Bat Special (The Late Show, 1989) - Very rare!

15th June 1989 Documentary by BBC2's The Late Show, made to tie-in with the release of Tim Burton's Batman (1989).
Interviews with: Frank Miller, Harlan Ellison, Jerry Robinson, Will Eisner, Legs McNeil, Trina Robbins, William Dozier, Denny O'Neil, Stanley Ralph Ross, Anton Furst and more...

[@stewmott3763]

Thank you so much for posting this!

[@Ben1973able]

Thank you for posting this. I remember watching it on the night it was released

[@danielshottopics8187]

This Video is Still Highly Enjoyable to watch Today.

[@KevinJonDavies]

I agree, which is why I kept my off-air VHS. The Late Show made many such fascinating programmes.

[@ProtoKun7]

I found it! I've been wanting to find this forever (over a decade) and it was so difficult to narrow it down just because "batman documentary" isn't that specific. Glad I was right about it being on BBC 2 though. I have this on VHS but so happy to see a copy online, even if I didn't catch it when you uploaded 7 years ago. Recognised it instantly because of the kid with the torch looking through everything. As I recall this was also on before a showing of the film Breaking Glass; at least that's what was on the same tape. So glad I decided to try searching again while I'm watching the '66 movie again.

[@bobbysmoother]

I have been looking for this for years. Used to have it on Betamax! Thanks so much.

[@KevinJonDavies]

You're welcome. It was a basic blueprint for my documentary about Doctor Who for the Late Show Prods in 1993.

[@geoffberesford]

You are welcome. I had it on VHS tape to begin with and then transferred it to CD for the eventual upload which at the time KZbin had automatically split into two halves. So I was most relieved at a later date to find that the two halves had been joined together and re-uploaded by someone else.

[@theking-nz1ut]

Bob Kane and Bill finger got the idea of Batman from Zorro. Batman and Zorro do have a lot in common. Because Bob Kane's favourite superhero as a kid was Zorro. Batman 1989 movie is the greatest Batman movie ever made and Batman Returns was good as well.

[@KevinJonDavies]

We each have our favourites.

[@kentallard8852]

The Shadow, the first story is even ripped off from a Shadow magazine. Dont believe a word Kane says he was a compulsive liar.

[@martyflipman4737]

You sound autistic as fuck.

[@theunknowncommenter725]

​@@kentallard8852 Well, Kane was there when all that happened so I'm more inclined to believe his word over yours.

[@kentallard8852]

@@theunknowncommenter725 Finger wrote the story for #27 and its copied from The Shadow

[@cultcollectiblemerchandise5364]

I have this on VHS from when it aired but this copy is a lot cleaner than mine. Nice one. Great upload.

[@geoffberesford]

That's good to know.

[@gloppyplop7511]

MARY HARRON DIRECTED THIS EPISODE THEN WENT ON TO MAKE AMERICAN PSYCHO WITH CHRISTIAN BALE AS PATRICK BATEMAN (BATMAN)

[@stewmott3763]

I love synchronicity shit like that! 🙂

[@iPorleMedia]

Just like Rob (below), I've hunted high and low for this! I still have it on VHS somewhere in the attic but oh the joy of finding it on here! It's astonishingly well put together and thought out. Your choices of incidental music are inspired. Is there much chance of you putting up a track listing of music used? :) If not, no problem, just thought I'd ask. Well done anyway.

[@KevinJonDavies]

Thanks, it's great, isn't it? Can't help you with the track list I'm afraid. I didn't make this programme, it is from my off-air VHS. I did however, work for The Late Show Productions in 1993 making "Doctor Who: Thirty Years in the Tardis" for which I borrowed the concept of the boy going on a journey through the history of a cultural phenomenon.

[@iPorleMedia]

Ah well, being a Who fan since '77, I can justifiably give you applause for 'Thirty Years'. I lecture, and it's on my recommended list for fans of 'Nu-Who' to watch, and appreciate the importance and significance of the era of the 'Classic Series'. It's a wonderful, stylised overview of Who and completely palatable to a non-fan too. Brilliant job.

[@KevinJonDavies]

Thank you very much. Yes, I've often explained to the uninitiated that it works as a sort of 'Primer' for Classic Who. It was dream job in many ways. The extended cut, "More Than Thirty Years..." made for VHS, also available on DVD, is my much preferred version, of course.

[@georgedeboo9046]

@@KevinJonDavies Are you comfortable discussing how Mary Harron found your homage?

[@NicholasWingoldenkiwi2095]

@@KevinJonDavies Since when did Michael Jackson have any credit for something like this documentary on Batman

[@AldenRDavis]

28:50 - “Wait ‘til they get a load of me!”

[@kforcer]

I really cannot stand people discrediting the entire history of Batman before Frank Miller. Argh. Drives me nuts. Batman had returned to his dark roots long before Miller.

[@solar-monk]

Thanks for uploading this. But what a strange show. Is this meant to be an earnest documentary? A parody? Why on earth is that psychologist (sitting closer and closer to his ...patient?) telling that young lad all that weird shit! LMAO the look on that boys face! And why is there a medical practitioner just randomly in the boys basement. Just ...what the hell? LOL leave Batman and Robin and you're insane attempts to uncover something that isn't there... alone, I think that doctor is the weirdest and creepiest thing here!

[@kentallard8852]

The psychologist is supposed to be Frederick Werham who wrote Seduction of the Innocent which claimed comicbooks were responsible for juvenile delinquency and that Batman and Robin were gay and Wonder Woman was a lesbian

[@geoffberesford]

Despite the inclusion of an eleven year old boy in several scenes, the TV show was broadcast after 11pm at night with an intelligent adult audience in mind.

[@geoffberesford]

@@kentallard8852 Yes, and it led to a distinct cause of alarm - and one might even say hysteria - in many parents' minds to the extent of them destroying a countless number of published early comic editions including my own. And much to my dismay they even destroyed my handmade and hand sewn Batman costume [not once but twice did they do this] that I had precisely copied from memory after my Saturday morning trips to the cinema in 1953/4 to watch the Lewis Wilson Batman serial of 1943.

[@usernameonutube]

what a load of crap. guy was projecting his own thoughts.

[@avace917]

I don't know where the music at the beginning comes from but I know it from the Cotton Club Movie

[@geoffberesford]

Aha! Thanks for letting us know of the source of the track that illustrates Gotham City at night. I've been searching for that for years.

[@avace917]

@@geoffberesford my dad played Cab Calloway in the movie. That's why it stood out to me

[@teeniebeenie8774]

brilliant thx much@

[@pinkystinkinc3475]

12:27

[@KevinJonDavies]

LOL. "To the pure, all things are pure..."

[@applemask]

The Bat Show

[@danielshottopics8187]

You Know the Sad thing is and I Just Learned this Batman 66 was not Supposed to be a Camp Comedy Originally it was Supposed to be like Every Present Day Batman Movie it was Going to be a Grim and Gritty Drama with Batman's Foes causing Trouble and Batman Kicking there asses, It was Going to be like the Golden Age Batman. However in this Form the Audiences of the 60s Showed no Love for the Show because in the 60s The Country was already ''Struggling'' With the Assassination of JFK the Cold War and Vietnam among other Things So People were Pussies and they did not want Dark and Gritty, so they made the Goofy and Campy Version we Know Today.

[@samohare3178]

Watch the pilot episode the riddler ' s henchwomen dies in the finally I think they said that's not happening again it wasn't a dark episode more dramatic tho

[@HectorIptwo]

We're is the flash ⚡😅

[@kentallard8852]

pretty good, but it parrots the tired old line things were great in the first years but then Robin and the Comics Code came along and ruined it and then nothing happened until the 1980s when Miller and Burton revived it. Batman had been maturing and getting dark, moody, gothic, and serious for a long time by then.

[@kamdan2011]

6:08 What movie is this?

[@KevinJonDavies]

I think it might be this serial - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batman_(serial)

[@kamdan2011]

I found out it’s from The Bat Whispers.

[@DonaldStrother24]

This documentary reeks of progressivism. Never the less it’s informative of how it reveals how childish and projecting so called normal adults in our society can be and how their minds and conscience is so defiled that they will read into something that is fun and harmless and see things that are not there at all.

[@petersmithyy4556]

Boy you hit it on the head. I was cringing at points.

[@theunknowncommenter725]

Who died and appointed you to be the fun police?

[@DonaldStrother24]

@@theunknowncommenter725 No one did. I don’t police anyone. And policing people’s thoughts like Fredrick Wertham did is part of the problem. If you don’t want to have fun it’s your right to do so. Just like it is my right to want have fun and take a break at times from this dark dystopian world without some quack medical or psychological professional or the state taking away my right to do so. Or the media stigmatizing the things I enjoy to point that I don’t enjoy them anymore and I give those things up. Just stating my opinion.

[@stewmott3763]

Quite right, we can't have people looking for meaning in art and culture. Good God, they might start THINKING!

[@petersmithyy4556]

Damn this is like woke before woke was a thing.

[@brandonspain12345]

WTF?

[@profileincourage]

​@@brandonspain12345like most, he has no idea what woke means.

[@stewmott3763]

To be fair, neither do I - but that's probably why I don't use it! ;-) 'Woke' sounds the same to me as 'political correctness', another rhetorical stick used by conservatives to beat progressives with. If you just dismiss everything you don't like the sound of as 'woke' then you never have to engage with it. I hate to invoke the obvious, but George Orwell was all over that anti-intellectual, language-cheapening bullshit three quarters of a century ago.