Columbia's 15-part Batman (1943) chapter play comes to a close with its final installment, "The Doom of the Rising Sun," in which the forces of law and order converge at long last on the Little Tokyo lair of Japanese super-villain Dr. Daka (J. Carrol Naish). Having endeavored in previous chapters to rid himself of Gotham City's resident do-gooder, The Batman (Lewis Wilson)--whose dogged interference has delayed the completion of an atom disintegrator capable of bringing the American government to its knees--Daka changes the game plan, sending his murderous minions after the nuisance with the instruction "I want him alive!"--an executive decision the Nipponese mastermind comes to regret. Its first chapter released in July of 1943, Columbia's morale-minded Batman serial wrapped up that October, as Allied forces were pushing the Third Reich out of Italy. Columbia bankrolled a belated follow-up in 1949 with another 15-part serial, Batman and Robin, in which Robert Lowery and Johnny Duncan assumed in the title roles. Outdated even in their own time, the Columbia serials would engender belly laughs over the years as the characters were relegated to the status of kitsch; Chicago's Playboy Club even ran the films to amuse its keyholders, a media event that did not go unnoticed by executives at 20th Century-Fox Television. Producer William Dozier and writer Lorenzo Semple, Jr. would capitalize on the camp aspect of the Batman character for the 1966-1968 ABC-TV series starring Adam West and Burt Ward, which took its comic cue from CBS' spy satire The Man from U.N.C.L.E..

By Richard Harland Smith