SECONDS. Paramount, 1966. Rock Hudson, Salome Jens, John Randolph, Will Geer, Jeff Corey, Richard Anderson, Frances Reid, Murray Hamilton. Based on the novel by David Ely. Cinematography: James Wong Howe. Director: John Frankenheimer.

   There are moments in the movie, filmed in glorious black-and-white, that are among the creepiest — not the scariest, per se — but the get-under-your-skin or the into-your-mind-and-can’t-get-it-out kind of nightmares that haven’t been surpassed by any other film that I’ve seen in a long, long time.

   Basic scenario: a secret organization has discovered ways of changing your identity, if you’ve gotten tired and weary of the one have, into another.

   It takes a skilled medical staff, a large support system, and a lot of stuff you really don’t want to ask about — and voila! An aging banker (John Randolph) whose marriage has long ago had all its passion sucked out of it becomes someone who looks a lot like Rock Hudson.

   And if things don’t go well, don’t ask about that either.

   A lot of the credit for what makes this movie work as well as it does has to go to cinematographer James Wong Howe, who uses innovative lighting, extreme closeups, high angle shots and hand-held camera work to create a world of depressive darkness that’s infinitely capable of causing heartfelt, emotional screaming not so much verbally — although there is that, too — but on the inside, where it really counts.

   It’s what’s in our heads that makes who we are, no matter how well disguise our facades to the world, and the older you get, the more you’re aware of that, and the harder it is to get away from it.

   It’s not an entirely successful movie, though, and by taking a few days to think it over, I believe I know why, at least in part. Individual scenes are often small gems, but there’s no cohesion, not enough connective tissue between them.

   It’s not that there’s not enough back story, as I thought at first — the actors in this film are utterly perfect in their parts, and we can see from their faces alone who they are and why they are doing what they are doing — and also that they’re wrong, most of them, or evil without knowing that they are and convinced they’re doing good; or in case of others, that they’re making the right decisions, only to find out that perhaps they’re not.

   Sagging the most is the middle of the movie, the transition from opening scenes to end game that needs the most support and doesn’t quite get it, wherein Arthur Hamilton/Tony Wilson begins to discover, belatedly, that a new body is not enough, not even when he meets a good-looking neighbor on a lonely California beach (Salome Jens).

   A long wine-crushing festival with a commune of naked hippies is followed by an even longer cocktail party literally from hell, but neither packs a wallop as solid as, well, when Tony Wilson does try the impossible: to go home again.

   A foolish attempt, that. It can’t be done.

The Annual Animation Program. Cinevent 41, Columbus OH, May 2009.

    It’s always a treat to see vintage cartoons (especially the color shorts in eye-popping color) on a decent sized screen. The well-chosen program featured some familiar (and readily available) shorts, along with some that had me shopping in the dealers’ room for decent copies on under-the-counter DVDs.

    There are always some Disney shorts, but the Disney franchise has been so generous in recent years with their deluxe sets compiled from the company archives that the main pleasure of viewing them is in being reminded how spectacular Disney’s contribution to the art of animation has been.

    “The Pied Piper” (1935) is from the Silly Symphony series and features a score by Leigh Harline whose contribution (he would later win an Oscar for his work on Pinocchio) greatly enhances the charm of this classic cartoon.

    The Disney cartoons of the 1940s continued the tradition of superb animation artistry, but few people would claim they are as consistently funny as the Warner Brothers cartoons of that decade.

    Still, Donald, who had replaced Mickey as the unquestionable star of the Disney stable of characters, could usually be counted on for some expert comic turns and did so again in “Drip Dippy Donald” (1948), where he’s trying to sleep and keeps getting waked up by a dripping faucet that eventually takes on nightmarish proportions.

    There was the familiar Betty Boop black-and-white classic “Mother Goose Land,” a 1933 short that featured a still sexy Betty, a turn that would be ended by the Production Code and would, in effect, precipitate the decline in Betty’s popularity.

    A later Popeye cartoon, “Service with a Guile” (1946), was entertaining, but the continuous flow of inspired animation that distinguished the ’30s Fleischer product was largely missing from this routine effort.

    Two Walter Lantz cartoons, “Under the Spreading Blacksmith Shop” (1942) and “Swing Your Partner” (1943), served to remind me of how little I care for most of the Lantz-produced cartoons.

    A controversial Bugs Bunny short, “All This and Rabbit Stew” (1941), initiated the screening of three politically incorrect shorts, now infrequently shown because of their use of black stereotypes. The Elmer Fudd role as Bugs’ hapless antagonist is here taken by a black hunter, based on the popular but offensive (to many people) comedian Stepin Fetchit.

   The cartoon, not credited to Tex Avery but reputedly one of the last he directed before leaving Warner Brothers for MGM, If not one of his best efforts, still contained elements of the inventive slapstick that betrays the inimitable Avery touch.

   The other two shorts from that category were probably two of the most creative of the morning’s program.

   The racial stereotypes in Avery’s charming and very funny “Half Pint Pygmy” (1948) are much less blatant than those in the Bugs Bunny cartoon, but in Bob Clampett’s “Tin Pan Alley Cats” (1943), a graphically stunning short, they’re in full flower (as it were), as a musician, a recognizable caricature of Fats Waller, finds himself transported into a Surrealist landscape that is mostly lifted from “Porky in Wackyland,” a 1938 release also directed by Clampett.

   The black and white original was redrawn and reshot in dazzling technicolor, with an array of fantastic creatures who seem to bear more than a passing resemblance to some of Boris Artzybasheff’s other-worldly inventions.

   In any event, this was an exhilarating experience that propelled me into the dealers’ room where I found a copy in a set that contains all of the notorious racially and politically incorrect cartoons that you can find on YouTube on a good day.

   More authors’ entries from Part 34 of the online Addenda to the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin.

Note: Thanks to Curt Evans in Comment #1 for pointing out the relationship of Thomas Cobb to Belton Cobb. (See the former’s entry below.)

CLARK, ELLERY H(ARDING). 1874-1949. Born in West Roxbury MA. Add: Educated at Harvard University; as an athlete, Clark is the only person to have won both the Olympic high jump and long jump, achieving the feat in 1896 at the first modern Olympics in Athens. Later a lawyer and a Boston city alderman; as an author, Clark has two books included in the Revised Crime Fiction IV. Below is his complete entry:

      The Carleton Case. Bobbs, hc, 1910.
      Loaded Dice. Bobbs, hc, 1909. Silent film: Pathe, 1918 (scw: Gilson Willets; dir: Herbert Blache).

CLAUSEN, CARL. 1895-1954. Correction of birth date. Born in Denmark; died in Pennsylvania. Prolific story writer for the pulps and other magazines, circa 1917-1941; the author of two books included in the Revised Crime Fiction IV. See below:
      The Gloyne Murder. Dodd, hc, 1930.

      Jaws of Circumstance. Dodd, hc, 1931; Lane, UK, hc, 1931.

CLEMENTS, COLIN (CAMPBELL). 1894-1948. Born 25 February 1894 in Omaha, Nebraska. Add: Educated at the University of Washington, Carnegie Institute of Technology and Harvard University. With his wife Florence Ryerson (Clements), 1894-1965, q.v., prolific co-author of over one hundred short stories, plays and screenplays. Included in the Revised Crime Fiction IV are five collaborative mystery novels and three plays of a criminous nature. Series character Jimmy Lane appeared in four of the five mysteries, including the one cited below:

      Blind Man’s Buff. Long & Smith, US, hc, 1933. [Thirteen people stormbound on lonely island are murdered one by one.]

CLEMENTS, FLORENCE RYERSON. 1894-1965. Working byline: Florence Ryerson, q.v.

COBB, THOMAS. 1853-1932. Add: Born and lived in London. Father of (Geoffrey) Belton Cobb, 1892-1971, q.v. Prolific author of some 78 novels and perhaps 300 short stories. Of these, over 60 novels are included in the Revised Crime Fiction IV, many of them only marginally. Series character Inspector Bedison has a leading role in four of them.

RYERSON, FLORENCE. Maiden name and working byline of Florence Ryerson Clements, 1894-1965. Born in Glendale, California. Add: Educated at Stanford University, Radcliffe College, and Boston University. Contributor to numerous magazines; screenwriter for films in the Fu Manchu and Philo Vance series; most noted for being one of the co-writers of The Wizard of Oz. Included in her entry in the Revised Crime Fiction IV are five collaborative mystery novels and four plays of a criminous nature, most in tandem with her husband, Colin (Campbell) Clements, 1894-1948, q.v., whom she married in 1927.

NEW TRICKS. BBC. Season Five [eight episodes]: 07 July 2008 to 25 August 2008.

   Last summer we had the fifth series (eight one-hour stories, no adverts) of this very popular programme. It has a nice set-up: a cold case team of three cynical ex-coppers (played by well know veteran actors Alun Armstrong, James Bolan and Denis Waterman) under the supervision of a female superintendent whose career has been sidelined (Amanda Redman).

   The characters are good and the humour and camaraderie are well done, but unfortunately the plots are rather a let down. The humour is obviously paramount to the producers and the logic of the plot seems to be given little thought.

   This is a pity as (as I’ve banged on about before) the pilot of this series was tremendous but, as often happens, the characterisation was sacrificed to promote the humour.

NOTES:   Season Six is currently in progress, 16 July 2009 to 27 August 2009. Season One will be available on DVD next week in the US.

JENNIE BENTLEY – Fatal Fixer-Upper.   Berkley, paperback original; 1st printing, November 2008.

   It wasn’t intentional, but as it happens, this review is timed perfectly for the publication of the second book in this “Do-It-Yourself” mystery series, Spackled and Spooked, which appeared in the nation’s bookstores earlier this month and currently has an Amazon sales raking of #35,440.

   Not that this comes as any surprise. Home repair is as popular an occupation or pastime as quilts, stuffed animals and talking cats when it comes to cozy mysteries, and this first case for Avery Baker, Manhattan textile designer turned indoor Maine renovator, is as good as any I’ve read in quite a while.

   It turns out that Waterfield is Maine’s third oldest towns, and Avery’s great-aunt’s house is an authentic antique in itself. Summoned by her Aunt Inga, a woman in her 90s she barely remembers, to be told some secrets before she dies, Avery arrives too late. Her aunt is dead, having fallen down her staircase only days before Avery’s arrival.

   I suppose I’d be more suspicious myself, but the local townsfolk aren’t, so why should Avery? But when she decides not to sell the house, she begins to get warnings in the mail and a small but luckily not serious accident happens to her as well.

   I also suppose that I ought to warn you myself, that the romance that’s oh-so-slow to build between Avery and Derek, the taciturn fellow she hires to help her in the fixing-up process, is more what makes this book a success with its intended audience than any of the detecting that Avery actually does.

   In fact, when I know who did it in the second chapter (or strongly guessed), you have to know that the mystery part of things is not a book’s strong suit. But to compensate, the tone is lively and spirited, the banter pleasant, the setting finely described, and for a “cozy” mystery, the killer is awfully cold and cruel.

   Prompted by the recent addition to the online Addenda to the Revised Crime Fiction IV, I’ve decided to begin annotating the entries again. I’ve been remiss in doing so since last December, in spite of strong admonitions to myself, and I’ve fallen way behind.

   All of the entries below are now online in Part 34. Posting the entries here on the blog means all the more visibility for them, however, and from past experience, the extra exposure never hurts. Comments, additions and/or corrections are not only welcome but strongly encouraged.

CHILD, HAROLD (HANNYNGTON). 1869-1945. Add: biographical information. Born in Gloucester, England; actor; literary and drama contributor to London Times from 1902; drama critic for Observer 1912-1920, with a number of writings on the history of drama. Also a novelist with many stories and articles contributed to newspapers and magazines of the day. Author of one book included marginally in the Revised Crime Fiction IV:

      -Phil of the Heath. Pearson, UK, hc, 1899. Setting: Bristol (UK), 1831. [A romantic tale of the Reform Bill period.]

CHILD, NELLISE. Add: Pseudonym of Lillian Lieberman Gerard Rosenfeld, 1901-1981, q.v. Born Lillian Lieberman, the author’s first husband was Frank Gerard, an automobile saleman; she later married Abner G. Rosenfeld, a Chicago real estate developer. A journalist and playwright, her work includes the Broadway play Weep for the Virgins. Under this pen name, the author of two detective novels included in the Revised Crime Fiction IV. SC: Detective Lt. Jeremiah Irish, in each:

      The Diamond Ransom Murders. Knopf, hc, 1935; Collins, UK, hc, 1934.

      Murder Comes Home. Knopf, hc, 1933; Collins, UK, hc, 1933. [After writing a note to the L. A. police department, a collector of Spanish art is found dead in his library.]

CHILD, RICHARD WASHBURN. 1881-1935. Add: biographical information. Born in Worcester, Massachusetts; educated at Harvard Law School. Ambassador to Italy, 1920-1924; contributor of articles on political and social themes to magazines. The author of two novels (one marginally) and two story collections included in the Revised Crime Fiction IV. Of the two collections, the one cited below includes a story which has been the basis for several film adaptations:

      The Velvet Black. Dutton, hc, 1921; Hodder, UK, 1921. Story collection. Silent film, from ss “A Whiff of Heliotrope”: Cosmopolitan, 1920, as Heliotrope. Also: Paramount, 1928, as Forgotten Faces. Also (sound film): Paramount, 1936, as Forgotten Faces. Also: United Artists, 1942, as A Gentleman After Dark. [Synopsis of the 1920 silent film: A prison inmate obtains his release in order to rescue his daughter from the clutches of a blackmailer.]

CHILDERS, JAMES SAXON. 1899-1965. Born in Birmingham, Alabama. Professor of literature, newspaper editor, and publishing executive. Add: Educated at Oberlin College and Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. Author of two espionage novels included in the Revised Crime Fiction IV. See below:

      The Bookshop Mystery. Appleton, US, hc, 1930. Setting: England. “A double appeal will lure the reader of this mystery story on: in the mellow atmosphere of rare books and famous bookshops is played out a tense intrigue between the secret agents of great nations.”

      Enemy Outpost. Appleton, US, hc, 1942. Setting: Canada. “An action-packed story of adventure, intrigue, and romance which is guaranteed to keep you on the edge of your chair. A story of a desperate attempt by Nazi saboteurs to dynamite American industry.”

CHRISTIE, ROBERT (CLELAND HAMILTON). 1913-1975. Add as a new author. Lived in Montreal and Ottawa, Canada.

      Inherit the Night. Farrar, hardcover, 1949; Hale, UK, hc, 1951. Setting: South America. “An evil stranger destroys the serenity of an Andean village and eventually himself.” [The cover shown is that of the reprint Pyramid paperback, R279.]

EUGÈNE SUE – The Mysteries of Paris.  W. Dugdale, UK, hardcover, 1844. Harper & Brothers, US, 1843. Translation of Les Mystères de Paris: Paris, 1843-4.  Silent film: Esclair, 1909 (scw & dir: Victorin Jasset).  Also: SCAGL, 1913.  Also: Cinematographes Phocea, 1922, as Les Mystères de Paris (scw: Charles Burguet, Andre Paul Antoine; dir: Burguet).  Also: Bennett, 1922, as The Secrets of Paris (scw: Dorothy Farnum; dir; Kenneth Webb).  Sound film: Franco-American, 1937, as Les Mystères de Paris (The Mysteries of Paris) (scw & dir: Felix Ganders).  Also: Unidex, 1962, as Les Mystères de Paris (The Mysteries of Paris) (scw: Jean Halain, Pierre Foucault, Diego Fabbri; dir: Andre Hunebelle).

   This feulliton, or French newspaper serial, was one of the most influential novels of the 19th Century. While it is little known today, when it first ran as a weekly serial it outsold Alexandre Dumas pere’s The Count of Monte Cristo, and was praised by no less a critic than Victor Hugo, who called its author, Eugène Sue, the “Dickens of Paris.”

   Despite its title, Mysteries of Paris is neither a mystery nor a detective story in any formal sense, it is however an early example of the crime novel and thriller and helped to establish many of the tropes of popular fiction that still linger today. Heroes from Zorro to the Shadow to Batman owe a debt to Sue’s Prince Rodolphe (in some editions Rudolph), the mysterious man in black haunting the back alleys of crime and poverty ridden Paris.

   Eugène Sue was a minor nobleman with a political bent. He was an avid socialist and critic of the Catholic Church — particularly the Jesuits who feature as the villains of his classic The Wandering Jew. He spent much of his career in semi-exile for his criticisms of Louis Napoleon, like his friend and fellow author Hugo.

   Sue also has an ironic role in history: In one volume of his massive Mysteries of the People, Sue created a fictional document detailing how a Jesuit conspiracy operated and secretly ran the world — when this ‘document’ was plagiarized by a Russian propagandist and the references to the Jesuits changed to Jews the document became the inflammatory and wholly fictional Protocols of Zion; an irony that would have horrified the liberal Sue.

   But Sue’s role in popular literature is secure with his two best known works, The Wandering Jew and Mysteries of Paris, the latter followed by countless imitations, with Mysteries of London, Prague, Berlin, and even New York to follow. Its influence extended well into the early 20th Century (fans of the TV series Friends might recall the “Mysteries of New York” poster on the wall in Joey and Chandler’s apartment).

   Prince Rodolphe of Gerolstein appears in Paris as a mysterious man in black. He is on the trail of Fleur de Mal, a child orphaned by an act of carelessness in his youth.

   As he searches the lowest and vilest of Paris slums he becomes an early model for the justice figure or avenger, seeking both redemption for himself and justice and mercy for the downtrodden but good people he finds driven to crime and degradation by poverty and social injustice, befriending and reforming many of the criminals and semi-criminals he encounters and even forming a sort of ‘thieves court’ with himself as judge which deals out fair but swift justice among a people who have no trust of the corrupt real courts and laws written and administered to oppress them.

   Sue threw himself into the novel with real zeal, and his use of Parisian street argot is a remarkable accomplishment. Any historian wishing to know what life was like in the streets of mid-19th Century Paris would be advised to carefully read Sue’s novel. Like Dickens to whom he was often compared, he had a real affection for the people of the streets of Paris though a realistic eye for detail. In some ways Sue’s modern disciples are writers like W.R. Burnett, Elmore Leonard, Joseph Wambaugh, and George V. Higgins.

   There is, as might be expected, a good deal of melodrama, pathos, bathos, and hokum in the novel. Its serial origins show, and at some 1300 pages in unabridged editions, it is far from a casual read. It gives the term Victorian triple-decker new meaning.

   But it is also filled with exciting scenes, interesting characters, and if Sue lacks Dickens’ more literary qualities, he quite shares his ability to tell a story and to involve the reader in the lives of his creations. Mysteries of Paris is what a friend of mine used to call a “thumping good read.”

   Mysteries of Paris has been filmed and adapted to other media countless times since the silent era in many languages. There are television mini-series and even animated versions, and it was one of the early books adapted by Gilberton’s Classics Illustrated Comics.

   Perhaps the best film is a 1962 Arthur Hunebele production with Jean Marais (Orphee, La Belle et la Bete) as Roldolphe, Dany Robin as Irene, and Jill Haworth as Fleur de Mal. By necessity it is a very abridged version of the story, but told in a lively manner by a director best remembered for his campy Fantomas films with Marais in a double role as the super criminal and his nemesis Juve.

    Mysteries is still widely read in Europe and considered a pop classic. It is less well-known here, in part because there has never been a really good translation of the novel nor an annotated edition, both of which are long overdue.

   But Mysteries is an important book in the development of the mystery genre, taking inspiration from Poe, Dickens, Collins and others, and in turn inspiring many of the works to come.

   Currently there are several editions available and some older reprints are relatively inexpensive to collect. I would suggest you avoid the abridged editions and go for the massive entire book. You might also want to read The Wandering Jew which was recently chosen by Thomas Disch for the 100 Best Horror Novels of all time.

   Sue really is neglected in this country and unjustly so. This is a novel that deserves to be rediscovered.

NOTE: The bibliographic information given at the top of this review was taken from the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin, as just now corrected. (The publisher of the first UK edition has been changed to the one you see above.)

[UPDATE] 08-21-09. Based on David’s statement: “Mysteries of Paris has been filmed and adapted to other media countless times since the silent era in many languages…,” and using IMDB as a guide, Al Hubin and I have come up with the following films, etc., which should be added to those listed in the credits above. These will appear in the next installment to the online Addenda to the Revised Crime Fiction IV:

● Silent film: Pathe Freres, 1911, as Les Mystères de Paris (dir: Albert Capellani)

● Silent film: Hub Cinemagraph, 1920, as The Mysteries of Paris (scw: Stanley J. Worris; dir: Ed Cornell)

● Silent film: Phocea Film, 1922, as Les Mystères de Paris (scw: Andre-Paul Antoine, Charles Burquet; dir: Burquet)

● Film: DisCina, 1943, as Les Mystères de Paris (scw: Maurice Bessy; dir: Jacques de Baroncelli)

● TV movie: France, 1961, as Les Mystères de Paris (scw: Claude Santelli; dir: Marcel Cravenne)

● TV movie (miniseries): Caravelle International, as Les Mystères de Paris (scw: Mario Benedicto; dir: Andre Michel)

WILL CREED – Death Comes Grinning. Five Star Mystery #47, digest-sized paperback original; 1st printing, 1946.

         Oh, Pittsburgh’s the home of the steel mill,
         The home of the rail and the rod;
         Where the Cooks speak only to Bodemans
         And the Bodemans speak only to God.

   Yes, I know you’ve heard it with different names, but never mind. Sally Brown, recently graduated nurse, is hired to care for the relict of Cyrus Bodeman, who spoke, it would seem, more with Satan than God.

   Brown is chosen because of her name, which implies to some person or persons unnamed, for reason or reasons unspecified, and in this case downright erroneously, plainness in appearance.

   Why this is important the author sayeth not.

   Bodeman’s widow is no prize, either, nor are her three sons. An unpleasant family, an unpleasant house, and Mrs. Bodeman has $100,000 in cash hidden away. She knows someone is trying to kill her for the money and the inheritance, so she gives Brown the key to the money box and names her in her will to get whatever else there is except the house.

   Mrs. Bodeman likes Brown. It’s a good thing she didn’t hate her.

   After the housekeeper dies suspiciously, Brown investigates. This requires her tasting a substance that could be strychnine and fortunately isn’t. She later, again voluntarily, drinks from a glass with a substance that could be strychnine and is. Two glasses of water drunk in quick succession, the popular and seemingly efficacious antidote to strychnine poisoning, save her for further folly.

   This is primarily a suspense novel, as you will have noted, and not a very good one, as I will note for you.

   Nobody gets the house or the money; Brown gets and deserves one of the Bodeman boys.

Editorial Comments: Will Creed was the pen name of author William Long. He wrote one other mystery novel under this name, that being Death Wears a Green Hat, which I reviewed here. I also appear to have liked the book I read more than Bill seems to have liked his.

   As Peter Yates, Long wrote another four detective novels, all published by either Five Star Mystery or the closely related Vulcan line. (A full bibliography accompanies that earlier review.)

PAUL WITCOVER – Dracula: Asylum. DH [Dark Horse] Press, softcover, 2006.

   I recently read, and enjoyed, Barbara Hambly’s Renfield, a retelling of Stoker’s Dracula from the point of view of Renfield.

   Now Paul Witcover has resurrected Renfield, who’s working as an orderly at the Carfax War Hospital, converted from its former use as a hospital for the insane to an institution hastily adapted (in 1916) to the treatment of victims of shell shock.

   A young doctor (Lisa Watson) arrives at the hospital, ostensibly to work under the supervision of the director. She has, in fact, pulled strings to get the post, which will allow her access to her fiance who has lost his memory and imagines himself to be Sherlock Holmes.

   Holmes/Watson? Well, that’s the level of the humor in this undistinguished novel, and pretty much the level of the invention.

   As you might expect, Dracula, still lying in his coffin in nearby Carfax Abbey with a stake in his heart, will be resuscitated (by the hapless Renfield) and Dr. Watson will become Dracula’s prospective bride.

   This is one in a series of novels that attempt to revive the classic Universal monsters. I would hope that the other novels in the series are more successful than this one.

BATMAN. Columbia, 1943. [Fifteen-episode serial.] Lewis Wilson (Batman / Bruce Wayne), Douglas Croft (Robin / Richard ‘Dick’ Grayson), J. Carrol Naish, Shirley Patterson, William Austin (Alfred), Charles Middleton. Based on the DC Comic characters created by Bob Kane. Director: Lambert Hillyer.

   Lightning Warrior [the 1931 Rin Tin Tin serial reviewed here ] was a gift from a friend, and it led to me watching a spate of serials, a pleasure I seldom indulge in because of the time consumed.

   But shortly after this, I started on Batman (1943) which I hadn’t seen since a marathon evening back in 1965 when all 15 chapters were screened back-to-back, accompanied by witticisms hurled from the audience, for a campy event called An Evening With Batman And Robin.

   Back then, Batman seemed closely linked to the myriad spy spoofs of the period but forty-odd years (in every sense) later, it has acquired a certain charm of its own.

   The characters and their baroque machinations seem like brightly-painted toy soldiers marching about to the caprices of a wanton child, and all the fights, chases and explosions merely excuses for fun. Batman keeps starting fights he can’t finish, leading to This Week’s Cliff-Hanger, as the bad guys repeatedly beat him up, push him off a skyscraper, down an elevator shaft, from a cliff, under a speeding train or what-have-you.

   Lewis Wilson and Douglas Croft play the Dynamic Duo with admirably straight faces, and Charles Middleton livens up a few chapters as a colorful prospector, but J. Carroll Naish really steals the show with a hammy turn as the villainous Dr. Daka, complete with disintegrator ray, alligator pit, and an army of mindless zombies.

   Not much sense in it, but there’s lots of fun.