Weirdhouse Cinema: The Bat Woman (1968)

In this episode of Weirdhouse Cinema, Rob and Joe return to the wild world of Mexican lucha films with 1968’s The Bat Woman, directed by René Cardona and starring Maura Monti and Roberto Cañedo.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob.

Speaker 3 (00:15):
Lamb and this is Joe McCormick.

Speaker 2 (00:18):
It has been I think many months since we've covered
a selection from Mexican cinema, so today we were returning
once more to the wild world of lucha libre films
with nineteen sixty eight's The Batwoman.

Speaker 3 (00:32):
Is this a lucha libre film? The heroine of the
film is both a superhero and a wrestler, like in
some of the other lucha libre movies we've watched, but
the wrestling has a distinctly less important role in the
plot than it usually does. Here, there are just some

(00:54):
random wrestling scenes. There is not a say, a wrestling
showdown with the villain like we often get. Did you
notice that right?

Speaker 2 (01:03):
Yeah. It is less of a specialized LUCA film compared
to other Luca films that we've discussed or we've watched
for Weird House Cinema. It's more of a like a
hybrid combination of of like James Bond spy movies, super
crime film. Also also an acapoco beach vacation brochure. Yes,

(01:26):
as we'll discuss, and yeah, there is also it is
also a luchadora film and a monster movie, all of
these things rolled into one. The director of this who
we've discussed him many times before, Renee Cordona, he was
looking at some old interviews of his and he had
said that a Luca film was kind of like a cocktail.

(01:46):
You had a lot of elements in there, and you
just sort of hope that like enough people liked it
or found the things they liked in it. And you
can definitely see that with this picture, you know, and
to the extent that it can kind of lead to
some like shifts in exactly what sort of movie it is.
Like one moment it's a horror movie and then the
next it's a fabulous super crime spy movie. And you know,

(02:09):
it doesn't it doesn't necessarily stitch all these things together perfectly,
but this is a very fun film.

Speaker 3 (02:15):
Well, I have a question you may know the answer to,
but I don't, so. As we've said, the title is
The Batwoman, And as we will discuss, part of the
Batwoman's costume is that she is wearing different kinds of
a bikini version of the Adam West to nineteen sixties
Batman costume. So this is some kind of play on Batman,

(02:39):
though in terms of what this character does in the
elements of the plot, she's really more like James Bond
than she is like Batman. But yeah, but so there
this is a take on Batman. But when I went
searching for this movie, I saw that there actually is
now a character the Batwoman, like a DC character the Batwoman.

(02:59):
Did that character exists at the time in the sixties
when this was made or is that a subsequent development?

Speaker 2 (03:05):
Ooh, I think this I think Batwoman existed by this point. Yeah,
so this is This is a thoroughly unlicensed Batwoman film,
to be clear, yes, and not the only one. There's
also a nineteen sixty six movie called The Wild World
of Batwoman I'm an American film that is also completely
unlicensed and is not an official portrayal of the female

(03:27):
counterpart to Batman.

Speaker 3 (03:29):
I have seen both films. I recalled that one being
a lot more boring than this one.

Speaker 2 (03:35):
Yeah, that one, I think I saw a riff version
of that years ago, and yeah, pretty boring. This one
pretty exciting. I think this one keeps the pace is
kept up pretty pretty nicely. It's always glamorous. There's always
something shocking, amazing or hilarious happening on the screen.

Speaker 3 (03:51):
Even though if you sketch out the plot it is
bananas on paper. There is a strangely repetitive, predictable quality
to the developments throughout it, like they're they're keep they're
keeping these moments where you think something really surprising is
going to happen, Like the villain is going to reveal
what what his next plan is, what is the next

(04:14):
crazy phase of his plan? And it's yet again he's
going to steal the pineal juice from somebody's planned. It's
like the fourth time he's a what's what am I
going to do? I will have your pineal juice?

Speaker 2 (04:26):
Yeah. Yeah, there are not gonna be a lot of
surprises in this film to get into it, and in fact,
there are many plot elements that are like straight out
of previous Renee Cordona films, so in fact, previous Lucadora films,
including Doctor of Doom, which we watched on the show before.
So you know, it's it's it sticks to a formula,
but it has a lot of fun with that formula,

(04:47):
and I guess that's the thing to to to really
focus on here.

Speaker 3 (04:52):
You may recall Doctor of Doom was the one. It
was the Luchadora film where the mad scientist is I believe,
transplanting women's brains into gorillas. Interesting. Good.

Speaker 2 (05:03):
Yeah, he figures out that the Luciadors, and particularly Lucadors
are the key focus, like, these are the best candidates
for my mad science. So we see a similar plot
line playing out here.

Speaker 3 (05:13):
Yeah, exactly. So here he's not doing full brain transplants. Instead,
he's taking a small cranial organ and getting the juice
from it and using that to create fishmen.

Speaker 2 (05:24):
Yeah. So again, this is a sixty eight film filmed
in sixty seven. We're reaching the end of the heyday
of Lucha Libret pictures, And in fact, I'm to understand
this movie actually didn't really do that well when it
came out. It was only much later that it kind
of developed a fan following and a cult following. Several
of the resources I turned to for this one are

(05:46):
via the excellent Indicator Blu ray release of the film,
which I highly recommend. It has some great extras. One
of the features on there comes from a film critic
by the name of Mauricio Matamoros around and he has
a very nice feature titled Adventures in Mexicolor, and he
does a great job further positioning the picture in Mexican

(06:09):
popular culture at the time. You know, it's again kind
of late in the Luca film period, but still very
much in a time when Luchadors and Luccadoras are still
reigning supreme domestically, is like, you know, cultural figures. Meanwhile,
international superhero and spy franchises are very popular. People love
Bond films, people love Adam West, Batman, and so all

(06:33):
of that's coming together as well as like just a
lot of like built up, like Mexican optimism and enthusiasm
heading into the nineteen sixty eight Summer Olympics to be
held in Mexico City, the first in Latin America. And
in fact, there's at least one scene in the picture
where I think Batwoman's doing some pistol shooting and you
can see a sixty eight Summer Olympics poster on the

(06:55):
wall behind her. And he also points out that of
course this is filmed in Acapulco, which was a major
especially at the time. It still is, but at the
time was really a major vacation destination, and this film
is essentially a vacation brochure for this beach destination.

Speaker 3 (07:16):
We've had several of these movies lately, in the same
way that Godzilla versus Mecha, Godzilla was showing off the
beautiful tourist locations on the island of Okinawa here. Yes,
this is very much like come visit Acapulco. It is
gorgeous here.

Speaker 2 (07:30):
Yeah, a successful film can do a lot in this area.
I don't know about an unsuccessful film, but still it's
got to Surely when this film came out, some people
became excited about the prospect. Now I want to include
We've talked about Luchador films and Luchadora films in the past.
I wanted to add some extra context here regarding Luchadora's

(07:51):
the female Lucadors, drawing on the writings of Dolores Tirnany
and Mexican cinema expert Doyle Green. We've taught referenced the
writings of Doyle Green before, particularly in our episode on Alocarda.
So they make some great points here about it that
I think help us understand the Batwoman a bit more

(08:12):
so Luca in general was open to both male and
female spectators and children, while at the same time, women
were prohibited from frequenting cantinas in Mexico until like the
nineteen seventies, So on one hand, it was like it
was a space that was open to everybody. Now, prior
to the nineteen fifties, there was essentially no such thing

(08:33):
as a luchadora in Mexico. There were just male luchadors.
But then a luchadora action becomes popular and it's you know,
they point out that it can walk that kind of
line between empowerment and exploitation within a sanctified space. So
you know, female bodies interacting with each other. But it's

(08:56):
in the sporting or pseudo sporting world of Lucha libre
professional wrestling, so it's okay. But this is where it
gets really interesting. Luchadoras became, you know, really popular on
the Luca cards, but more socially conservative forces in Mexico
were not crazy about this, and luchadora matches were actually

(09:18):
banned in Mexico City from the late nineteen fifties till
nineteen eighty six. What wow, Yeah, So the luchadora movies
beginning with Doctor of Doom, I believe provided a key
way for many fans to actually see luchadora action. Granted,
big name luchadors played the beefy leads in their movies,

(09:40):
like Santo. You know, they'd be dubbed, but they would
get to showcase their physiques, their moves, their signature masks.
You know, as we've discussed with some of the Santo films,
you'll have almost pretty much whole entertaining matches popping up
in those and those films are sometimes more focused on
the Luca action. In luchadora movies, you instead tend to

(10:01):
have a glamorous non wrestler actor playing the lead, like
Lorena Velasquez, while actual Luca doors played themselves or side characters,
and of course served as wrestling stunt doubles for the
main character. As you mentioned this film in particular, it
is pretty light in the actual Luca action, but we
get a little bit of it, we get a dash

(10:21):
of it.

Speaker 3 (10:22):
I could tell actually in the Luca scenes in this
it is obviously not Maramnty, the star of the film,
doing the wrestling, or it certainly seemed to me it wasn't.

Speaker 2 (10:32):
No, it wasn't. Yeah, you can see that when she's
when she's International Spy Batwoman, she is wearing the smallest
bikini that just about you've ever seen underneath the cape
and the cow. But when she is in the ring
as a as a wrestler, it's this kind of like
gray body suit that brings to mind Adam West Batman,

(10:54):
and it's clearly like a stockier individual doing the wrestling.
And the interesting thing is we'll discuss Merrimante did pretty
much all of her own stunts, like even when she
shouldn't have. She was like, they were like, can you
ride a horse? She's like, yep, sure, can I can
do that? Can you scuba dive? Up? Let me do it?
Can you shoot a gun? Yes, get me in there.

(11:15):
But she did. She specifically did not do the the
main Luchadora scenes, and part of that was because, again, uh,
these women, this was the this was a chance for
these women to showcase their skills and their art when
they had limited options to do so due to some
of the bands that were in place. So you know,

(11:35):
it was out of support for them really that she's
not doing these sequences, because you know, they could have,
they could have forced something they could have made it
look like she was doing doing the moves.

Speaker 3 (11:45):
Some weird close ups and stuff. Yeah, really, let you
see what's happening. Yeah, but no, instead it is good
wrestling action. And so I guess that's when they actually
brought in the pros, the luchadoras. Yeah, did this professionally.

Speaker 2 (11:57):
Yeah, now there's a There was actually a similar suitchituation
in general with Luca films, you know, male or female practitioners.
While live Luca was still permitted, the Mexican government banned
Luca from television in nineteen fifty four and this band
held until nineteen ninety one.

Speaker 3 (12:15):
What wow.

Speaker 2 (12:15):
Yeah, so Luca films were just were also just a
key way for some folks out there to take in
Luca action, aside from catching it live.

Speaker 3 (12:25):
Wait, I'm trying to sort all this out. So in
the in various parts of the second half of the
twentieth century, you would have Luca in general banned from TV, yes,
and women banned from doing it live, at least in
certain parts of the country.

Speaker 2 (12:39):
Right, at least in Mexico City, which would have been
you know, is of course a major center for Luja
libre action. But in movies you could get both in movies. Yeah,
in movies, you were allowed to do it. And so yeah,
these Luca films prospered, and they apparentparently prospered into the
early nineteen seventies when this was Another thing I learned
on the Indicator disc among other facts, is the President

(13:01):
of Mexico's own brother, a former actor who had appeared
in some B movies and Luca films and allegedly like
didn't really you know, rise much above them, and maybe
held a grudge against these pictures. He got to then
severely limit the funding and decide where the funding went
and took it out on the Luca films. And so

(13:22):
the Luca films at that point that were made they
had to be complete indie productions, like the money had
to come from somewhere else. So that also played into
sort of the downfall of the heyday of Lucha libre films.

Speaker 3 (13:36):
I see love a high government official with a grudge.

Speaker 2 (13:43):
Yeah, so so yeah, just a little extra background on
luchadors and Lucca dooras before we get into this picture,
which I'm going to give the basic elevator pitch that
this is bat versus Fish, the classic rivalry of course.

Speaker 3 (13:57):
You know, it's a little bit blood Water of Doctor Z,
a little bit Doctor of Doom, and a little bit
Doctor Know. Yeah, did you notice how so Again, her
costume is Adam West Batman themed, but it's also the
ursula andris bikini from Doctor No except blue.

Speaker 2 (14:17):
Did you know that's a good, good point. Yeah, the
bikini is Key. You'll also note that the batwoman mask
is definitely a Luca mask the way that it's tied
in the back. It's laced in the back, yeh, which
is a nice nice touch.

Speaker 3 (14:31):
Well. But it also this film highlights some real parallels
between Batman and Luca heroes, with both in you know,
their own independent media. There has been a big focus
on the danger of unmasking that shows up in Batman movies,
even more recent ones. You know, we got to reveal
his secret identity and then you know that will put

(14:53):
him in danger, and obviously the same is true of
many of these great Luca heroes. You know, It's it's
cons stantly coming up in like the Santo movies and
stuff that the villain wants to reveal his secret identity.
Like the threat of unmasking is real.

Speaker 2 (15:07):
Yeah, yeah, Key part of Lucha Libray, the Rudos want
to take the technico's masks, and the ultimate stakes in
a match are not a championship belt, they are the mask,
the potential unmasking of a mask wrestler.

Speaker 3 (15:20):
Yeah. I also noticed this movie zeroing in on some
actual overlap between Batman and James Bond media because again,
you know, it partakes a little bit of both, but
mainly esthetics from Batman and like sort of plot details
from James Bond. But one thing they do have in

(15:41):
common is that both of them often get out of
a jam by employing a gadget, and Batwoman does that
several times in the movie with some great gadget twists.

Speaker 2 (15:50):
Doesn't she essentially have a golden gun? At one point
she does.

Speaker 3 (15:54):
She has a makeup compact mirror makeup case that turns
into like Scaramonga's gun. It's great.

Speaker 2 (16:01):
Yeah, he's got some Batman smoke pellets that she throws
out as well.

Speaker 3 (16:05):
That's true. Actually this movie though, was before The Man
with the Golden Gun.

Speaker 2 (16:09):
Oh all right, Yeah, so if you would like to
watch The Batwoman, I highly recommend it. As far as
physical media goes, the Indicator Blu Ray again is phenomenal
and it has that brilliant four K restoration from the
original negative, loads of on disc extras, as well as
a full color, eighty page booklet that includes various essays

(16:32):
from different periods by experts on Mexican cinema and if
you are an MST three K fan, this one was
riffed on the final Netflix series of Mystery Science Theater
three thousand. It's an Emily episode and I really enjoyed
it as well. I watched it a few years back
when it first came out. For this episode, however, I

(16:53):
rewatched the movie on the Indicator disc in the original Spanish.
Yeah all right, well, let's talk about the people behind
this picture once more. This is a Renee Cardona picture
directed by Renee Cardona Senior, not junior. There are his

(17:16):
son and then I believe Renee Cardona the third also
directed some stuff, but we've never really touched on his work.
But the Cardona Senior lived nineteen oh six through nineteen
eighty eight. He was a director, actor, producer, writer, and
editor and you know, best remembered as one of the
more prolific directors of the Golden Age of Mexican cinema.

(17:37):
This is our fourth Cardona Senior film, alongside fifty nine
Santa Claus, sixty three's Doctor of Doom and sixty nine
Santo in The treasurer of Dracula. The Batwoman is one
of five films attributed to him in nineteen sixty eight alone,
the other the others being I think three Westerns and
the Santo film The Treasure of Montezuma. Okay, in some

(18:02):
interviews I was looking at Cardona back in the day,
was he was very candid about the business of making
Luca films. He says, these were all b movies and
much of their filmmaking craft. He says, what's kind of
learned on the job meant a lot of pretty much
A lot of people were self taught in the industry,
but they were laying the ground work for future Mexican filmmakers.
But sometimes that meant that the product was a little

(18:23):
rough around the edges in its initial execution. And plus
he says, like sometimes we just ran out of money.
The money went away, and we still had to find
a way to finish the film by cutting it and
so forth. I definitely remember having that feeling with Doctor
of Doom, where it was just like, oh, we got
to end this somehow. Let's throw some characters up at
the top of a water tower and finish it up.

Speaker 3 (18:44):
Yeah, there you go. Interesting that. I'm getting a lot
of echoes of Roger Korman here in descriptions of how
the business worked and the process, a lot of cutting
corners to get things done on time. Feels like it
feels like that late fifties Cormin era. Also the making
five movies in a year. Yeah, different genres, but all

(19:07):
sort of exploitation or B genres.

Speaker 2 (19:10):
Yeah. One of the interviews, the interviewer at Esque Cardona's like,
why don't you make an art film? Why haven't you
made an art film? And he's like, well, the art
for me of filmmaking is finishing the film. That is
the art. And I thought that was an interesting observation.
It's hard to argue with that. Yeah, all right. The
screenplay here is by Alfredo Salazar, who lived nineteen twenty

(19:30):
two through two thousand and six, brother of Mexican director
Abell Salazar. Alfredo scripted a number of notable Mexican B films,
including the Aztec Mummy movies, multiple Santo films, including Santo
and the Treasure of Dracula. It should come as no
surprise that he also wrote Doctor of Doom because this
I kind of feel like Salazar is on autopilot here

(19:53):
for the most part, except for the Fishman stuff. A
lot of things in this film are just straight out
of Doctor of Doom. But again the result is still
a lot of fun and pretty great.

Speaker 3 (20:03):
It is close to a Doctor of Doom remake, except
with the adding in the Batwoman, like that's the main
element that's different, and swapping Gorilla for fish.

Speaker 2 (20:13):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, all right. Our star, as we've mentioned already,
is Mara Monty. She plays the Batwoman and her real
name is Gloria.

Speaker 3 (20:23):
This almost never comes up.

Speaker 2 (20:25):
Yeah, almost never comes up. That's your secret identity. Monty
was born in nineteen forty two and as of this
recording is still very much alive. We previously mentioned Monty
as she played one of the Martians in sixty seven
Santo Versus the Martian Invasion.

Speaker 3 (20:42):
That one was fun. I don't know if that one
has ever had a like a quality proper re release.

Speaker 2 (20:48):
I don't think so. We've had a great run of
certain It's one of those cases where a lot of
these pictures they were B movies and they were kind
of they weren't given a lot of love when they
came out, you know, certainly by this sort of cinematic
industry in Mexico, and some of them were kind of forgotten.
But we've had a lot of great efforts to find,

(21:09):
like the original negatives and restore a lot of these films.
We saw that with Santo and the Treasure of Dracula,
and there are several other releases where they've done a
great job of bringing these films almost back to life
to ensure that their legacy can be enjoyed. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (21:24):
Well, Martian Invasion, I remember that one was a lot
of fun.

Speaker 2 (21:27):
Yeah, I mean, there's so many examples of The she
Wolf is another one where it's like, oh, man, I
would kill to see this in better quality, and you
just kind of hope that it's out there somewhere now.
As for Maramanti, she was born in Italy but then
moved to Mexico with her mom at a young age.
She did some model works, some TV work, and then

(21:47):
transitioned into film roles. She played Mary Magdalene in nineteen
sixty six Jesus film The Trial of Christ, but otherwise
appeared in comedies, and she often played sort of fem
fatale types, you know, very stylish, supermodel, mysterious woman. Definitely
appeared in some spy movies. She appeared in sixty seven's

(22:07):
SOS Operation Bikini, sixty seven Santa Versus The Martian Invasion,
and then The Batwoman. Sixty eight was her chance to
break the mold a little bit to a certain extent,
you know, playing the heroine here.

Speaker 3 (22:21):
In Santo in the Martian Invasion. She's not like the
main villain, but she's one of a large cadre of
Martian Invaders. If I recall correctly, she is the Martian
with the biggest hair. Tremendous big hair.

Speaker 2 (22:35):
Yeah, I do remember some enormous hair in that film,
in some fun lucha action. Let's see subsequent films for
monte included, Let's see the sixty eight film The Treasure
of Montezuma, sixty eight's Blue Demon, Destructor of Spies, sixty
nine's Las Ampiras, and seventy one's The Incredible Invasion starring
Boris Karloff. All four of Karloff's final released films, at

(22:59):
least in their release order, were Mexican productions.

Speaker 3 (23:03):
Oh yeah.

Speaker 2 (23:04):
So Monty retired from acting around this time as well,
but he has looked back fondly on this period of
for filmmaking and on the Batwoman. As I mentioned earlier,
she does pretty much all her own stunts here. So
if you see, aside from the main Luca scenes, if
you see Batwoman scuba diving, riding a horse, firing a gun, parachuting,

(23:28):
they did not use a stunt woman even when they
should have.

Speaker 3 (23:32):
You do see all those things in the film, most
of them back to back. Yeah. So there's a montage
at the beginning where they're like, let's talk about all
the sports that Batwoman.

Speaker 2 (23:40):
Can do, yeah, and let's show you yes. All right,
So that's our hero. And every hero needs a villain,
and in this film it is doctor Eric Williams from
Mad Sciences. I can only imagine that that name lands
better for the for the Mexicans of the Spanish speaking audience,

(24:03):
because I don't know, it doesn't sound sinister enough to me.

Speaker 3 (24:07):
It's a very generic sounding name. Yeah, you would think
you want like a like a doctor, you know, doctor
Thunder or something. Oh wait, no, that's a beverage, isn't it. Well,
you know some kind of like ominous sounding name. Instead,
we're getting doctor Smith here.

Speaker 2 (24:23):
Yeah yeah, yeah, I mean his ship has a cool name.

Speaker 3 (24:26):
But we'll get to that in a minute.

Speaker 2 (24:27):
Yeah, but he's just doctor Eric Williams. But he is
played by Roberto Canado. Lived nineteen eighteen through nineteen ninety eight. Really,
I always enjoy this guy. This is our third Canado
film is He also played the mad scientist villain and
Doctor of Doom, essentially the same character, and he played
a much more sympathetic character in the nineteen sixty five

(24:50):
where Will film La Loba the she Wolf. He was
a classically trained actor, you know, a veteran by this
point where you know his work dating back to I
think nineteen thirty nine, he was already a two time
Aerieal Award nominee and a one time winner, and he'd
go on to receive a special Lifetime Achievement Award in
sixty seven, I'm sorry in ninety seven. He worked in

(25:10):
pretty much every genre, a lot of dramas, but also
a fair number of Luca films, including I think three
Santo films.

Speaker 3 (25:18):
You mentioned. He plays basically the same character in Doctor
of Doom, and I would say that's right, Except I'm
not trying to knock this movie. I really like Batwoman,
but his character to me in this seems a downgrade
from Doctor of Doom and Doctor of Doom. They at
least play up some mystery about his identity. He has
a double role in Doctor of Doom where he's playing
a kind of a mild mannered guy working in an office.

(25:42):
And then also there's this villain character whose face you
do not see at the beginning, and there is a
revelation when it turns out, oh it's a you know,
Roberto Kannedo who is the bad guy, and you didn't
see it coming, or maybe you did. I don't really
remember how much they.

Speaker 2 (25:57):
I mean, you see it coming. But but the mystery
is in place. You know, the plotting was a lot
more ambitious than Doctor of Doom. Here, it's pretty it's
pretty obvious from the get go that we're dealing with
a mad scientist. Like, there's no there's no mystery here.

Speaker 3 (26:13):
First scene you meet him, he is dunking a doll
into a fish tank and saying, we're going to make
a fish man.

Speaker 2 (26:19):
Yeah, yeah, there's no there's not even a mystery concerning
what he's trying to do, but still a lot of fun.
Like I say, I always enjoy his performances. Now he
has a toady in this as I think any good
mad scientists should. And his name is igor Of and
he is played by Jorge Mandragan, who lived nineteen oh

(26:41):
three through nineteen ninety seven, Mexican actor who also appears
in fifty sevens The Aztec Mummy and in sixty threes
Santo in the wax Museum. That Santo in the Wax
Museum I've mentioned before because that's the only Santo film
to feature Claudio Brook, the great Mexican actor. Sadly, I
don't think it's necessarily top tier Santo horror. I watched.

(27:05):
I tried to watch it not too long ago, and
it's fine, but it's it doesn't deliver what you'd hope.
Knowing that it's like Claudio Brook and Santo dot, maybe
I should give it another go. Well.

Speaker 3 (27:18):
I appreciated Jorge mondergn in this movie, especially in the
way he portrays a kind of jealousy of the fish man.
Did you notice that? Yeah, he's like the mad scientists
used to care about me, and now all he cares
about is his fish Man.

Speaker 2 (27:34):
Yeah. Almost, there's almost the Snither's Mister Burns kind of
vibe here with these these two, especially with Igor. I mean,
Egor seems to really be into this project they're working
on together, and then you know, priorities shift and and
I'm not sure he knows how to take it.

Speaker 3 (27:52):
Sometimes that happens workplace politics.

Speaker 2 (27:55):
Yes, all right. Another familiar face in this film is
the actor playing He's listed in the credits is Jose
the lottery Seller, but I think that's that's a cover
that he has basically this one. Oh he's number one. Yeah.
He's one of the criminal underlings of the mad Doctor Williams,

(28:16):
and he is played by David Silva nineteen seventeen through
nineteen seventy six. Listeners of the show and Mexican cinema
fans might remember him as the deranged father Lazarro in
seventy seven ZADOKARDA. Okay, yeah, so he was. Also he's
a one time Aeriel Award winner, three time nominee. He
also pops up as the Colonel in nineteen seventy two's

(28:39):
Al Topo. So you know, very much hard faced, heavy
sort of actor effective here playing the under the chief
underworld operative for our mad scientists. All right, let's get
into some of our other good guys. They're supporting good guys.
So we have Hector Goadoi playing Mario Robles.

Speaker 3 (29:00):
You mean special agent Mario Roblaze.

Speaker 2 (29:02):
Yes, agient Mario Roeblace. This is one of two crime
fighting operatives that work with the Batwoman. Good Oi lived
nineteen twenty six through nineteen ninety four, a handsome Mexican
actor whose other credits include sixty threes, Bring Me the Vampire,
sixty three's House of Frights, sixty five She Wolves of

(29:24):
the Ring. That's a Luchadora film, and let's see also
the nineteen sixty six Luca film The Clutching Hand in
seventy eights, the Year of the Plague.

Speaker 3 (29:33):
He is very handsome. He is a handsome special agent. Yeah,
but then you couldn't You wouldn't be a Batwoman movie
with just one handsome special agent.

Speaker 2 (29:42):
Yeah, that's right, because we also have Tony Roca, played
by Armando Silvestri, who lived nineteen twenty six to twenty
twenty four. He came up in our episode of Doctor
of Doom. He's in that as well, though he sadly
passed away since our recording of that, but he was
like a bullfighter turned actor, and he often played punky

(30:03):
leading men in Mexican cinema and also you know, he
pops up in some American westerns as well. But the
thing that I've found really fascinating about this film is, Okay,
we have our female here, a heroine here, and then
we have these two male crime crime fighters, you know,
police investigators, special agents that are working with her. And

(30:27):
to be clear, this is a very family friendly film,
and both Mario and Tony are are just the batwoman's
close friends.

Speaker 3 (30:34):
Are they?

Speaker 2 (30:35):
Well, on the surface, they hang out, they're essentially on
vacation with each other, and if one of them has
to sleep over, they are downstairs on the couch. But
on the other hand, these three feel very close to
the extent that it feels it feels like what I
think is called in the romanticy world a reverse Harem situation,

(30:56):
in which a female protagonist has multiple dedicated love interests,
usually usually three or more, but in this case it's two.
So yeah, these three seem very close with each other.

Speaker 3 (31:08):
I have now given a terrible update to what the
Algos think is going on in my life because this
movie had me googling to figure out what it's called
when one woman goes on a date with two men
at the same time, and I couldn't figure out an
answer to that. I don't know if there's a term
for that, but it happens in this film.

Speaker 2 (31:28):
The romance genre has like everything mapped out, like there's
there's terminal terminology for everything. So I'm sure there's there's
a more articulate term that I'm just not utilizing here.

Speaker 3 (31:40):
Well, I mean, so the Internet told me, oh, when
three people are dating together, that's called a thrupple, so
that that may be the most common name for this
relationship situation. But I was wondering, what do you call
the date? What's the date where the batwoman She's like,
I'm going to go to the beach with Special Agent
Mario Roblaze and Inner National Agent Tony Rocca and I'll

(32:01):
kiss them both.

Speaker 2 (32:04):
Yeah, So I can only imagine they're playing that up here. Also,
the story inverts typical genre conventions by having Mario and
Tony essentially be the damsels in distress most of the time, but.

Speaker 3 (32:17):
Though they have a stinger at the very end, that's
like I don't know, some weird kind of gender conventional
twist at the end just to like put you at ease.
I guess.

Speaker 2 (32:27):
Yeah, it's weird. This movie's weird in that regard and
commentators have discussed this because, yeah, there's a lot of
stuff where obviously you're putting a beautiful woman in a
bikini and having her you know, prants around on the screen.
You know, the male gaze is very much in play here.
But on the other hand, like she's kicking butts, she
has a dual her sort of dual role here is

(32:49):
both a highly effective like physical crime fighter and investigator
and then her secret identity she's a superstar there as well. Oh,
she's like a highly successful, wealthy presumably like businesswoman.

Speaker 3 (33:05):
Where's her money supposed to come from?

Speaker 2 (33:07):
Yeah, yeah, Like I assume she has business interests that
she's successfully running. So yeah, it's fascinating that regard.

Speaker 3 (33:13):
We never see her in a board meeting like we
get Bruce Wayne scenes. Yeah, so we don't know where
the money comes from. But yes, she is a successful
wrestler and the world's most fearless crime fighter. She excels
at all sports and can basically do anything except she
does have some specific sort of creature related terrors.

Speaker 2 (33:34):
Yes, yeah, one of them is very understandable because one
of them is fish men. Yeah, but yeah, we'll discuss
the other one later. Let's see real quick. Do you
remember Crumba and La Loba Crumba?

Speaker 3 (33:47):
Who is Crumba?

Speaker 2 (33:49):
He was like, the I think his position is like
a Roma character, you know, Oh okay, yeah, well he
was played by Costa Rican luchador turned actor croc Alverado
who lived nineteen ten through nineteen eighty four. He's in
this as well. He plays the inspector.

Speaker 3 (34:06):
Oh okay, is he the guy who's there to explain
how wonderful Batwoman is? And then he was like, would
you like to meet the handsome special agent Mario Roblaze
And then we're just the plot just just sort of
handed off to Mario.

Speaker 2 (34:18):
Yes, yes, all right. We have an individual by the
name of Alfonso Barcinas, dates unknown, but he is credited
as he's credited like later in the credits for the
sea Monster, the Monstro Marino, you know, the making of it,

(34:39):
one presumes, But then also he is listed as playing
pieces the fish monster, right.

Speaker 3 (34:45):
The name that the doctor gives to the fishman. He
is PCs PCs.

Speaker 2 (34:49):
Yes, so I was. I was looking into this a
little bit and I wasn't finding much about this guy,
just a few credits. But then I was checking out
one of the extras on the Indicator disc by film
critics Jose Lewis Ortega Torres, and he points out that
this guy Barcinas, was an underwater cinematography expert, and he

(35:10):
stresses that Barcinis just really didn't receive enough credit for
his work on this film, certainly back in the day.
You know, in this film in general again didn't really
you know, didn't really change the world when it came out.
But Barcinis's pieces is really a standout monster in Mexican cinema.
Torres points out he has almost no predecessors as a

(35:33):
guill man or a fish man in Mexican cinema, with
really the main precursor being a gill Man type character
in the Ship of Monsters style horror comedy The Castle
of the Monsters in nineteen fifty eight.

Speaker 3 (35:47):
Oh, okay, so does Castle of the Monsters. I haven't
seen it. I'm just guessing kind of pull in a
bunch of the universal monsters in exact way.

Speaker 2 (35:57):
I saw a clip of it. It looks pretty funny,
Like basically when it's when the fishman is defeated in
this film, he just turns into a trout or something,
but flopping on the floor.

Speaker 3 (36:08):
But I have spread out of him. He put it
on a bagel.

Speaker 2 (36:12):
Maybe maybe, But I have to say, I think the
fishman in this film looks really good. Is it? Is
it subog creature from the Black Lagoon? Absolutely, but pretty
much everything, literally everything is nothing looks as good as
that fish man. On the other hand, certainly better than Zat,
than the bloodwaters of Doctor z I dig the red color.

(36:34):
And something that's key, according to Torres is that the
monster moves so well underwater and is shot so well
in those underwater sequences, and the creature's interactions with our
heroin underwater as well.

Speaker 3 (36:48):
I was actually kind of shocked how good the underwater
cinematography is for especially for a movie of this budget
in caliber, Like, the underwater scenes are pretty impressive. I
was thinking about the main in terms of what they
were trying to recreate from recent James Bond movies. I mean,
you can clearly see Thunderball was a big film that

(37:08):
had a lot of underwater scenes, which, frankly, in my opinion,
if you go back and watch Thunderbold, there's too much
underwater stuff becomes quite boring. There's so much of it,
and I'm just like, okay, I'm ready to hear people
talk now. But so, I think that kind of spirit
of underwater spy action is something they're trying to capture

(37:30):
in this film, and they do it quite well. The
underwater photography looks good, and it's staged well too. There's
a good underwater choreography, which I imagine is not easy
to do.

Speaker 2 (37:41):
Yeah, yeah, because it's making use of space and depth
in ways that there are a lot of underwater sequences
in films that are a lot sloppier. And also a
lot of films will just depend on some stock footage.
Like when I was pulling this film out, my wife said, oh,
I bet that's gonna have a lot of stock footage

(38:01):
in it, And you know, there's probably some stock footage
in it. Like, using some stock footage in your film
is just sensible. But on the whole, it's not the
the sense that you get from the Batwoman. It really
feels like they filmed pretty much everything in this on
location and did it quite well.

Speaker 3 (38:18):
I'm trying to think what could have been stock footage.
There are some shots of Yse gliding over the bottom
of the water, and I wonder if that's original or
if that's just stock they sourced.

Speaker 2 (38:30):
Yeah, I mean it might have been something that Barcena
has already had or had already shot. You know, that
seems highly likely, all right? And finally, the music in
this picture is a lot of.

Speaker 3 (38:48):
Fun cooking hot jazz. Yeah it is.

Speaker 2 (38:51):
And the individual responsible is someone I wasn't familiar with.
I'm not super well versed in a lot of Latin music,
you know. I hear it in mixes or on radio stations,
but I don't necessarily know my way around it. The
individual credit it is Leo a Costa who lived nineteen
twenty five through two thousand and seven. He only has

(39:12):
a few film credits, but I learned more about him
via the label mad About Records, which describes him as
a legendary master of psych Latin jazz, funk fusion, and
they single out his nineteen seventy album A Costa. This
is the one if you're looking it up. It has
a picture of I'm assuming this is the artist himself
with his face on like a drought and not a dragon,

(39:34):
a lion with a psychedelic background. And you can find
this wherever you stream your music or download your music,
what have you. I was listening to this a little
bit and it's top notch. It has a great vibe
and it's very reminiscent of the vibe that you get
with the Batwoman soundtrack.

Speaker 3 (39:54):
Yeah. I checked it out when you sent me the link.
It's got some great grooves.

Speaker 2 (39:58):
Yeah, all right, well let's go proove into the plot
of The Batwoman.

Speaker 3 (40:02):
Okay, Well, we hear some of that groovy jazz while
the credits are playing over what looked like oil paintings
of ocean waves crashing on the beach. It's like JMW.
Turner paintings. It's kind of a strange choice. It doesn't
really fit the mood of the film.

Speaker 2 (40:18):
Yeah, why do not you some of that underwater footage
when you're saving that for later? Just throw it up now.

Speaker 3 (40:23):
It's not like it looks bad. It just sets a
very different visual tone than the rest of the movie.

Speaker 2 (40:28):
Is. It's this feeling that it's like we're watching a
stage production and they're still dressing the stage behind the curtains, Like,
this just feels like curtains.

Speaker 3 (40:37):
So after the credits, we cut to actual waves crashing
on a rocky shore. Two boys are out fishing off
the top of a rock and they find a dead
body floating in the surf. Then we learn from a
news broadcast that this is the fifth murder in a
row where the victim was one of Acapulco's famous athletes.

(40:57):
The victim this time was a wrestler named Reo, and
the killer still has not been caught. And then the
newscaster says the police are incapable of solving these crimes. Well,
that's bad news. Yeah yeah, so let's check in with
the incapable cops. We cut to an office where a
couple of detectives are sitting among stacks of paper and

(41:19):
filing cabinets, and they are complaining about how quote the
liberal newspaper readers do not understand the inherent difficulty of
police work. One of them says there are no clues,
no leads, nothing, and then the other one says that
there have been similar murders in Hong Kong and Macau, Like, wow,
how'd they get that information? But and they have somehow

(41:42):
established that those murders are connected to the murders in Acapulco.
And then I was thinking, wait a minute, I thought
there were no clues and no leads. That sounds like
clues and leads.

Speaker 2 (41:52):
Yeah, this is a complete cold case. We have no
leads except for the clear connections that Interpol has supplied for. Yeah,
but Interpol's got together hands busy with some sort of
Godzilla situation.

Speaker 3 (42:04):
Meka Godzilla exactly. Yeah. So anyway, the FBI, I guess
the United States FBI is sending them a special agent
to help with the case, a very very handsome, dashing
special agent. His name is Mario Roblace. And he arrives
for a visit right after they start talking about him,
and they're like, oh, the handsome special Agent Mario Roblaze.

(42:26):
Knock at the door, that's him. So special Agent Mario
Roblace comes in, he sits down, and he says, I
know someone who can help us solve this case. It
is someone I've worked with before, and apparently that gives
it away. He doesn't even have to say who it is,
and the detective is like, ah, batwoman, you mean So
I guess special Agent Mario Roblaze is just the FBI

(42:50):
agent who has a reputation for always working with Batwoman.

Speaker 2 (42:53):
He's the guy you hire because of his connections to Batwoman,
not because he himself is really that in the field.

Speaker 3 (43:01):
Well, yeah, does Special Agent Mario Roblaze accomplish much of
anything in this film? No?

Speaker 2 (43:05):
No, really, he's very much as supporting role.

Speaker 3 (43:08):
He is there to get Batwoman on the case. Yeah.
But when they bring this up, the other detective somehow
does not know anything about the illustrious Batwoman and asks
who she is, and they muse for they say, hmm,
she is very difficult to describe with words, but they're
going to try anyway. So here's the you know, the

(43:29):
ineffable Batwoman begins. Thus, she is a wonderful and very
rich lady who lives in the capital city. Seems straightforward.
She uses her vast fortune to fight against the forces
of evil. So far, is this something that's hard to
describe in words?

Speaker 2 (43:46):
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (43:47):
But while they're saying this, we cut away to Batwoman's
house and she's putting on some going out clothes, a
long white evening gown, furs, white gloves that come up
to the elbows, and big hair. Big hair. Once again,
I mentioned that Maramonte is the Martian with the big
hair in Santo in the Martian Invasion, So I think she,

(44:09):
I don't know, maybe she had a strong neck, could
like really balance a weighty wig up there. Anyway, it
starts getting weirder, so they say the cops are still
trying to describe the indescribable Batwoman, and they say, thanks
to her special abilities, she is distinguished in all sports.

(44:30):
And now we see her in black leggings and a
green sleeveless shirt and a Batman mask like the cowl
with the ears in the mask of Adam West style
batman mask, holding a gun. She's got a big, long
barrel revolver in one hand like a dragoon, holding it
out in one hand, and she is leveling the gun

(44:51):
at a target, and then she hits six bull's eyes
in a row. So I think this little shot settles
the question of who's winning an the fight between Batman
and Batwoman. And she just pulls out the revolver and
he's toast.

Speaker 2 (45:04):
Oh yeah, because Batman famously doesn't use a gun, which
always does always struck me as a weird flex on
Batman's part because he's still like murdering people with his
bare hands and is engaged in extra judicial justice. So
but he's like, hey, hey, my moral fiber is is

(45:26):
firmly in place. I don't use a gun at all. There,
didn't you just throw that guy off the building?

Speaker 3 (45:30):
Though, there's definite hypocrisy and the characterization of Batman because
they also they always make clear about Batman he doesn't kill,
you know, that's his rule. It doesn't use guns and
doesn't kill. But if you're beating people unconscious some of
them will die. That that also will Well, you're causing
many people permanent brain injuries. Some of them are going
to die. That's unavoidable. So it's just a kind of

(45:51):
a fantasy world where you know.

Speaker 2 (45:52):
What's going to happen to them in the criminal justice
system and so forth.

Speaker 3 (45:55):
Obviously some people would be killed in those kinds of
car chases, just inevitable. Yeah, So anyway, after this, we
see Batwoman dressed up in an old Hollywood like western
gunslinger outfit with a little black hat and a chin
strap yeap, riding a horse down the middle of a
western frontier town movie set. I was thinking, is this

(46:18):
the same western town movie set where they shot that
scene in Nemesis. You remember what I'm talking about.

Speaker 2 (46:23):
Oh yeah, yeah, I think that was in That was
in Arizona or New Mexico, one of the two.

Speaker 3 (46:29):
Well they said it was taking place in Mexico.

Speaker 2 (46:31):
But oh well, yeah, Well, in the context of the film,
I'm assuming the exact same place. Yeah. Sure.

Speaker 3 (46:36):
So she gets off her horse and she starts shooting
her gun at something. Again we don't see what. Then
we see her skin diving around a coral reef and
spearfishing underwater. So the sports that she excels at are
shooting a gun, riding a horse and shooting a gun,
and skin diving and shooting a harpoon.

Speaker 2 (46:56):
Now, one thing that we've touched on before is that
there was often a Mexican cut of a film like
this and then an international cut, and the international cut
would include added footage of, say, nudity, mainly nudity, but
maybe sometimes blood. I'm imagining an alternate cut of this
which entailed, wherever you were sending the Batwoman out to
be viewed, you would show her showcasing her sporting abilities

(47:20):
and whatever the most popular sports of that given country.

Speaker 3 (47:23):
Happened to be Batwoman excels at the luge, but yeah,
that's true. That was definitely the case with Santo and
The Treasure of Dracula, where it was the European cut
that had all of the excessive nudity.

Speaker 2 (47:35):
You know, speaking of Dracula, I was noting some of
the international titles for this film when it was released
in Germany. I don't know if they just didn't know
about Batwoman in Germany or if there's some other issue.
But she is not Batwoman. She is Dracula's daughter.

Speaker 3 (47:49):
Wait what yeah, wait, are you joking?

Speaker 2 (47:53):
I'm not joking. Yeah, oh, okay, that the German titles
for this film I think translate to Dracula's daughter and
Professor Satan.

Speaker 3 (48:02):
Professor Satan.

Speaker 2 (48:03):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (48:04):
Oh man, wait, isn't that the name. There's a Professor
Satan in some rob Zombie movie Doctor Satan, doctor Satan.

Speaker 2 (48:12):
So okay. Yeah, And if memory serves, there may be
an act there may be a doctor Satan somewhere in
the La Lucha film universe as well, because you know,
obviously Zombie was was and is inspired by a lot
of that media as well.

Speaker 3 (48:25):
Absolutely so, anyway, the detective, he's been listing her sports.
She can shoot a gun, ride a horse and shoot
a gun, shoot a spear, skin dive. But then finally
he says, behind the mask, she's become a great wrestler.
And then finally we get to see her in the
ring wrestling her in ring costume. So there are two
main Batwoman costumes. As we said, one of them is

(48:49):
going to be a blue bikini with the batwoman mask
and a blue bat cape, and then the other one
is going to be her in ring costume, which is
gray tights on top and bottom, dark dark blue mask,
dark blue boots, and dark blue briefs over the tights
with a yellow utility beild.

Speaker 2 (49:10):
And as we noted earlier, this is of course going
to be a luchador wrestling double. You can no differences
in physique here. Moves are pretty neat too. There are
a lot of arm drags.

Speaker 3 (49:20):
Yeah, yeah, we see her beating up on another woman
in the wrestling ring. Batwoman is absolutely dominating the match.
I don't think the other wrestler even gets a single
move in. So we cut back to the office and
then all the men agreed the Batwoman is indeed amazing
in every way, but the detectives should not expect to
see her real face because they say if and here

(49:43):
there was a word in my subtitles that was translated Hampa,
like all capital letters, like it's an acronym Hampa. They say,
if Hampa finds out about her true identity, she will
be eliminated. I took that to mean something like Specter
in the James Bond films, like a criminal organization, but
then we got no further information on Hampa, So don't

(50:05):
know what that is.

Speaker 2 (50:06):
I don't clearly remember. I want to say that the
subtitles on the version I watched were just like if
the criminal world found out, but I don't recall that
was literally what it was, or if that was just
how I interpreted it.

Speaker 3 (50:17):
Yeah, So they say her alter ego is known only
to special Agent Mario Roblace and one other person. They
don't name who the other person is. Anyway, her wrestling
career is actually key to solving these crimes, so it's
not just a hobby. As a wrestler. She will be
able to infiltrate the wrestling scene and quote begin inquiries.

(50:41):
Because the deal is the killer has been killing not
just athletes, as the newscaster said earlier, but wrestlers, in particular,
wrestlers are the victims. Once again, It's like, wait a minute,
they have no leads. It sounds like they've got a
lot of information to work with here.

Speaker 2 (50:57):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (50:57):
Yeah, So they're going to set the Batwoman up with
some matches in Acapulco while she works the case. And
then we see her arrive in Acapulco by parachute landing
on the beach dressed in a blue bikini with the
batman mask and cape. And then she gets to business
directly to business working the case, starting by going to

(51:20):
an autopsy in that same outfit in the bikini.

Speaker 2 (51:23):
Yes, at an autopsy wearing this tiny blue bikini. It's
a marvelous scene that she plays completely.

Speaker 3 (51:29):
Straight, Yes, going to the autopsy and the bikini and
the mask, the mask on the face. So the medical
examiner tells Batwoman that in every case of these Rassland murders,
the quote pinnial pineal gland juice has been extracted surgically,
and from this they deduced that the killer must be
a medical practitioner of some kind, must have knowledge of medicine,

(51:53):
and must be skilled in the arts of surgery. Whoever
they are, they must be able to extract a tiny
organ from the brain cavity, leaving only a barely noticeable hole.
Then the medical examiner tells them that we know very
little about the human body, and even less about the
pineal gland. The only thing we can do now is
let the killer create. Is let the killer continue killing

(52:16):
and wait for them to make a mistake. It's a
horrible plan.

Speaker 2 (52:20):
Again, have They clearly have some leads here, but they're
just like it. Just let him keep doing it until
he'll mess up eventually too hard.

Speaker 3 (52:27):
Yeah, And then we cut to a boat named Reptilicus. Yes,
they've all gone to look for Reptilicus. They literally have
the police trying to find this boat, but they can't.

Speaker 2 (52:40):
Yeah. I love this. This ship that has Reptlicus looks
like it's just painted like free hand on the side
of the ship. And I kept the wide shots. I
kept thinking, is this truly an ocean going vessel? It
looks more like some sort of a fairy. I don't mean,
I don't really know my boat's all that well, I'm
just saying I look at this and I'm hard for
me imagine that this ship is about to go to

(53:03):
Asia next to kidnap wrestlers from a different culture for
mad scientist experiments.

Speaker 3 (53:09):
It looked like the kind of boat you would rent
to have a party on. It looked like a booze
cruise party barge.

Speaker 2 (53:16):
Yeah that one, But yeah, I don't know if it's that.
It doesn't strike me as an ocean voyage sort of vessel.

Speaker 3 (53:22):
But instead of being a booze cruise party barge, it
seems to contain a combination villain layer and science lab.
So two guys ease on into the mad science room
here in the boat. They're wearing white lab coats, and
we've got the boss, doctor Williams and his assistant Igor.
They approach a fish tank with a single orange fish

(53:44):
in it, and then they drop a human shaped doll
into the tank. They tweak some knobs and then they
make the fish tank start bubbling vigorously. So it seems
to me any live fish in that thing is now
cooked in d It appears their experiment has failed, so
doctor Williams approaches the tank. He's dejected. Now he's upset.

(54:09):
There's this like gray lock of hair hanging out of
place over his brow and Williams says, no reaction, Egor,
we have to do a new experiment to create our
fish man. But he says, they've got a problem. They
are out of gland liquid, so they're going to have
to kill another wrestler immediately.

Speaker 2 (54:27):
Oh, I have to stress Canedo's pencil thin mustache is
also key to all of this. Gray pencil thin mustache.

Speaker 3 (54:34):
Yes, very good, and Igor tries to argue with him.
He says it's too dangerous. The police are onto us.
Can't we use somebody other than a wrestler. The professor
says no, Only wrestlers provide the level of physical perfection
needed for my gland liquid.

Speaker 2 (54:51):
High profile victims. Only Egor exactly.

Speaker 3 (54:54):
So now we cut to the house of wrestling. It's
time to check in at a gume for luchadors. So
it's big guys. They're doing throws on a mat, practicing
throws on each other, and then we see rob. I
wonder if you know what this is. There's a line
of dudes doing some exercise on the parallel bars where
they split their legs over the two parallel bars and

(55:18):
then rotate their bodies forward to grab the bars with
their arms lift the legs off and then flip them
over and do it again. I don't know what this
is called.

Speaker 2 (55:27):
It was impressive. It would be disastrous if I were
to attempt this myself.

Speaker 3 (55:31):
Yeah, yeah, that looks like some torn crotch muscles or
something for sure. So a blind man with sunglasses and
a cane comes into the gym. I think this is
the guy named Jose.

Speaker 2 (55:46):
And yeah, played by Silva. Yeah right.

Speaker 3 (55:48):
He starts talking to a wrestler named Swedish. Jose has
rented for Swedish a half priced boat so that Swedish
can go out in the ocean and go fishing. Swedish
is very exciting. He says he's going to catch a
tuna and a swordfish, and I just get the feeling
he's gonna be out some gland liquid quite soon.

Speaker 2 (56:08):
Yeah, this guy's damned.

Speaker 3 (56:10):
Meanwhile, at the other end of the gym, Batwoman in
full Adam West costume is sparring against a wrestler named Esmerelda.
Batwoman obviously wins because nobody beats Batwoman, and then afterwards
Batwoman heads to the locker room. She takes off her
mask and checks in with special Agent Mario Roblaze. By
way of a two way radio. He has been staking

(56:31):
out the port, but so far he hasn't seen anything.
And then we get a scene with the wire the
wire tap. It seems thet is she going downstairs at
the gym for this scene?

Speaker 2 (56:43):
I think, I guess. So there's just a spy infrastructure
underneath everything. This is also the scene where she's wearing
the batwoman mask. Ye, but then she has like black
suspenders over what is this like a purple sleeveless shirt pinguation.

Speaker 3 (56:59):
Yeah, pink sleeve shirt, black suspenders on a black skirt
and the batman mask. It is a bizarre outfit.

Speaker 2 (57:07):
Yeah. I think I like this one the most of
anything she wears.

Speaker 3 (57:09):
It's very good. So she wears this. I think she
has to put the She has to keep the mask
on because she's going to talk to the detectives and
they don't know her alter ego. So she goes downstairs
of the gym to talk to the detectives who have
tapped the payphone upstairs of the gym. Jose from earlier
gets picked up placing a suspicious call where he and
his accomplice identify each other with code names. They're calling

(57:32):
each other number one and number three, like operatives from
Specter and from Russia with Love. Batwoman runs upstairs to
see who is on the phone, but by the time
she gets there, it's too late. There's nobody on the
phone anymore. So there's going to be a sting. Swedish.
The wrestler is out fishing on this rented boat. He's
just sitting there, fishing in the water and minding his

(57:54):
own business, not suspecting it. I guess he's not minding
his own business from the fish's perspective, but he's just
doing his thing. And then a gang of guys in
scuba gear swim up to his boat, get on the boat,
beat Swedish unconscious, kidnap him in another boat, and Williams
and Igor, meanwhile are looking on from their floating laboratory nearby.

(58:16):
There are actually many scenes in this film of Igor
and Williams standing at the window in their laboratory looking
out the window with binoculars, narrating what's going on.

Speaker 2 (58:28):
Yeah, yeah, most of their scenes are in that room.

Speaker 3 (58:31):
Yeah, maybe all of all, Yeah, almost all of them,
I think, actually, maybe all of them. Yeah. Anyway, Number
one and his henchmen bring Swedish to the combination villain
Lair and science Lab, and doctor Williams is informed that
Batwoman has arrived in town and this is no good,
very scary because everybody knows that Batwoman solves crimes. She

(58:53):
means business. But Williams is not very concerned. He says,
soon they can finish their experiments, then they will flee
to another country where she can't find them. And they
have fled to many other countries before. Previously they were
in Hong Kong and Macau. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (59:10):
Well, I don't know what the wrestler crop was like
over there, but maybe they found some other profession to
prey upon.

Speaker 3 (59:18):
There's a thriving luchador scene in every city. So the
patient now is etherized upon the table and they start
doing this thing with what was this thing they're doing
with A two? They've got a tube, a rubber hose
thing hooked up to the top of a goldfish that's
swimming around in the tank.

Speaker 2 (59:36):
Yeah, I don't know. They did have some goldfish wired
up for a minute.

Speaker 3 (59:40):
There had the wire up the goldfish, maybe so they
could feed it the pineal juice.

Speaker 2 (59:44):
I guess that's it, because I think the idea is
you put the pineal juice in the fish, and then
you take the fish and you're going to do other
things with you know, you put the pineal gland juice
in the fish, you make a tiny fish man, and
then you need to do other things to grow that
tiny fishman into a proper sized fish man.

Speaker 3 (01:00:02):
And animate it. Because when they make the tiny fish man,
it's just a doll. But they have to bring it
to life and make it big at the same time.
With radiation.

Speaker 2 (01:00:09):
It's a complicated process that you know, it seems like
you could just have a single mad science tank that
does the whole thing.

Speaker 3 (01:00:18):
Anyway, Williams, whatever's happening in this experiment, Williams likes it.
It is good. He gets this crazed look in his
eye and starts muttering perfecto, perfecto, and then we get
a villain speech incoming. So here it is in translation,
of course, he says, prepare yourself, igor, you were about
to witness this century's most awesome act. Four hundred million

(01:00:40):
years ago in the sea, the evolution of the human
being began when the first vertebrate appeared the fish. According
to this law, we'll regress back to the dawn of
creation and we'll create the image and likeness of our
ancestors and amphibious human creature. Ha ha. Amazing villain laugh here,

(01:01:02):
just a rich, savory villain laugh, like a hardy bowl
of stew. It was top tier villain laugh.

Speaker 2 (01:01:09):
Yeah, yeah, great laugh. And I guess. So the plan
is we're either there either used to be fishmen fishmen
and we're making fishmen again, or we're getting the fishmen.
Is basically getting back to the idea that humans have
roughly aquatic origins and therefore we should have aquatic humans.

Speaker 3 (01:01:27):
Now I'm not sure exactly what he's saying. It's kind
of hard to parse that speech. Yeah, I don't think
he's saying that there used to be fishmen. I think
he's saying we evolved from fish and now we're going
to go back to fish, which will complete the cycle.

Speaker 2 (01:01:43):
Yeah, it absolutely needs to happen. A little sketchy on why,
like is it because oh, well, you know the world
is changing and we're gonna have more aquatic environments. We
need aquatic humans, or aquatic humans would be ideal for
space travel. This is the long term future of the
human race, or as there is plenty to recommend that
there's plenty to suggest later that it's just about him

(01:02:04):
controlling the oceans through an ever growing army of fishmen
that serve him.

Speaker 3 (01:02:16):
So we cut away from this to Batwoman. Now she's
out of costume as her alter ego Gloria and special
Agent Mario Roblaze. They are out at dinner at a
fancy restaurant next to the Marina, and I was wondering,
if Batwoman has to hide her real identity, are people
not going to figure out that she happens to be

(01:02:38):
the woman constantly hanging out with Special Agent Mario Roblaze,
who is one of two people who know Batwoman's real identity.

Speaker 2 (01:02:45):
Yeah, you think that the criminal element could work backwards
from that data and figure it out. But I don't know.
Detective work is hard in this town. I think it's
just there's a lot of vacationing that distracts one from
getting the job done.

Speaker 3 (01:02:58):
It's kind of like if Bruce Wayne as Bruce Wayne
was always going out in public with Catwoman.

Speaker 2 (01:03:05):
Yeah, yeah, you'd think you would put one and two
together on that.

Speaker 3 (01:03:10):
Yeah. Anyway, they're talking work. They can't leave the work
behind and just be social. They're at this restaurant and
talking about how they traced the phone call at the
gym to a building associated with a retired surgeon named
to doctor Eric Williams, who lives on the ship the Reptilicus.
And one of the only facts they know about Williams

(01:03:31):
is that he collects fish. I wonder if they're still
in the mindset of having no leads.

Speaker 2 (01:03:36):
Or CRUs Yeah, we almost to having a lead here,
we might be I.

Speaker 3 (01:03:41):
Think this could be a lead. Batwoman thinks since the
killer is a medical professional, that they should treat doctor
Williams as a suspect and investigate. Also in this scene
we here mention of the other person who knows Batwoman's
true identity. This is international agent Tony Rocca and one
of them, Oh, she says, I'd like to salute him.

(01:04:03):
Only the two of you know my true identity. We
have solved many cases together. So Batwoman takes a boat
out and tries to talk herself aboard the reptilicas she
goes out there, like heyrect let me come on your boat,
but the crew send her away. Doctor Williams does not
accept visitors, so after this there is a scene with

(01:04:24):
special Agent Mario robe Lace and international agent Tony Roca,
both flirting hard with Batwoman. They established that the Reptilicus
the boat was previously in Hong Kong and Macau, where
the other gland liquid murders were and seems like pretty
strong suspicion on Williams Now. So Batwoman has to get

(01:04:44):
aboard the ship and this is where we get some
bond overlap where there's a scene much like in Thunderball,
where Batwoman uses an underwater torpedo shaped propulsion device to
swim underwater up to the boat at night. Yeah, she
climbs aboard the boat. As she's coming up the ladder
onto the side of the boat is instantly dry somehow

(01:05:05):
in her Batwoman costume wearing, so it's the batmsk the
bikini in the cape and she starts searching the reptilicus
room by room. In one room she finds a dossier
full of notes on the pineal gland. Seems suspicious. But
while she is spying through the keyhole into the laboratory,
Batwoman is discovered by Williams henchman and a fight breaks out.

(01:05:28):
She karate chops two henchmen and then throws a flask
of acid into the face of doctor Williams. He collapses
on the floor, writhing in pain. So he's going to
be very very Harvey two face now burned on one
side of the face, and he will regard himself as
a monster after this, though the scarring is not that extensive.

Speaker 2 (01:05:48):
No, no, but the exact same thing happened to Gnato's
character and Doctor of Dim the doctor Doctor Doom suffered
the exact same injury.

Speaker 3 (01:05:57):
So Batwoman fights her way through the crew, heading to
the upper deck and beating dudes up one by one.
Eventually she throws a smoke bomb to escape, and we
see the villain's coughing with all the smoke, and then
she dives off the side of the boat and swims
away to safety. Now scarred and humiliated, Doctor Williams pulls

(01:06:17):
a hard reorientation of his organization's mission. So they have
gone from number one priority of making fishmen to number
one priority of getting revenge on Batwoman.

Speaker 2 (01:06:28):
Yep, and I think the exact same thing happened in
Doctor of Where suddenly it's like, nope, we are revenge
oriented business. Now that's what we're doing.

Speaker 3 (01:06:37):
He tells his henchmen in this scene, use your brains
to find out who she is, and so they're going
to do that. They're going to use their brains. There's
a whole sequence here where Batwoman goes to the gym
in costume, leaves in her massive convertible in costume, is
tailed by the mad Doctor's goons as she drives around town,

(01:06:58):
and there's a funny part as she's driving by and
all the bad guys are just standing on the sidewalk
in a huddle. One of them takes aim at her
car with a gun with like points of pistol at
her car, and then his friend is like, you idiot,
you can't shoot her in broad daylight. But they're already
out here waving a gun around in public in broad daylight.

Speaker 2 (01:07:18):
They're using those brains, that's what they're doing.

Speaker 3 (01:07:20):
So where is she going, Well, this is the scene
where she has a hot double date at the beach.
Or it's not a double date, it's a three way.
She has a date with special agent Mario Roblaze and
with international agent Tony Roca. So she goes to the
beach and it's a very beach blanket bingo kind of scene.
Everybody's doing the twist in a circle in the sand

(01:07:42):
and you can see they have been doing this for
a while, or maybe they've done several takes, because the
sand is really kicked up in the dance circle. She's
got her two dates there with her on the beach,
sitting on a blanket, and she tells them, I can't
get it out of my mind. I'm sure that thing
I saw on the fish tank was a fishman. One
of her dates tells her, if you were looking through

(01:08:03):
a keyhole, maybe your vision failed. I'm certain you only
saw a fish. Batwoman says, maybe, but I'd like to
be sure.

Speaker 2 (01:08:10):
Yeah, don't guess slight her about fishmen.

Speaker 3 (01:08:13):
Come on, you weren't there, dude, what do you think?

Speaker 2 (01:08:15):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (01:08:16):
Batwoman leaves the beach back in her bat costume once again,
and so she's driving in the convertible in the back
costume with the cape flapping in the wind. And this
leads into a car chase where the bad guys zoom
around her on this winding ocean drive. All of these
cars are so big, these gigantic nineteen sixties convertibles. Mara

(01:08:39):
Monte does not seem the least bit fussed or troubled
about this cliff side death race. She's just cruising while
the henchmen are swerving back and forth at her and
the brakes are shrieking, and every time we cut to her,
she's just it looks like she's just driving.

Speaker 2 (01:08:54):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:08:55):
Eventually they force her to pull over onto the shoulder
and it seems like they've got her trapped, but she
has a good trick up her sleeve, though I guess
she doesn't have sleeve. She's got a good trick somewhere
in there in the cape. She pulls out a compact
mirror and starts to check her makeup, which I guess
the villains are fine with, and then suddenly she turns
and points it at them, revealing that the compact is

(01:09:17):
actually a gun. That was a good That one had me.

Speaker 2 (01:09:20):
Going, nice, nice gadget work.

Speaker 3 (01:09:22):
Yeah, So she holds them up at gunpoint and calls
police headquarters. After this, a fight breaks out sort of.
They get the better of her again for a second,
and they tell her they're going to lead her out
to an isolated place for execution, but then she breaks
free and starts beating them up again. So it's a
kind of stop and start sequenced fight that you know,

(01:09:42):
multiple fights break out and then stop and then start again.

Speaker 2 (01:09:45):
There's a lot of meaningless back and forth between the
heroes and the villains in this film. For sure, I
have captured you. No, I have captured you. Actually I
just turned the tables, and so I will also turn
the tables as well.

Speaker 3 (01:09:58):
But now I hear the police sirens approaching, so we
must scram yes, and that's what they do. They scramble
when the when the cops arrive. Next scene is another autopsy.
Now the medical examiner is talking to Special Agent Mario
Roblace about gland juice, and bat Woman is standing there.
In this scene, she seemed obviously bored and not listening.

(01:10:18):
She's just staring off in the other direction and fidgeting.

Speaker 2 (01:10:21):
She's making connections. She's like she's going beyond the autopsy.

Speaker 3 (01:10:25):
I guess. So it seemed like it almost seemed like
a take where she was not really on, like not performing,
but they just left it in. Batwoman says, obviously, the
men who tried to kill me worked for doctor Williams.
He is the killer. Let's arrest him. Special Agent Mario
Roblace is he's about to make a very wise move.
He reacts to this by saying, you need to calm

(01:10:46):
down and try to understand there is just not enough
evidence to implicate Williams. You're talking about coincidences here, so
oh boy. After this there is a great there's a
mad science scene where Williams and his wretched underlings boil
up the kindall sized fishman and then they send it

(01:11:09):
down to the bottom of the bay to be bombarded
with radiation. So the plan is they're going to irradiate it,
which is going to bring it to life, and then
the divers can bring it back to the lab. But
after the experiment is a success, the fishman is enlarged
to the size of a human adult and inspired with life.
Maybe this is a good place to actually describe the fishman.

Speaker 2 (01:11:31):
Yeah, yeah, it's it's pretty great. I guess. One of
the underlying challenges to the design here is if you're
if you're going to create a fishman a gillman to
use in a film, and you're gonna shoot it underwater,
how are you going to have somebody play that part?
Either you have to just do it like a skin
diving situation, which is what they did with in a

(01:11:54):
Creature from the Black Lagoon, or as they have believe
they did with the with zat and the bloodwater is
you got to have all of that built over a
scuba suit, which can make things a bit bulky, and
I believe that is what they do here with our fishman.
But the results look really good. I think they did
a great job with the suit. I assume the suit

(01:12:15):
is covering up some sort of limited scuba gear. Maybe
they're making do with just some snorkeling gear. But it's
a brother bulky head that has these big bulbous eyes.

Speaker 3 (01:12:26):
Like insect eyes, actually not quite so much like fish eyes,
and has a little nasty little mouth with teeth, has
a ridge across the middle of the head like a
like a helmet, almost kind of the rocketeer helmet.

Speaker 2 (01:12:39):
Yeah, it does kind of look like organic rocketeer.

Speaker 3 (01:12:41):
Yeah, and then has these and also like the rocket
heer in that I guess the rocketeer had a jet pack.
And you mentioned there is like a bulging ridge a
hard piece on the fishman's back, which I think is
supposed to be like spines covering fins on the back
of the fish. But I think that could very well
be covering up, like you were saying, covering up the

(01:13:02):
oxygen tank.

Speaker 2 (01:13:03):
Yeah, certainly for the underwater sequencesparatus.

Speaker 3 (01:13:06):
And then the catcher's mint hands with claws.

Speaker 2 (01:13:08):
Yeah, you got to have great claws in a monster suit.
I mean, that's just it's just because you got to
have those shots of like claws grabbing claws reaching around things,
and the claus look really good on this guy.

Speaker 3 (01:13:19):
So the scuba henchman try to guide the Fishman back
to the Reptilicus, but it is not coming along quietly.
The Fishman is aggression incarnate, and it doggedly fights back
against the divers. In fact, you could almost say we
are treated to an underwater tag team wrestling match, which
is Fishman versus the scuba brothers. Do you think that's

(01:13:40):
what's going on here?

Speaker 2 (01:13:41):
Yeah? Maybe so. I mean it's it's admirable that they
were able to really capture anything at all, because it's
how do you how do you really translate underwater action
for the screen? You know, I think the film does
a pretty good job with it.

Speaker 3 (01:13:54):
Yeah, Doctor Williams overcomes this because he has some kind
of sonic weapon that they can use to incapacitate the Fishman.
They blast him with this thing, and then the scuba
wrestlers can snatch him with a net and bring him
onto the boat. Doctor Williams tells Igor to quote, prepare
the wet mattress. Is that some kind of thing?

Speaker 2 (01:14:15):
What is I think that is like a thing with
if you have some sort of like a it's a
way like a wet surface substance that you can put
a sea animal on for. Oh okay, you know medical
interventions that sort of thing. Okay, Well, I spoke too soon.
Maybe this movie really knows what I mean. I don't
know if that's the correct terminology, but I feel like

(01:14:35):
I've seen this before and like a big aquarium behind
the scenes type things. It is not a pe soaked mattress.

Speaker 3 (01:14:45):
On the boat, they keep the fishman confined to a
room they called the Special Room, and doctor Williams explains
to Igor that they are now ready to move on
to the second phase of their experiment to create una
muhair piss a MoU hair pass a fish woman. So
he stares up at the ceiling and says, and I

(01:15:05):
don't need to tell you who that will be. I
think we can all guess.

Speaker 2 (01:15:11):
Well. I like at this point though, that he has
he's sort of he's taken his revenge. He's still keeping
to his revenge pledge, but he's incorporated it back into
the work, this vital work that he and Egor have
been working on and have committed their life to creating fishmen.

Speaker 3 (01:15:27):
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Now we're going to create fish women
and get revenge in one stroke. It's a good idea.
It's efficient. There are some Fishman containment issues. Fishman keeps
breaking out and is grunting and growling while thrashing around
in the laboratory and smashing stuff. There is conflict between
Egor and Williams here. Igor is using the sonic weapon

(01:15:50):
Beam to subdue the beast when it breaks free, and
Igor actually seems eager to kill the beast in the process,
but Williams intervenes to make Egor stop. This is what
I brought up earlier, is are we supposed to take
it as Igor being jealous of the fish Man like
Doctor Williams only seems to care about the Fishman these days.

Speaker 2 (01:16:10):
Could be? Could be? Or perhaps now that Igor sees
the reality of the fish Man, he's like, this is
not what we were dreaming of. This is just a
murderous monster.

Speaker 3 (01:16:18):
This is this. Yeah, I signed up for now I
regret my choices. Also without any rationale that I picked
up on. Doctor Williams has started calling the fishman pieces
pieces or either pieces or pieces again like Pisces. So
Batwoman and special Agent Mario Roblace go check out the

(01:16:38):
reptilicus on a little boat. Batwoman, who is not in
costume right now, goes scuba diving to snoop on the yacht.
Doctor Williams goes berserk and sends Pieces to go get
her and bring her to him so he can turn
her into a fishwoman, and this leads to an underwater
chase scene between the fishman and the batwoman, in which

(01:16:59):
we learn that the the fishman is afraid of fire
because she manages to drive him off with a gadget.
She has an underwater flare which she lights and holds
up against him, and this terrifies the fishman. During the scene,
there are a lot of footage of schools of fish
darting around in front of the camera and rays gliding
on the ocean floor. Batwoman climbs back up onto the

(01:17:21):
boat with special Agent Mario robe Lace and says in
a surprisingly frightened and even plaintive tone. She says a
monster is after me. So this is the first time
I noted, like, Wow, She's experienced plenty of peril so
far in the film, but this is the first time
she has seemed the least bit bothered by the peril.

(01:17:42):
Other action scenes are scenes where she's threatened it, not
bothered at all. But now she's freaking out and the
fishman pops out of the water starts attacking the side
of the boat, and she says, there it is like,
that's the fishman that attacked me and Mario Robelace. He's
got an idea. He pours gasoline on it and then

(01:18:02):
hits it with a cigarette lighter. Pretty pretty good, right,
you think so? But the fishman, he's got it. He's
got a way to get out of this. He goes
under water.

Speaker 2 (01:18:13):
Yeah, this is the I like the way they shot
this too, because you see presumably the actual fishman amid
the flames on the water, and then they shoot it
underneath the water as well.

Speaker 3 (01:18:24):
So back at the swanky Seaside Mansion, special agent Mario
Roelace says, it's incredible. I can't understand what kind of
creature that was. They argue about whether it was the
creature made by Doctor Williams or not. Finally, Special Agent
Mario Roeblace agrees that it's time to have the police
raid the good chip reptilicus. Finally, Okay, you're coming around

(01:18:46):
and in the scene by the way, they are slamming
some tiki drinks. Do you catch that?

Speaker 2 (01:18:51):
Yeah? Yeah, these are all working lunches and working dinners,
though they're always talking about the case.

Speaker 3 (01:18:56):
But also having a fog cutter. Yeah. Meanwhile, the bad
guys figure out a plan. Doctor Williams is going to
have one of his undercover henchmen plant a tracking device
on Batwoman's cape, and then his fishman is going to
be able to follow the signal and track Batwoman to
her secret hideout. He says, PCs will bring me the woman,

(01:19:19):
and then my vengeance will be terrible, terrible to reblay,
to reblay. Also, he implies that they will turn Special
Agent Mario Roblaze into a fishman as well. Williams says, quote,
we will go to another country and make a dozen,
no one, hundred fishmen. We will control the seas and
the oceans. We will create hundreds. So finally, I think

(01:19:41):
we were wondering, what's the plan I guess that's the plan.
He's going to control the seas in the oceans.

Speaker 2 (01:19:46):
But he's really got to scale up. We've barely we
don't really have one functional fishman right now, Like he's
this fishman is barely under their control.

Speaker 3 (01:19:56):
Not disciplined. Yes, they're constantly having containment problem and he's
not listening to instructions. After this, there's a random wrestling
scene that is not relevant to the plot, but we
see Batwoman and the wrestler named Esmeralda, the one who's

(01:20:17):
all in red versus two other women. Again, this is
not Maramanty and the Esmeralda actress. It's just Luchador is
doing their craft and there's some really good moves here.

Speaker 2 (01:20:27):
Oh yeah, we do get to see some of those
signature LUCA double team submission moves, which I believe you
still see these in Lucha Libre, but you don't really
see them outside of Lucha Libret. Like generally, the idea
is that a submission move like kind of like UFC style,
it has to be one person administering it to another person,

(01:20:48):
whereas in LUCA it can be two three guys using
it on one guy or two guys doing it on
two guys, the sky's the limit.

Speaker 3 (01:20:56):
So after the match, a henchman places the radio transmit
on Batwoman's cape and she takes the cape home with
her after the match, so the trap is set. Special
agent Mario Roblaz comes home to her fabulous mansion with
her and declares that she is not safe, so he's
going to stay the night, though he is staying on
the couch with a gun, So again questions abound about

(01:21:17):
their relationship status or what exactly is going on with them.
It's complicated, yes, But while Batwoman is changing out of
her wrestling costume, she finds the radio. Then she gets
out a receiver device and starts investigating. And this has
got to be the only time in movie history where
there is a spy movie style bug sweeping scene set

(01:21:39):
to hubba hubba saxophone music.

Speaker 2 (01:21:43):
That's a great point. And the other thing I love
about it is she finds the bug and then she's
just kind of like, oh, well, I'm going to go
to sleep now, which she later explains as being like, well,
I didn't think there was any going to be any threat.
I thought they were just tracking my movements.

Speaker 3 (01:21:57):
Yes, she says she thought it would bring the bad
guys to her, but she didn't think it would bring
the monster to her.

Speaker 2 (01:22:05):
Yeah, because as we've seen, she can handle bad guys.

Speaker 3 (01:22:07):
Oh Yeah, she wakes up with a room full of henchmen.
She just beats them all up.

Speaker 2 (01:22:11):
Yeah for everybody. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:22:13):
So, in the middle of the night, pieces the fishman
comes trudging up from the waves on the beach. He
goes into Batwoman's house, creeps up the stairs and into
her bedroom, and we get plenty of the fishman looming
over her. But eventually she wakes up and she starts screaming,
and then she faints as the fishman carries her away.

(01:22:34):
So once again this interesting distinction. Like a gang of
armed men threatening to kill her at gunpoint, Batwoman not
only doesn't seem afraid, she doesn't even seem interested, almost
a psychopathic level of no fear at all in these situations,
just a perfunctory listlessness in her beating up and disarming

(01:22:56):
of the human enemies. However, a fishman so terrifying to
her that she first runs screaming back to special Agent
Mario Roblaze, and then in this scene she loses consciousness,
just faints.

Speaker 2 (01:23:10):
Yeah, it's a terrifying monster. I guess, so everybody's got
their achilles heel.

Speaker 3 (01:23:14):
Yeah, so fishman, And they don't write in anything in
the story like, oh, when I was a child, I
was afraid of fish or something, you know, that might
kind of explain it. Instead, it's a well, I don't know,
I'll come back to this at the very end of
the notes. Maybe. So the fishman Mario Roblaze comes up
and tries to save her, but the Fishman fights him off,
and then the Fishman carries the unconscious Batwoman down to

(01:23:36):
the beach, but Mario Roblaz chases and attacks again on
the beach, and this time it's sort of a proper
wrestling match in the waves. So the Batwoman manages to
regain consciousness, joins in the fight, and together she and
Mario Roblaze hold off the monster until doctor Williams activates
the return home signal and it dives back into the ocean.

(01:23:58):
So he really, you know, Doctor Williams just keeps messing up.
He's like, surely he's got her by now. Now I'll
press the come home button.

Speaker 2 (01:24:06):
And he'll just bring her. He'll just bring her to me.

Speaker 3 (01:24:09):
Gives up in the middle of the fight and leaves
goes back into the water, so our two heroes are
safe for now. Back at Villain headquarters, the Hinch squad
is getting chewed out by the Boss. Doctor Williams is
mad that PCEs failed to bring the bat Queen. He
says he must have her and make her his dread
fish Woman. Finally, he gets a brilliant idea. He says,

(01:24:30):
they know that the Batwoman works with special Agent Mario Roblaze.
As we've established, this is public knowledge. So what they're
going to do is kidnap Roblaze and she'll have to
come rescue him, and then they're going to set a
trap for her and then bam, fish Woman coming right up.
So that's what they do. The bad guys kidnap Mario
Roblaze and then also international agent Tony Roca get both.

Speaker 2 (01:24:54):
Of them, might as well.

Speaker 3 (01:24:55):
Yeah, and they inform Batwoman of this kidnapping by leaving
a ran some note in her locker at the wrestling gym,
so it says, go to the yacht alone. If you
don't do this right, both of your friends will die.
So Batwoman, now in costume again, makes her way out
to the yacht. She drives to the marina that we
keep seeing in her convertible in the Batwoman costume, and

(01:25:17):
then in a shot that was very funny to me
for some reason, we just see her sprinting down the
length of the dock. And so doctor Williams has the
two agents tied up in the lab and he details
his evil plan. He's going to capture Batwoman and use
her pineal juice to make a fish woman, as we've
already established. Then he says, gentlemen, you've caused me problems,

(01:25:41):
but I've decided to use your lives in a glorious fate.
He's going to can you guess, use your imagination, what
do you think he's going to do. He's going to
use the pineal juice from these two agents to make
two fishmen.

Speaker 2 (01:25:55):
Yeah, and you know they should be honored. They should
be honored. He could have just had them execut didn't
thrown it into the ocean. But they're going to be
part of the fishman future of the.

Speaker 3 (01:26:03):
Human rights, the glorious plan. That's right. Pretty beautiful Batwoman
comes aboard the Reptilicus and is captured. The henchman escort
her to a table where she's going to be strapped
down for surgery, but on the way there, Batwoman begins
to struggle and fight, and doctor Williams says, stupid, don't
you see that you are defeated? But we see something

(01:26:24):
he does not. In the fight, Batwoman manages to reach
out and attach something to doctor William's back. She sticks
the fishman homing beacon on the back of doctor William's
lab coat, so the bad guy strap her to the table.
Williams and Igor prepare for surgery. Williams kind of muses

(01:26:45):
that while the surgery has killed all the male wrestlers,
perhaps a woman will be more able to survive the
extraction of the pineal juice, and Mario Robli says, you're crazy.
William says, a thin line divides genius and madness. Made
me reflect that is that a statement you're supposed to
make about yourself? More kind of contrarian analysis of somebody else.

(01:27:09):
Somebody else says doctor Williams is mad, And then maybe
a doctor Williams supporter could say possibly, but there is
a fine line between genius and madness. When you're talking
about yourself, that just sounds like you're making excuses.

Speaker 2 (01:27:21):
Yeah, yeah, or at least he should. He should be
specific about which side of that line he believes he
is actually on.

Speaker 3 (01:27:26):
Yeah, anyway, the doctors they're about to suck out Batwoman's
pineal juice and put it in a fish, but the
surgery first requires that they remove her mask. Oh no,
this is the big the climax. Is her secret identity
going to be revealed? And would it matter if they're
about to suck out her pineal juice anyway?

Speaker 2 (01:27:45):
Yeah, I don't.

Speaker 3 (01:27:46):
I guess it would.

Speaker 2 (01:27:46):
This would be high priority. But I mean she already
she's confident, she knows she's getting out of this.

Speaker 3 (01:27:51):
But just before they can get the mask off, there's
a crashing sound. Uh oh PCEs. The Fishman smashes through
the door to the operating room. He's gone mad, and
because of Batwoman's clever trick sticking the beacon to doctor
William's back, the Fishman attacks his own creator and we
see him yelling. He's yelling like Bela Lagosi in Bride

(01:28:14):
of the Monster. He's saying stop by command and you
stop pieces, but the Fishman does not listen and smashes
up the laboratory really good, instantly starting a fire on
the floor. Igor tries to stop him with the sonic
beam weapon, but the Fishman gets to him first and
beats him down. And meanwhile, Special Agent Mario Roblace somehow

(01:28:35):
gets loose from his bindings, unstraps the Batwoman and says,
we have to get out of here. She says, the
yacht is going to explode. Why is he going to explode?

Speaker 2 (01:28:45):
I mean there are a lot of chemicals in this room,
mad science lab. What happens when a mad science lab
catches on fire, It's going to explode. If it's in
a castle, that castle's gone. If it's in a boat,
that boat's sinking.

Speaker 3 (01:28:55):
Batwoman and the two special agents escape while the Fishman
flails around in the burning laboratory making grunting and moaning sounds.
And then, as she promised on cue the good ship
Reptilicus explodes in a big fireball. Then we get our
final scene back at Batwoman Manor Special Agent Mario Roblace
and International Agent Tony Roca are having some Mortiki drinks

(01:29:18):
at the bar. One of them says, I don't understand
why did the Fishman attack Williams instead of us? The
other says God was watching over you. But then the Batwoman,
now out of costume, comes out to reveal. She says, nope,
it was me. In fact, like, I am your god,
I am the one who intervenes for you, and she

(01:29:38):
explains the whole thing with the homing beacon. So bravo Batwoman,
well played. But after that reveal, suddenly Batwoman locks eyes
on something across the room and then screams, bloody murder.
So what is it? We cut over and it is
a mouse, very clean looking little mouse, on the arm

(01:29:59):
of the couch, and Batwoman shrieks and leaps into the
arms of the two agents, screaming, begging for them to
kill it, destroy it now, and the two agents are like, haha,
women what So I guess the joke is that she
is the most powerful crime fighting hero in the world,

(01:30:19):
but she's still a woman. And women are afraid of rodents.

Speaker 2 (01:30:23):
I thought that was elephants. Elephants are afraid of rodents
and nice, yeah, cartoon scenarios, right, And or is it
that women are afraid of rodents and men have no
fear of the plague? I don't know. I feel like
I would scream if I saw the mouse, just because
I'm like, that's gross. That's not supposed to be in here.
How much are we paying for this fine vacation condo.

Speaker 3 (01:30:44):
Doesn't look like a wild mouse, though it looks like
a pet mouse.

Speaker 2 (01:30:46):
It's very Yeah, it's very well cared for.

Speaker 3 (01:30:48):
Yeah, so I think it's just a dumb joke, but
if I can torture it to make it make sense.
There is a running theme we've talked about several times
where the Batwoman has no fear of death when it
comes to threats from human crime and bad guys guns, knives, whatever,
doesn't care, easily outwits beats them up. But in the
face of non human creatures, including the fish Man and

(01:31:11):
now this mouse, she just dissolves into a screaming mess
and she has to like beg the brave Special Agents
to save her. Is this some kind of theme, like
the fearless destroyer of human crime is helpless when it
comes to beasts and monstrosities. Is that some kind of
I don't know, D and D balance builds you can

(01:31:31):
make where you're good against humans but bad against monstrosities
and wild beasts.

Speaker 2 (01:31:35):
Yeah, that would make sense. Yeah, Yeah, I think it's
a good read on the scenario. But it's like we
needed to have Batwoman face other beast hybrid creatures, you know,
like a werewolf, I don't know what else, certainly an
ape man. The sky's the limit. But you know, sadly, again,
the film I don't think did that well. And this

(01:31:57):
was pretty late in the the Lucha era for there
to be another film featuring the Batwoman, which is a shame.
I feel like there could have been more adventures.

Speaker 3 (01:32:07):
You know, at the beginning of the movie, they make
a big deal about her horseback riding and gun shooting skills,
and we never get to see her do either one.

Speaker 2 (01:32:14):
And I know, yeah, you could have done a follow
up that was essentially a Western, like very much shoot
it like a Western in the same way that this
is like Luca Spy Monster. You could do Luca Western Monster.
Maybe that werewolf, I don't know. Pull out one of
the old Aztec mummies. A number of villains that would
be fit. It will be befitting of the Batwoman. Here.

Speaker 3 (01:32:36):
I would watch that. We should revive the Batwoman here. Yeah,
this Batwoman, Yeah, there is another there's like an official
Batwoman now.

Speaker 2 (01:32:45):
Yeah, it is a real match show or something. There
have been shows and movies and so forth. But yeah,
but I don't think i've I don't think i've seen
any of them.

Speaker 3 (01:32:54):
That's been fine. I don't know anything about it. But
I think they should do this Batwoman too.

Speaker 2 (01:32:58):
We should both. Yeah, I think she should be made canon.
I would not I would not be surprised if she
has been made cannon in one way or another. I mean,
comic book writers love that kind of stuff. So DC
comic book fans, if you were aware of any references
to the Mexican Batwoman nineteen sixty eight's bad Woman, certainly

(01:33:18):
send that in to us because I would love to
see that.

Speaker 3 (01:33:21):
Please. Okay, that's all I've got on Batwoman.

Speaker 2 (01:33:24):
Yeah, the Batwoman. It's a lot of fun. I highly
recommend viewing it if you're into this sort of movie
at all. It's great in this original form, but if
you absolutely need it to be riffed, that MST three
K treatment is a lot of fun as well. I
watched that movie. I watched that version of it, the
riff of it with my wife, though I think she
did not remember the movie at all. It goes like

(01:33:46):
you've seen this movie, this is the one that the Batwoman,
and it remembers. She goes scuba diving.

Speaker 3 (01:33:51):
But it happened. Sometimes it took We were talking about
it in our house and it took Rachel a while
to remember whether she had seen Doctor of Doom or not.
I think she did.

Speaker 2 (01:34:02):
Yeah, Yeah, that one's a lot of fun too. And
you'll find our episode on Doctor of Doom in the
audio archive. So wherever you get your audio podcast, look
for stuff to blow your mind. You can also look
for Weird House Cinema. But if you look for stuff
to blow your mind, you'll find an archive of all
the episodes we've done over the years, and we've done
quite a few weird houses at this point. If you

(01:34:23):
would like to pull up a list of all the
Weird House Cinema episodes that we've recorded, go to letterbox
dot com. Our user name there is weird House, and
we have a nice list all the films we've covered
over the years, and sometimes a little glimpse at what
we're covering next in case you want to watch ahead.

Speaker 3 (01:34:39):
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Jjpossway.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
a topic for the future, or just to say hello.
You can email us at contact at stuff to blow
your Mind dot com.

Speaker 1 (01:35:00):
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