Director/Screenplay Artemio Marquez Story Pepito Vera Perez Executive Producer/President: Sampaguita Pictures Dolores H. Vera [as Mrs. Jose O. Vera] Cinematography Amaury Agra Music Carding Cruz Editor Jose H. Tarnate Sound Supervisor Flaviano Villareal Sound Recordist Filemon Berba Assistant Sounds Recordists Pete Soquerata, Jose Villalobos Sound Re-Recordist Totoy Nuke [as Alfonso Nuke] Assistant Sound Re-Recordists Tony Caymo Jr, Tomas Olfindo Assistant Director Charlie Ordonez Special Effects Apolonio Abadeza Gun Effects Roberto Balancio Makeup Artists Isay Francisco, Andy Mariano Wardrobe Supervisors Marichu Perez Maceda, Nina Tarnate Set Supervisor Honorato de la Paz Assistant Set Supervisor Bert Sto. Domingo Assistant Cameramen Lauro Mangalindan, Nestor Orense Laboratory Technician Vicente J. Aquende Assistant Editor Serafin Dineros Titles Greg Alcid Jr
Cast Dolphy (James Hika/James Batman/Dolpho), Shirley Moreno (Shirley), Boy Alano (Rubin), Bella Flores (Delia, Shirley's Sister), Diane Balen, Johnny Ysmael Jr (Agent Johnny), Elsa Bouffard, Tessa Concepcion, Nori Dalisay, Lynn D’Arce, Joy del Sol, Jose Morelos, Jaime Javier, Ven Medina, Apollonia Abedeza, Willie Dado, Ricardo Monteza, Carlos Diaz, Sancho Tesalona, Christy Ellsworth, Jane Polinton, Maricel Santos, Girlie Simmons, Max Taeza, Bert Balinton, Rudy Carballo, Jaime Pablo, Rey Santos, Nonone Arceo, Pat de Guzman, Warlito Teodora, Federico Cortez, Delfin Medel, Andy Bustamente, Ernesto Reyes, Anny de Luna, Harry Rontquillo, Fred Esplana (Syndicate Goon), Angel Jose, Fausto Tolentini, Andy Pangilantan, Edwin Rico, Johnny Capistrano, Fernando Doria, Geronimo Gatmaita, Eddie Mallares
COMEDY/SPY/ACTION/COSTUMED SUPERHERO
Review by Andrew Leavold
[expanded version of Leavold's introduction to the James Batman screening on his TV show "Schlock Treatment", 15th November 2009]
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 by Sampaguita in 1966, and was a homecoming of sorts for Dolphy, who had left the studio for a series of independent producers, and had even tried his hand at co-producing with Fernando Poe Jr (their company RR Productions was named after their real first names Ronald and Rodolfo). 1966 was also 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, who has given all East Asian and European nations just five days to succumb to their Communist-aligned organization - or face complete nuclear annihilation.
Dolphy is hilarious as Bond, complete with lecherous sneer and a checkered jacket and hat that match the curtains (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: a Batpole leading to a fully-equipped Batcave complete with his own Boy Wonder (Boy Alano), a functioning Batmobile, 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. Even if the world is about to go up in flames in just five days, it still gives Batman's alter ego Dolpho to try to woo the Government Chairman's pretty daughter Shirley (Shirley Moreno), despite being besotted with the "other" Batman and thinking Dolpho looks like a lizard. Wait til she sees him without pants after he's bitten on the... ahem... by a centipede! Her sister Delia (the ever-dependably sketchy Bella Flores) seems to know more about CLAW and the adjacent syndicate of hoodlums than she's letting on - and what a collected Gooniverse! There's an array of other DC-inspired villains including Joker (complete with metal hand), Black Rose and a cigar-chomping Penguin (Sancho Tesalona), 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.
Other reviewers have pointed out the less-than-suburb parts of James Batman. The drawn-out comic business, for instance, usually shot with one camera. Or the appalling sound and picture quality of the only available print in existence. Yes, I totally get it. And after more than two decades of watching Pinoy pulp artifacts like this and making those micro-adjustments with each viewing, peering between the pixels becomes part of the journey into the unknown. The very fact James Batman still exists while literally more than a thousand other titles from the Sixties have been consigned to the landfill of history - that's a small miracle in itself. In the days before mass TV viewership, features were made in a fortnight, then dumped into theatres, where they made as much moolah as they could before the next cash cow had left the pen. To caretake a print cost money, a commodity in short supply in the Philippines to all but a few with unworn heels and deep pockets. Luckily the big players, Sampaguita and LVN, managed to stockpile many (but certainly not all!) of their films and eventually gave them a second life through television and later mail-order VHS, and now streaming on Youtube, which is where you'll find James Batman at the top of this blog page. It's also the reason why most of those non-studio productions - including ALL of the films Dolphy produced with Fernando Poe Jr - are now just phantoms on a newspaper page. With that, I hope you enjoy your viewing experience, and pray for more miracles like this.
Kim Newman's review on his website: "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."
Den Valdron's review on his D.V. Valdron blog: "The pace is brisk, it never drags. There’s technical glitches, lighting and sound and stuff, but don’t worry about that. The action sequences are well done, inventively making use of scenery, employing lots of experts, and being shot with a bit of style. And as I’ve noted, the final battle royale is thoroughly epic. This is a genuinely good B-movie which adeptly combines humour and action."
Review on Melcore's Cineplex blog: "The film begins with a meeting of the representatives of the nations of the world raising their concerns about the threat of chaos of the Claw Organization if they will not surrender to a nation called Pulahan (a reference to the Communism then)..."
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