robin), Rene Requiestas (Jocson/Joker), Dawn Zulueta, Vina Morales (Vina), Panchito [Alba] (Tiyo Paenguin), Almira Muhlach, Chinkee Tan, Cathy Mora, Ruben Rustia, Mon Alvir, Bomber Moran, Joaquin Fajardo, Yoyong Martinez, Rommel Valdez, Ernie Forte, Rene Hawkins, Danny Rojo, Bert Cayanan, Rey Solo, Jun de Guia, Ariel Villasanta, Nemy Gutierez, Enciong Reyes

Review by Andrew Leavold

Philippines cinema has had a long and fruitful relationship with its komic industry dating back to the Forties, as well as a tenuous grasp on the concept of international copyright law. Much of Western culture was adopted and adapted, and put through the process of “Pinoyization”: out of the other end of the cultural sausage machine came a product that was faintly recognizable, but very much Filipino in flavour.

At times producers didn't even bother slapping a new label on a familiar product. The Sixties, it seemed, was open season on Americana: not only Batman, but James Bond, the Phantom, Tarzan – the list is endless. Copyright holders required a court case to be mounted in the offenders' country of origin – a costly and often pointless process, particularly if the offending territory is as far away as the Philippines. And so the relentless plundering of Batman iconography continued, including the intriguing titles Batman Fights Dracula (1967) and Batwoman And Robin Meet The Queen Of The Vampires (1972). But enough was enough, and when Batman En Robin premiered in Manila cinemas in 1991, DC Comics sent a cease-and-desist letter (or so the story goes). The film was withdrawn from theatres, only to reappear on VHS months later with “Alyas” before the film's title, but with all of the infringing material – the name Batman, for starters, along with the symbol, the Batmobile, the Bat Cave ad nauseum – thankfully intact. There's parody, and the degree of license bestowed upon its comedic form, and then there's outright theft. I think you'll quickly note which side of the legal fence this unrepentant sack of arse is proud to sit.

Kevin (Keempee de Leon) is a teenage dreamer obsessed with comics and especially Batman and Robin, lives with his older brother (Joey de Leon) in their parents' old house, is a champion swimmer at his local high school, and object of every young girl's affections. His jealous rival is schoolmate Jocson (Rene Requiestas), a would-be Casanova with full moustache and no front teeth and possibly the oldest schoolboy in the Philippines. He hates both Kevin AND Robin with a passion, and favours the darker charms of Batman's rival The Joker instead. As fate would have it, Jocson's Tiyo (“Uncle”) Paeng (Panchito) invites him to join his new criminal organization, a fearsome bunch based on Batman's rivals: Uncle Paeng crowns himself the Paenguin, complete with top hat and umbrella, while Jocson dons the pancake makeup and spikes his hair into antennae to create the most ludicrous, almost Dali-esque caricature of the Joker in Comicdom.

With assistance from a slinky Cat Woman and her gang of masked she-kittens, Tiyo Paenguin and the Joker embark on a crime spree the likes of which “Gotham City” (or is it “Anila”, as a newspaper headline suggests?) has never seen. At the Smith and Wesson Dollar Exchange, the super-baddies point their guns at the cashiers – and then break into song and dance routine, whilst the girls behind the counter wave their upstretched arms in unison. And the musical numbers don't stop there. Kevin talks his older brother (Joey de Leon) into donning the superhero costumes and teaming up as the Caped Crusader and Wonder Boy in order to banish Paenguin and Joker, and by association, Evil from the world of the Right and Just. Over the top of a montage showing the two brothers getting into superhero shape and building their own Batmobile, musical copyright is once again flushed down the toilet to the tune of the Beach Boys' “Surfin' Safari”:

Do you still remember from your comic book?

All the series of the Dynamic Two

The Caped Crusader and the Wonder Boy

Kalaban nila ang mga goons (They fight all the goons)

Holy smoke, Batman and Robin

Oh my God! Batman and Robin

Praise the Lord Batman and Robin

Shoot na shoot Batman and Robin

Let’s do Bruce Wayne now and Dick Grayson now

They are all a part of me…

For all its surface weirdness and eccentricities to a Western audience, it must be remembered that Alyas Batman En Robin was considered a major release in the Philippines: produced by the largest studio at the time, Regal Films, and starring three of the most popular comedians ever. Joey de Leon's Batman is just one of hundreds of his comedic creations from a career dating back to the Seventies as popular TV comic, game show host, DJ, singer, and member of the phenomenally popular team of Tito, Vic and Joey (affectionally known as “TVJ”). Along with brothers Tito and Vic Sotto, TVJ graduated from TV sensations in Seventies sitcom Iskul Bukol to prolific films stars throughout the Eighties. Aside from the odd reunion the trio went their separate ways in '88, and it was Joey who had the earliest hits with goofy parodies like Starzan (1989) and The Long Ranger And Tonton (1989), often with Batman's Tony Reyes in the director's chair. Alyas Batman is even cheeky enough to reference Joey's most beloved screen character:

Batman: No, no, I don't really like Batman.

Kevin: What do you like?

Batman: I'd like to be Starzan!

Kevin: What? Starzan? And turn it into shit?

Joey is still one of the most prolific presences on Philippines TV in four separate shows for GMA-7 – testament to any popular comedian's staying power, and their public's loyalty and adoration. The same can be said for Panchito Alba (“Uncle” Paenguin), the gruff, exasperated sidekick of Dolphy, the Philippines' King of Comedy, in movies and on stage together since the early Fifties, and a top-shelf comic in his own right. Rene Requiestas (Jocson/The Joker) found fame much later in his life as Joey de Leon's comic foil in many of solo outings, with his trademark missing front teeth and malleable moustache. Sadly, both comedians passed away soon after Batman – the 36 year-old Rene of tuberculosis in 1993, the much older Panchito following complications from a stroke in 1995, aged 70.

As with much of the Philippines' populist fare, Batman's faults are many and glaring. It adopts a regulation Bollywood-style “masala” approach: throw in some comedy, some romance, some by-the-book goon action (and let's not forget the musical numbers!), and pad out the film's unnecessarily long running time with protracted and pointless exposition, in the belief the audience's ceaseless fascination with their favourite film personalities will carry the movie just nicely. Even the goon punch-ups – a chance to emulate the “Biff! Bang! Pow!” moments of the Sixties TV show – are flat and uncooked, with not even the hint of a camera tilt on the horizon. It's lazy, perfunctory filmmaking at best, which trades on accumulated goodwill and over-familiarity which in the West would merely breed contempt. Luckily for Alyas Batman En Robin the film is, at times, as funny as it is bizarre, and the humour – never an easy thing to translate between cultures - is in turns silly, self-aware, puerile, grotesquely unfunny, ribald and downright scatological. Take for example Paenguin and Joker's escape from their prison cell, under a toilet and into the sewer below...

Paenguin: In a toilet bowl? That's why you're a shit, smell like shit, because you're always close to shit!

Joker: I thought you wanted to escape?

Paenguin: How? Are you going to put me in and flush me?

Then there's a blink-and-you'll-miss-it studio in-joke – Batman points to the Regal Films emblem on Kevin's Robin costume and says, “Wait, what's this? This is a Viva film [Regal's main rival]. Why is it on Regal? “I bought it already,” replies Kevin.

On the romance front there's young Kevin and his puppy-lovestruck classmate Vina (pop star/actress Vina Morales), who halt the film long enough for a duet in English which sounds like Celine Dion dropping her breakfast. Batman himself goes weak in the tights for ace reporter Angelique Legarda (Dawn Zulueta) and at one point even addresses the camera in a Wayne's World moment (come to think of it, Joey does look like an older, doughier Mike Myers) and asks the audience, “What if I do a dream sequence?” Cut to a fantasy poolside sequence in which Batman saves Angelic from a gang of goons but loses his mask, and tries to maintain his secret identity by wearing her bikini on his face. What can I tell you? I'm a sucker for lowbrow silliness. In a word: Comedy...Gold...

Despite the best efforts of Uncle and nephew, the true family values of goodness and justice prevail, and the storyline stresses that Batman is nothing without Robin, and vice versa. The film ends with the Batman clan, a reformed Paenguin and Joker, and a cast reunion on the front lawn outside the Batcave. There's even a few surprise additions: Angelique in a Wonder Woman costume (hubba hubba!), Superman, and even a go-go dancing dwarf Spiderman! Cue a second stolen tune, this time “At The Hop”, while the Joker points out his new-found humility in Taglish (a mangle of Tagalog and key English phrases):

Kung kayo ay isang salbahe (If you’re bad) and you are very naughty

You dirty rat. You’re very dirty rat!

Pwede pa kayo mag bago at hindi pa nahuhuli ang lahat (You can still change while it’s not too late)

Let us sing kumpare (friend) that the world means love and not the rot

Let us good na brod (Let's be a good brother),

Let us not be bad

That’s better

Let’s be good na part (Let’s be part of good), let’s be afraid of God

Ahh... Let's believe in love!

It's equal parts comedy heaven and hell, and I sure know which part Rene Requiestas is in right now, tittering away in whiteface, after witnessing the DC Comics car crash courtesy of Manila traffic, Alyas Batman En Robin.

Todd Stadtman’s review from his Die, Danger, Die, Die, Kill! blog:

As a follow-up to my review of Bedmen Yarasa Adam, I thought I'd delve a little further into the abuses that the Batman copyright has suffered at the hands of filmmakers from non-English speaking lands. Today's stop: the Philippines. The caped crusader has been a fairly steady fixture of that country's Tagalog language cinema over the years, being the subject of everything from the raucous pop culture parodies that Filipino audiences apparently never tire of to more sober, but no less unauthorized, treatments starting with the mid-sixties heyday of the American Batman TV series. Sadly many examples of such films -- including the original, 1965 version of Alyas Batman & Robin, 1967's Batman Fights Dracula, and 1973's Fight Batman Fight! -- appear to be among that large percentage of pre-EDSA Tagalog pop cinema that has since been lost to the combined forces of time and neglect. (One happy exception is Dolphy's irreverent 1966 spoof James Batman, which I reviewed for Teleport City last year.)

Thanks to its more recent vintage, the 1993 musical comedy Alyas Batman en Robin is probably the easiest to track down of all the Pinoy Bat-sploitation films -- not to mention the most widely reviewed. This is so much the case that I've never really made much of an effort to get my hands on it, secure in the knowledge that it would eventually fall into my lap one way or another. Well, that inevitable day has finally rolled around. And having now viewed Alyas Batman en Robin -- armed with the very low expectations that everything I'd heard about it seemed to justify -- I have to admit to being a bit surprised. Not that Alyas Batman en Robin is all that good, mind you. It's not. It's just that it ended up being fairly different from what I'd been lead to anticipate. This is largely due to the fact that, unlike its predecessors, Alyas is not an attempt to bring Batman and Robin's comic book world to the screen, but rather a tale of two doofy inhabitants of the everyday world -- the one in which Batman and Robin only exist in the comics -- who decide to take on the role of those fictional crime fighters in real life.

Alyas stars popular Filipino comedian and television presenter Joey de Leon, here continuing a string of successful pop culture spoofs that included Sheman: Mistress of the Universe and the Starzan films, both of which were helmed by Alyas director Tony Y. Reyes. This time around, De Leon costars with his own son, actor and singer Keempee de Leon, playing -- I think -- the role of De Leon Junior's elder sibling. (Keempee's character refers to De Leon Senior as "Kuya", a Tagalog term that, while literally translating as "big brother", can also refer to an elder male relative from the extended family.) Kempee portrays Kevin, a bookish college student and closet comic enthusiast, who -- when a gang of run-of-the-mill crooks assume the guises of The Joker, The Penguin and Catwoman to commit a series of bank robberies -- convinces his Kuya Joey to join him in becoming a real world dynamic duo. The two commit to this task the best efforts that they're resources will allow, constructing a makeshift Batcave in Joey's garage and customizing a less-than-supercharged approximation of the Batmobile using one of their own cars. This aspect of Alyas' story represents a rare instance of a Filipino film's low production values being a source of intentional humor, as Joey-cum-Batman and Kevin-cum-Robin's low-rent creations are meant to look every bit as cheesy as they appear.

While Joey and Kevin's fumblings in their attempts to personify Batman and Robin provide for a lot of Alyas Batman en Robin's comedy -- the exaggerated stiffness that Joey De Leon affects whenever he's in his Batsuit, for instance, is actually quite funny -- it's important to note that, for the most part, they're heroic exploits are successful, and result in their masked alter-egos being celebrated by the grateful populace of their city. In this sense, Alyas is far less the cut-rate knock-off of the original Batman that you might expect, and is instead a full-fledged appropriation and culturally-informed repurposing of the character; In other words, not the whitebread Batman of the comics, but a Batman born specifically of the Philippines, with a distinct Pinoy identity. This kind of cheeky hijacking of Western pop totems is one of the things I love most about Tagalog pop cinema. While Turkish films, for example, were equally profligate in their blatant borrowing of characters from Western films and comics -- and did end up doing some culturally-motivated retooling of those characters -- they seemed to be doing so for mainly mercenary purposes, while Filipino film's borrowing of such characters often seemed to have a far more transformative -- and even subversive -- intent. One can't really find a better example of this than Filipino film and comic book heroine Darna, a rural reinterpretation of Wonder Woman who acts as a savior to the poor residents of her small village.

While providing us with a fair amount of the biff-bang-pow action that one would expect from a Batman movie, Alyas Batman en Robin also goes about the business of being a romantic comedy. Young Kevin finds, much to his delight, that the object of his heretofore unrequited love, Vina (Vina Morales), has become besotted with Robin, but is foiled in his attempts to reveal his identity to her by the arrival on the scene of a flock of would-be suitors in Robin costumes. Meanwhile, Joey falls for Angelique (Dawn Zulueta), the genre-requisite "plucky girl reporter" hell-bent on getting the scoop on Batman's true identity. Eventually his romantic frustrations lead to him having a "dark night" of the soul of his own, with the result that Robin is left to fend for himself against the gang of costumed criminals. Eventually the pair rallies in time for a triumphant third act confrontation with the forces of evil, clearing the way for a chirpy, all singing, all dancing finale.

A staple of Joey de Leon's comedy act was his song parodies, which involved him singing his own putatively comical words to the tunes of popular oldies. With the exception of one, very eighties-sounding power ballad sung by Keempee de Leon and Vina Morales, these are the type of songs that comprise Alyas' several musical numbers. A training montage early in the film that features Kevin and Joey getting fit for their superheroic duties is accompanied by a tune lifted from the Beach Boys' "Surfin' Safari", to which off-screen vocalists sing:

"Holy smokes, Batman and Robin

Oh my God, Batman and Robin

Praise the Lord, Batman and Robin

Shoot, man, shoot, Batman and Robin

Let's do Bruce Wayne now

And Dick Grayson now

They are a part of me!"

The Joker (Filipino comedian and frequent De Leon sidekick Rene Requiestas in his final film role) and the Penguin (beloved comic actor Panchito) are incapable of pulling off a robbery without a bit of song and dance, and their spirit is so infectious that the besieged bank tellers and customers can't help but join in and act as their chorus line. Finally, everything comes to a silly karaoke-esque head with a closing number in which the principles -- heroes and villains alike -- are joined by dancers costumed as various superheroes (midget Spider-man!) to caper about and sing to the tune of "At The Hop":

"Let's be good, not bad

Let us not be bad

Let's be afraid of God

Let's believe in love!"

In contrast to the more anarchic, seemingly Mad Magazine-inspired style of the earlier James Batman, Alyas Batman en Robin is a gentler breed of Bat-comedy altogether, redolent of goofy sweetness and bearing an earnest up-with-people message at its core. We've seen this kind of aspirational comic fantasy before, with its riffing on everyday folks' use of popular fantasy heroes as repositories for their better selves. (Takashi Miike's Zebraman comes immediately to mind.) However, Alyas' intellectual-property-law-flaunting use of an actual, very recognizable piece of "real world" pop iconography disarmingly strips away a layer of artifice that those other films have to employ out of legal necessity, making possible an identification with the schleppy protagonists that is that much more poignant and immediate. It also doesn't hurt that the lead performers -- by which I refer to the DeLeons, both junior and senior, and Dawn Zulueta -- are all thoroughly likeable (and in Zuleuta's case, knee-tremblingly gorgeous in the bargain).

Again, this is not to say that Alyas Batman en Robin is a particularly good film. To be honest, it's startlingly amateurish on many levels and as hokey as all get out. Still, I think that, if you're willing to give it a chance, you'll find that it has quite a bit more to offer than what you might have read about it elsewhere on the internets would lead you to believe.

Phil Hall’s review from the Film Threat website:

The Turkish film industry is celebrated for its unique habit of taking Hollywood classics and remaking them into surreal, no-budget ripoffs ("The Turkish Wizard of Oz," "The Turkish Star Wars"). While these films inspired audiences around the world to laugh themselves silly, they seem to have also inspired a group of filmmakers in the Philippines to display a happy disregard for copyright laws and good sense in making their own no-budget ripoff. While the 1993 "Alias Batman and Robin" may not match the Turkish output in terms of sheer lunacy, it nonetheless hypnotizes the unsuspecting audience by mercilessly stomping over Bob Kane's beloved creations in an outlandish so-bad-it's-good production.

This time around, the Caped Crusaders are actually brothers who live in Manila (which is occasionally and confusingly referred to as Gotham City). The older brother has no immediate source of income, although he lives in a mansion decorated with some of the clumsiest artwork this side of a kindergarten finger-painting class. The younger brother is the star of the local high school swim team, and his shirtless presence creates such a riot among the young girls that they break into a swimming meet and chase him around the pool in a screaming frenzy. Much to their chagrin, their beloved Manila/Gotham is being vandalized by three extraordinary villains: the Joker (who sports a heavy handlebar mustache in the midst of his whiteface make-up), the Penguin (who wears the top hat and morning suit while sporting a baby umbrella and a four-foot-long cigarette holder) and Catwoman (who wears a sequined red mask, a red cape and a blue bodysuit). These criminals travel with a fairly large number of associate miscreants: men in pinstriped suits who carry Uzis and women in evening gowns who provide support in the musical numbers.

Yes, musical numbers. It seems Joker, Penguin and Catwoman can't resist breaking into song and dance while stealing bags of cash from the local banks. Indeed, they are so inspiring that the bank tellers find themselves waving their arms and wiggling their bodies in time to the criminal music. But all good songs have to come to an end, and eventually Batman and Robin swing into action with their fists ready. Unfortunately, no one in the Philippines seems to know how to throw a decent punch and the Caped Crusaders and their male foes actually fight like a bunch of girls. The real girls don't even bother fighting: at the first sign of trouble, Catwoman's distaff gang runs away while the feline foe tries to kick Batman in the teeth but winds up subdued when Batman bites her on the neck.

"Alias Batman and Robin" also gives Batman a love interest in the shapely body of Angelique, a reporter who bears more than a passing resemblance to Margot Kidder's incarnation as Lois Lane in the Superman films. Batman actually brings her back to his Batcave and serves her his own special brand of Batcoffee. Later in the film, Batman dreams of saving Angelique from a gang of thugs who invade her swimming pool, but Batman loses his mask in the commotion and winds up wearing Angelique's bikini top across his face to keep himself disguised.

While this is going on, Joker and Penguin keep finding their way back into the crime scene. This is curious, since during the course of the film they are actually arrested three times. At one point, they escape from jail by dismantling the toilet in their prison cell and sliding down the pipes into the sewers! This dastardly pair even tries to pull a heist dressed as Batman and Robin, but the real Dynamic Duo show up and soon everyone is slapping each other silly. Eventually the film concludes with the entire cast standing in a park lot singing and dancing "Let's Be Good, Not Bad" to the melody of the old doo-wop song "At the Hop." Angelique the reporter dresses herself as Wonder Woman for this number, for no very clear reason. In the midst of this madness, a dwarf in a Spiderman costume, a sumo wrestler, and a man dressed like Peter Pan (none of whom had anything to do with the film) abruptly appear and shimmy back and forth.

In many ways, "Alias Batman and Robin" is a must-see campfest. Everything about the film is hopelessly wrong, from the shabby Halloween costumes worn by the eponymous heroes to the painfully embarrassing fight sequences where jabs fly a good 10 inches in front of faces while the soundtrack is clogged with clunky sound effects simulating connecting punches. Most of the film was clearly shot in private residences, schools and offices, giving the film an on-the-cheap home movie look while unintentionally forcing a lethal dose of reality into the world of the costumed crimefighters and their comic-mad enemies. Unlike the 1960s TV series or the Tim Burton films, which had specialized art decoration and set design to play up the comic book effect, "Alias Batman and Robin" puts its characters in the real world and thus exposes the inanity of the concept in having two men in capes and masks doing the job that departments packed with professional law enforcement officers are incapable of handling.

But truth be told, "Alias Batman and Robin" is hardly a non-stop joy. The film takes a particularly long time to get moving and often it lurches to strange stops for the most idiotic reasons (Robin and his high school sweetie sing a pop song love duet, Batman inexplicably vanishes and Robin has to fight a carload of villains on his own). Nor does it help that the entire cast is challenged in the charisma department; it is hard to recall another film where so many uninteresting people find themselves together in a single production.

Yet despite these problems, "Alias Batman and Robin" should be sought out by fans of the Caped Crusaders and those who take a perverse joy in experiencing the very best of the very worst of global cinema. Holy masochistic pleasure, Batman!

Review from the Webomatica website:

Best described as “Filipino Bat Man and Robin” this terrible-on-the-verge-of-hilarious flick is an unauthorized Batman spoof with the familiar caped comic-book crusaders played by local Filipino comedians – none that I recognized, naturally, since I know nothing about Filipino cinema. Batman and Robin fight the Joker and the Penguin, and the antics and costumes are all lifted from the sixties television show.

I enjoyed watching the first half hour, trying make heads or tails of the mostly Filipino dialog (this DVD had no subtitles) that occasionally lapses to English for key movie phrases like “my hero!” or “I love you!”. The film also occasionally lapses into a musical – one feel-good number features the Joker and the Penguin robbing a bank joined by fifty armed heavies. Most of the songs are covers of American rock tunes translated into Philipino except for a few English words, so the Beach Boy’s Surfin’ Safari is changed into Batman and Robin.

The actor who played the Joker (Rene Requiestas) was pretty freaking hilarious, cackling like a cockatoo, sporting an appropriately cockamamie hairstyle.

In watching Alyas Batman en Robin, I realized the leotard is an extremely unforgiving outfit – the average joe looks decidedly non-super. But what’s funny is how behavior transforms once the super-suit is donned. This Batman acts quite heroic, employing a unique double-fisted alternating punch-to-the-stomach technique that serves to eliminate 90% of the heavies that attack him. No wonder he never employed his utility belt.

Anyhow, there really isn’t much else to say about this film (not even the midget Spider-Man or the modified black Chevy Batmobile). Here’s a picture gallery if you have even a passing interest in this flick. It’s truly one of those toxic entertainments, that could be really awesome in certain situations and in particular company, but if you’re feeling slightly off, I feel you’d not get five minutes in before saying “this sucks.”

Darna vs The Planet Women (1975)

1975 - Darna vs The Planet Women (Tagalog Ilang-Ilang Productions)

[release date 26th December 1975]

Director/Screenplay Armando Garces Music Carding Cruz Cinematography Botong de Guzman

Cast Vilma Santos (Darna), Rosanna Ortiz (Elektra), Eva Linda, Lita Vasquez, Lieza Zobel, Diana Villa, Zandro Zamora, Bentot Jr (Ding)

Todd Stadman's review from his Die, Danger, Die, Die, Kill! blog:

This review of Darna vs. the Planet Women benefits greatly from the fact that my wife generously agreed to watch along and translate the film's Tagalog dialogue. It must be said, however, that this arrangement was not an easy one to negotiate. I think my wife, quite understandably, would prefer to think of the Philippines' cinematic heritage as being defined by such lauded artists as Lino Brocka, and would rather live in blissful ignorance of that dark underbelly that plays home to figures like Dolphy, Chiquito and Weng Weng.

Still, she was intrigued by the fact that Darna vs. the Planet Women starred Filipino screen icon Vilma Santos. In fact, when I first talked to her about Darna, and mentioned the fact that Santos was the star most identified with her big screen incarnation, she didn't believe me. It was almost inconceivable to her that an actress as revered and respected as the oft-awarded Santos would have ever been low enough to don silly superhero duds for a series of cheesy comic book movies. To put it in perspective, I think it would be tantamount to someone trying to convince me that Meryl Streep had been the star of Electra Woman and Dyna Girl.

But the truth is that Santos didn't appear in the Darna movies out of hunger, and was in fact already a star at the time of first taking the role. I think this says as much about the stature of Darna as it does about that of Santos. Darna was, after all, an iconic figure in her own right at that point, having been the star of both a best-selling comic book and a popular series of movies for over twenty years. Given that, I imagine that the offer to play her, despite bearing with it the risk of ending up looking a bit ridiculous, was a difficult one to refuse -- just as the opportunity to play such freighted pop cultural totems as Batman or Superman has been for many Hollywood actors who might otherwise have been loath to parade before their audience stuffed like sausages into form-fitting lycra.

Darna vs. the Planet Women was the third, as well as the next to last, Darna film to star Santos, though you might not guess that from watching it. For some reason it was decided -- despite the fact that Santos' debut as Darna, Lipad, Darna, Lipad, had been far and away the most successful Darna film ever -- that, three films later, a Batman Begins should be done on Darna, rebooting the series and, in the process, altering certain aspects of the lore that had surrounded the character in the previous films. And so, with Planet Women we get a retelling of Darna's origin that for some reason recasts her formerly able-bodied alter ego Narda as being disabled by a gimp leg.

But before that retelling, we're treated to a half hour or so of light village melodrama, during which Narda bickers with her somewhat thick-witted boyfriend Ramon (Zandro Zamora) and bears up nobly to repeated taunting by a gang of liquored-up local rowdies (who you just know are due for some big time payback once Darna Time comes around). At this time we are also reintroduced to Narda's little brother, Ding -- here played by Bentot Jr. -- who acts as Narda's confidante, constant companion, and a very informal sidekick once she makes the transformation to superheroine. Ding is a chunky little wiseass in an ever-present striped shirt who will readily shake his undersized fist and mug defiantly at a bad guy as long as Darna's around for him to hide behind in the event of retaliation. In short, put this kid in some overalls, give him a monkey, and render him as a cartoon and he's a dead-ringer for Spritle from Speed Racer. Ding reaps many benefits from having a superhero for a big sis, as we see in those scenes where he gets to ride Darna like a pony as she flies through the skies above the islands.

Finally the Planet Women, a band of bikini-clad space amazons who are each color coded with a different shade of primary-hued body paint, make their appearance, interestingly choosing a small rural village in the Philippines as ground zero for their invasion of Earth. As their first act of conquest, they put the whammy on Narda's beau Ramon with a paralyzer ray -- by appearances, simply because he was unlucky enough to be wandering around in the vicinity of their flying saucer. Narda then happens upon Ramon in his frozen state and falls to her knees in lamentation, only to be answered by a surprisingly laid-back sounding voice from the heavens who reassures her and sends down to her a small stone with the name "Darna" written on it in glitter. Following the voice's instructions, she swallows the stone, shouts "Darna", and is instantly replaced by the scantily clad super amazon we've all been waiting to see -- a transformation that leaves even young Ding unable to restrain himself from exclaiming about what a hottie his sister has suddenly become.

The Planet Women, who are lead by the Ronald McDonald be-wigged Electra (Rosanna Ortiz), come armed with a shopping list of Earth scientists whom they plan to abduct, setting the stage for most of the movie's action, which involves Darna's efforts to thwart those abductions. This leads to some of Darna vs. the Planet Women's most indelible moments, including a scene where Darna bursts through the wall of one of the imperiled professors' homes, leaving a perfect, Darna-shaped hole behind her, and a rooftop kung fu fight between her and a Planet Woman that I'll just refer to as "the blue one". This is a film that goes out of its way to show that our heroine is truly a woman of her times, and so, in addition to a lengthy scene in which Darna shows her stuff on the disco floor, we're given a weirdly static kung fu match that consists almost entirely of Bruce Lee-style stance-taking and smirky goading of the opponent with come-hither hand gestures, and almost no actual fighting.

In comparison to the utilitarian and nearly mute performance of Eva Montes in Darna and the Tree Monster, the last Darna film I had the pleasure of watching, Vilma Santos gives us a Darna who is brimming with personality, boasting a charming combo of golly-gosh do-gooderism and cocky, cobra-necked bravado. By dint of this, she even seems to win over the Planet Women themselves, who turn out to be much more honorable than your average Earth-coveting space invaders. Ultimately, Electra and Darna agree to settle the whole matter woman-to-woman, and when Darna comes out of the fight on top, the Planet Women, true to their word, pack up their stuff and head back from whence they came.

With its dodgy technical execution and resolutely rural sensibility, Darna vs. the Planet Women is third world pulp cinema at its purest, with the most extreme example of conspicuous consumption seen on screen being the destruction of a chicken shack. Still, you just know that I'm going to say that I enjoyed it anyway, and I did. Vilma Santos makes for an appealingly plucky heroine, and it's not hard to see why she is such a beloved figure in her country. On top of that, the film, like the most savvy hostess, shows that it knows how to entertain on a budget, delivering up a generous amount of cheesy thrills with the simple application of colored paints on an impressive expanse of exposed flesh, some imaginative repurposing of discarded household objects in its cash-strapped sci-fi sets, and some truly head-slap worthy primitive special effects. That's enough to guaranty that I'll be taking another return trip to Darnaland in the very near future.

James Batman reviews

Review by Andrew Leavold:

James Batman is a rare example of Philippines cinema from the Sixties, a period in which between 150 and 200 films a year were produced. That's a staggering 150-200 Tagalog-language films each year, an overwhelming number of which never dubbed or subtitled into other languages and exported past the Philippines borders, and shot on 35mm film for a developing nation's relatively impoverished audience.

And yet , like other former colonial outposts Mexico, Turkey and India, the film industry boomed. Alongside radio and komik books, movies were a cheap and easily accessible form of mass entertainment, and the population took their own movies to their hearts, allowing the studios to maintain an elaborate system of stars, uniquely Pinoy forms of storytelling, and their own stable of komik superheroes and supervillains. Throughout the Sixties, "goon" films reigned supreme - the action-centic movies named after a villain's ape-like henchmen, and a staple of Filipino cinema right into the Eighties. The fact these "goons" are the Philippines' finest stuntmen AND action stars-in-waiting only adds to the gritty rough-and-tumble of these films' ubiquitous fight scenes. In the Sixties, the action king was Fernando Poe Jr; his comedic counterpart, the king of the "goon" parodies, was a man named Rodolfo V. Quizon Jr, or simply known to generations of adoring Filipino fans as Dolphy.

Dolphy began his career as a song and dance man and vaudeville comedian during the Japanese occupation during World War 2. The flourishing studio system in the early Fifties gave him a decade-long contact with Sampaguita Pictures, and he quickly graduated from bit roles and comic second banana parts to leading man in musical comedies. He encapsulated a droopy-shouldered and slightly pot bellied Pinoy Everyman: a henpecked, cowardly (if lovable) loser, or wily would-be trickster who both turn out "good" or at least functional to others in the end. Men identified with him, women adored him; before long he was making a movie a month, on top of TV and radio appearances. Parodies of Hollywood and European movies soon became Dolphy's forte, and he played the Pinoy version of everyone from the Lone Ranger to Tarzan, from - I kid you not! - Genghis Bond to Adolphong Hitler.

James Batman was released in 1966, at the height of the Filipino komik superhero AND spy craze, featuring Dolphy as James Bond AND Batman - and often in the same scene! The "international" crime fighters are both called in to weed out nefarious organization CLAW and their leader, the cartoonishly Oriental Drago. Dolphy is hilarious as Bond, complete with lecherous sneer and a checkered jacket that matches the bedspreads (cool!), and it's a role he's familiar with, having already starred in a slew of spy knockoffs - Dolphinger, Dr Yes, Operation Butterball to name just three. But it's his Batman where the film comes alive and he steals the scenes from himself: crazed fight sequences, sadly with no Tagalog equivalents of "BIFF!" and "POW!", but with exaggerated tilts and low angles, and Carding Cruz's ever-present stolen surfadelic score. There's an array of other villains, not to mention an army of nurses with pre-war tommy guns, an all-girl squad with low cut black cocktail dresses and executioners' hoods, and the ending in Drago's lair - complete with a huge hand for a chair spitting lasers from the fingertips - kicks the entire Manila-A-Go-Go enterprise up one big lunatic notch. Superb.

Todd Stadman's review from Teleport City:

I've mentioned elsewhere that I find the Philippines' Tagalog language pop cinema of the 1960s strikingly similar to Turkish pulp cinema of the same period. The products of both are comparably rough hewn and action oriented and, by necessity of their staggering volume, bear the hallmarks of being churned out at a very brisk pace. Both are also brimming with fanciful costumed heroes, many of which are lifted directly from Western pop culture sources with little or no concern for matters of copyright. Of course, the Filipino's have their own rich comic book history to draw from, and the decade would also see numerous screen adaptations of homegrown superheroes such as Captain Barbell, Lastikman, and Mars Ravelo's Wonder Woman inspired Darna, but audiences at the time were just as likely to be treated to fare along the lines of Batman Fights Dracula or Zoom, Zoom, Superman!

Filipino cinema had not always been that way, however. In fact, the previous decade had been what is now considered a golden age for the country's film industry, dominated by a quartet of major studios known as "The Big Four", who turned out relatively lavish prestige productions built around their respective stables of glamorous stars. Financial troubles and the resulting defection of contracted talent started to take their toll on those studios toward the end of the fifties, and by the mid sixties Sampaguita Productions was the last of the Big Four left standing.

And the landscape that Sampaguita found itself a part of was a markedly changed one, made up of dozens of scrappy independent production companies seeking to turn a quick profit by grinding out hastily produced imitations of whatever international product Filipino audiences were paying to see at the moment. This translated primarily into countless indigenous interpretations of the James Bond and Eurospy films (resulting, among others things, in the phenomenally successful and long running Tony Falcon: Agent X-44 series), Spaghetti Westerns, and, of course, the ubiquitous Batman television series and the numerous European costumed capers inspired by it. In this sense, Sampaguita's 1966 production James Batman can be seen as one of the studio's efforts to go with the dollar-chasing flow of this new industry environment.

Another tendency in Filipino cinema that is at play in James Batman -- one that, in fact, can still be seen in the industry's current cinematic output -- is a fondness for broad, Mad Magazine-style lampoons of Western pop culture products. It doesn't take a cultural anthropologist to see this as reflecting some ambivalence on the part of the Filipino people regarding the inescapable cultural influence of their former occupiers, but, whatever the case, the result was that, alongside more earnest efforts such as the Agent X-44 films, Pinoy filmmakers were producing an equal number of spoofs along the lines of James Bone, which starred the emaciated comedian Palito as a skeletal superspy.

This particular trend was a boon to one performer born Rodolfo Vera Quizon, who, under the name Dolphy, would go on to become the most beloved screen comedian in the history of Pinoy cinema (such was his popularity at the time of making James Batman that he had recently had the gig of warming up the crowd for The Beatles during the mop-topped ones' ultimately disastrous visit to the islands). After initially rising to fame in the fifties in a series of cross-dressing roles (sure-fire comedic gold in the macho culture of the Philippines), Dolphy had, by the mid-sixties, reinvented himself somewhat in a series of secret agent spoofs such as Dr. Yes, Dolpinger, Genghis Bond: Agent 1-2-3 (all 1965) and Napoleon Doble and the Sexy Six (1966). Dolphy didn't limit himself to parodying the spy genre, and also lampooned comic characters such as Tarzan and Captain Barbell during this period -- and for James Batman combined the two with a dual performance as comedic versions of both James Bond and Batman.

What makes James Batman such a strange animal -- aside from the obvious -- is that, in parodying the James Bond films of the mid sixties and the Adam West Batman television series, it's spoofing two things that are already spoofs themselves. On top of that, the film, in addition to delivering lots of very broad slapstick comedy, also strives to function as a proper action film, and as such features quite a lot of fairly soberly staged fight sequences and action set pieces. In fact, by the time we reach the final act, most of the comic antics have been dispensed with, and James Batman plays out its remaining length as a fairly straightforward action melodrama. The result is that the movie gets to have it both ways by presenting Batman and James Bond, as the objects of parody, as cowardly and preening, while still having them go on to perform the daring heroic feats that the audience expected of them.

James Batman's action starts at what is apparently some kind of congress of Asian nations, at which a Fu Manchu-like emissary of the criminal organization CLAW shows up to make extortion demands and threaten nuclear annihilation upon those who would not comply. What was most striking to me about this scene was the CLAW emissary's sidekick, who was played by a very elderly man who looked both disoriented and confused throughout, leading me to speculate that someone's grandfather had been put to work during furlough from the rest home. Anyway, the combined nations decide that the threat from CLAW is so great that the services of both Batman and James Bond are required. An actually kind of funny scene follows in which the movie's distinctly childish and self-regarding versions of both Batman and Bond, who are obviously none too fond of one another, sit before the committee and argue why each of them should be given the job exclusively -- an argument that quickly devolves into each of them shouting "pick me!" at the delegates.

One of the perks of the job for Batman is that it will increase his proximity to the chairman's beautiful young daughter, Shirley. Unfortunately, while Shirley is crazy about Batman (exemplified by a shot of her gazing dreamy-eyed at a magazine that confusingly features a photo of Batman and Robin as portrayed by Adam West and Burt Ward), she has no time for Batman's alter ego, Dolpho, despite the insistence of her controlling older sister Delia that Dolpho, with his many millions, is a prime catch. Meanwhile, the members of CLAW -- which include a cloaked figure called Drago, an especially tall and roided-up interpretation of The Penguin, a guy with a spiked ball for a hand, and a masked female called The Black Rose who is clearly derived from the character in Chor Yuen's Cantonese film of the same name -- have learned that Bond, Batman and "Rubin" are on the case, and determine to eliminate them before they interfere with their plans.

In addition to former Sampaguita contract player Dolphy, the cast of James Batman serves as something of a showcase for Sampaguita's house talent at the time. Boy Alano, who plays Rubin, began his acting career at the age of ten, when he co-starred in the 1951 film Roberta, a smash hit that helped rescue the studio from bankruptcy following a fire that consumed a large part of its property. Bella Flores, who plays Delia, had portrayed the female heavy in that same film, and her performance was so iconic that it pretty much doomed her to the type of bad girl roles we see her essaying here. Finally, Shirley Moreno, who plays "Shirley", was a recent discovery whom Sampaguita head Dr. Jose Perez had that year included in a promotional launch of the studio's new faces dubbed "Stars 66". Despite the Spanish surname, the fair-skinned, conspicuously Anglo-looking Moreno serves as a perfect example of the Caucasian standard of feminine beauty that dominated in the Pinoy film industry at the time -- and still does to some extent today.

With its simple set-up out of the way, James Batman proceeds along a trajectory not unsimilar to that of most spy films of its era, trotting out a succession of action set pieces based around the villain's serial attempts to pick off our heroes. Only, in this case, those set pieces are punctuated by gag scenes in which, to give a few examples, Batman gets pantsed and produces condiments from his utility belt, and James Bond gets bitten on his bare ass by a rubber centipede. Alano's portrayal of Rubin as somewhat of a cretin also provides the opportunity for some Three Stooges-style rough stuff, since Dolphy/Batman is frequently driven to violence by his idiocy. Elsewhere, the level of the movie's humor can best be summed up by the phrase "boobies... hee hee".

Mike Simpson's review from his website:

Holy discovery, Batman! Here’s conclusive proof that, no matter how many extraordinary films are catalogued, described and eventually released on DVD, there are always plenty more that nobody has ever heard of.

I thought that I knew about all the famous, copyright-skirting Asian takes on western culture: the legendary Turkish Star Trek movie, the Indian versions of Superman and Star Wars. Batman, Spider-Man and El Santo rampaging through Ankara... But here’s something new. Could it be (I wondered, as I e-mailed my credit card details halfway round the world) that James Batman is some sort of unholy cross between Batman and James Bond?

Indeed it could!

The representations of Batman and Robin are based on the 1960s TV series, which must have been as popular in Manila as it was in Manchester and Manhattan. The Caped Crusader’s costume is reasonably accurate, except for a striped cape and an odd symbol on his chest in place of the usual bat. It’s either some weird Chinese pictogram or a silhouette of a stripper - I honestly can’t tell! The bat symbol is correct however on the tailfins of the (pretty good) Batmobile. And the Boy Wonder’s costume seems to be completely accurate.

James Bond is played by someone who looks as much like Sean Connery as I do and has an awful taste in jackets and hats.

The movie kicks off with a meeting of some sort of council or government (did I mention: it’s in Tagalog and therefore completely incomprehensible?), which is visited by an evil, Fu Manchu-style warlord. He threatens to detonate an atom bomb - somewhere - and evidently can also fire some sort of stun-ray from his fingertips. Bizarrely, we never see him again after this prologue.

Batman and Bond are both summoned, leading to one of several genuinely funny scenes, which transcend the language barrier. “This is a very important mission,” (or something) says the Council Leader. “I’ll do it!” cries Batman. “No, I’ll do it!” responds James Bond. “I’ll do it!” “No, I’ll do it!” “I’ll do it!” “No, I’ll do it!”

“It is a mission which will bring great glory and fame to whoever succeeds.” (Or something). “I’ll do it!” “No, I’ll do it!” “I’ll do it!” “No, I’ll do it!” “I’ll do it!” “No, I’ll do it!”

“It is a very, very dangerous mission.” “He’ll do it!” “No, he’ll do it!” “He’ll do it!” “No, he’ll do it!” “He’ll do it!” “No, he’ll do it!”

Let’s make it clear. This is not a serious attempt to dupe Filipino audiences into thinking that the stars of Batman and Dr No have suddenly been transplanted to the Philippines. It’s a comedy, a spoof. The Batman TV series was already a spoof, so that’s all right, and although this is meant to be James Bond, the character is more like the self-parodic James Coburn in Our Man Flint.

The actual plot? Goodness knows. Find me someone who speaks Tagalog. Actually, the film contains two sorts of scenes: talky scenes and fights, with the latter predominating. And they’re not bad fights either. Batman and Robin versus the bad guys; James Bond vs the bad guys, then everyone pitching in (as you’d expect). There are some decent martial arts moves on show here and imaginative (for the time) use of buildings and furniture. These are properly choreographed fights and are properly shot too, with reasonably long takes so that we can see what’s actually going on. Clearly the action is more influenced by Hong Kong than Hollywood.

The villains are an odd bloke in a hooded cloak with metal plates on his head (surely he’s not meant to be Doctor Doom from The Fantastic Four, is he?) plus a young chap with sunglasses who has a spiked ball instead of his left hand, and carries a heavy machine gun around with him at all times. Oh, and the Penguin! (And one of the minor characters turns out to be Catwoman later on.) Metalplate, Spikeballhand and the Penguin command their masked minions from a stage dominated by a giant hand - which we later see flex its fingers and shoot a ray, a bit like Fu Manchu did in the prologue. One of the oddest things is that, towards the end, when the Dynamic Duo and 007 (and his Bond babe) are held captive by the Penguin and his cohorts, they are rescued by a good-looking young man with a machine gun. I don’t know who he is - but we’ve never seen him before! Perhaps it all makes sense if you can understand the dialogue.

Has anybody seen this before? Several sources list a 1967 Filipino film called Batman Fights Dracula, although I can’t locate anyone who has actually seen it. Stephen Jones’ Essential Monster Movie Guide gives cast and production company and it’s clearly unrelated to this film. Pete Tombs’ Mondo Macabro mentions something called Alyas Batman and Robin in its Filipino chapter, but that’s a 1990s film. Looks like I’ve stumbled across something new.

So where did I find this rarity, which has remained uncatalogued these 37 years? I found it at Kabayan Central, a company which has an archive of old Tagalog movies. For a quite reasonable fee, they will make you up a VHS copy from the only surviving master. The print quality isn’t great - James Batman is very scratchy and the sound is all over the place - but when something is this rare, that’s a quibble. The simple matter is that James Batman turns out to be a genuinely entertaining collision between two icons of global popular culture, with lots of entertaining if slightly silly fights, and some amusing visual gags (see Batman dispense his lunch from his utility belt!).

With a title like this, it was a reasonably good bet what sort of film this would be. But what undiscovered gems lie behind those other enigmatic titles: Espada ng Rubitanya Mga, Magic Bilao, Nagkita si Kerubin at Tulisang Pugot, Tansan vs. Tarsan? (The only one I have identified so far is Dugo ng Vampira, which is the original Tagalog version of Creatures of Evil.)

There’s a lot to discover here, if my credit card can stand it.

MJS rating: A-

Review from Kim Newman's blog:

The Dark Knight is setting cinemas alight all over the world, but, as Kim Newman discovers, there are other Batman movies that aren't quite so well known... James Batman - which crosses the caped crusader with suave spy James Bond - probably didn't attract much Oscar buzz, nor was the word "masterpiece" mentioned in its reviews, but for completists, is it worth seeing? Does the Filipino film industry's flouting of international copyright law deliver a treat? Read on to find out...

So, riddle me this, trivia-hounds, can you name all the actors who've played James Bond or Batman in the movies? Including the likes of David Niven in the first Casino Royale and Lewis Wilson in the 1943 Batman serial? Well, dynamic dunderheads, did you know one actor has not only played Batman and James Bond but did so in the same film?

Step forward Rodolfo Vera Quizon (always billed as 'Dolphy'), the Peter Sellers or Roberto Benigni of the Philippines. Or maybe the Benny Hill or Don Knotts. Dolphy takes the two roles (three, if you count the 'Bruce Wayne' part separately) in the 1966 Tagalog-language multi-hero spoof James Batman -- which, with apologies to Christian Bale and Daniel Craig, is one of the darnedest things I've ever seen.

Evidently the Filipino film industry of the 1960s deemed itself outside the reach of international copyright lawyers, and laughed maniacally at the cold-eyed franchise guardians of Eon Productions, 20th Century Fox and DC Comics, not to mention the Performing Rights Society folks collecting royalties for composers Monty Norman and Neal Hefti -- the familiar 'Bond' and 'Batman' tunes are played many times in James Batman in what sound like garage band arrangements.

As the title suggests, director Artemio Martez is managing a quick-off-the-mark combined parody of the 'Sean Connery is Ian Fleming's James Bond' saga initiated by Dr No and the Adam West-Burt Ward pop art/camp Batman TV series which debuted in 1965. The runaway world-wide successes inspired filmmakers everywhere to try and get in on the action with imitations and parodies.

Of course, the funny fellows blithely ignored the fact that the 007 films stopped taking themselves seriously around the time 007 wore a duck decoy hat (Goldfinger, 1964) and the Batman show was always a send-up of the comic book and movie serial hero. So, this means that parodies have to go really broad in search of laughs. When Dolphy's Batman gets his tights pulled down during a cliffhanger, he is accompanied by the da-na-da-na-da-na Batman theme with a mocking 'wah-wah' instead of the traditional 'Bat-man'; and when his Bond gorily stabs an arch-villain, he pokes his tongue out rudely at the dying crook.

My Tagalog is a little rusty, but the plot is fairly easy to follow. A bearded Chinese criminal representing 'the Organisation', who could as easily be Fu Manchu or Dr No (though he looks most like Iron Man's comics nemesis, the Mandarin), strides into a meeting of a Pan-Asian United Nations-type set-up and reads out a list of demands and threats from a scroll. He illustrates this with stock footage from 1950s atomic tests and what I presume is newsreel material of the aftermath of a Pacific typhoon or hurricane, cackles in the approved master-fiend manner, and zaps someone with an electrical arc from his fingernail.

Weirdly, this promising baddie fails to reappear, though the Organisation also employs the Penguin (or a thinner, tougher, cigar-smoking variation thereof), a Catwoman lookalike who is apparently a Chinese movie villainess called the Black Rose, a sunglasses-sporting sniper with a mace for a hand, a hooded and partially metal-headed nasty called Drago whose chair is a giant hand with raygun fingers which can be slowly aimed and fired at those who displease him, and a horde of cowled, machine-gun-toting babes with plunging neckline mini-dresses.

The venerable Chairman, whose younger daughter Shirley (Shirley Moreno) has a crush on Batman (a picture of Adam West), is so concerned at the threats of the Organisation that he calls in Bond and Batman, who one-up each other in a split-screen shot and each childishly insist they should be given the solo mission. Later, in a frankly bonkers plot twist, the Chairman himself turns out to be behind the Organisation's nuclear plot, which allows for a poignant moment as Shirley pleads with him not to pull the lever that sets off the big bomb but begs the question of why he bothers to order the two comical but surprisingly efficient superheroes to defeat his own plan.

The heroes wear parody-of-a-parody outfits: Bond isn't in the tux usually associated with the character but a hideous check suit and hat (in one bedroom scene, they match a quilt) which riffs on the tweedy Brit-abroad outfits Connery occasionally sports in the early films; and Batman has baggy tights, a chest symbol which seems to be a silhouette of a girl with a feather boa and a floppy cowl/stripey cape combo which isn't that much sillier than the '40s look. Robin (Boy Alano) looks as if he's wearing a commercially-available Burt Ward costume, but hasn't got much to do in a movie where the hero can play his own sidekick. The budget runs to a fairly cool four-door stretch Batmobile with spindly fins, gadgets like a fork with a radio aerial and a computerised bat-device from which a Thing-like disembodied hand dispenses pre-crimefight snacks (bananas, mostly).

Most of the film consists of knockabout action comedy -- Bond is canoodling with a slinky villainess but doesn't notice her shooting him several times in the chest because he is wearing a bullet-proof vest, and later loses his swimming trunks while fleeing hordes of gunmen and is bitten on the bum by a centipede in the palm-leaf he uses to cover himself. He then pretends he's hurt worse than he is to get sympathy from a nurse and the other good guys. In fact, both Bond and Batman are such whiny dolts that a cooler, better-looking agent (the real James Bond?) and Robin's karate expert girlfriend show up to help in the busy climax.

After it's over, everybody gets a girl but Bond, who is pursued by a goofy-looking character in a Batwoman outfit and comically hops off as if chased by Pepe le Pew ('ugly' women with 'ridiculous' desires for frankly equally gruesome-looking men remain figures of fun in gross-out comedies of all nations to this day, so this instance of horrible misogyny isn't really unusual).

From a non-Filippino point of view, the strangest thing about James Batman is that it keeps turning oddly serious. After the comedy murder attempt, this goofy Bond roughs up a hit-woman in a sexualised way even Sean Connery would have thought ungentlemanly, stopping only just short of rape. The villainess is then taken to a police station where her low-cut dress excites Basic Instinct-like interest from goony cops who absent-mindedly shove cigarettes up their noses or drink from saucers while ogling her breasts (along with the camera).

Because the melées are shot in black and white on real locations (with thump noises but no 'Zap Pow Bam' captions) makes the karate fights seem more like the straight action of the '40s serials than the stylised silliness of the camp crusaders -- Bond vs the Penguin is especially brutal, but a pile of thugs drop a net on and then kick the helpless Batman and Robin as if acting out the wish-fulfilment fantasies of all those bonked, zapped and powed extras in the TV show. The mood swings take the edge off the Third World-level production values, and it's all bizarrely fascinating. I can honestly say I enjoyed it more than two Joel Schumacher Batmans and most Roger Moore-Pierce Brosnan Bonds.

For the record, there's more out there. Dolphy played 'Agent 1-2-3' in a string of films (Dr Yes, Dolphinger, etc) and remains a major star in his home territory (unlike, say, Adam West), but he wasn't in the 1993 Filipino musical comedy Alyas Batman y Robin. Sadly, Batman Fights Dracula (1967), a perhaps-serious Filipino cross-genre movie which vaults to the top of my 'must see' list, seems to be as lost as Andy Warhol's similarly-titled Batman Dracula (1964).

Meanwhile, if you need a bigger bat-fix, there's La Verdadera Historia de Barman y Droguin, Superbatman vs Mazinga V, La Mujer Murcielago, Bat Bitch, Splatman (which features a villain called the Pornguin), Buttman and Throbbin, Rat Pfink and Boo-Boo, The Wild World of Batwoman (aka She Was a Hippie Vampire), Bathman dal Pianeta Eros, the short Robin's Big Date (with Sam Rockwell as Batman) and Scooby-Doo Meets Batman, which is the only entry in this list authorised by DC Comics.