1308-The Batwoman

Film Year:  1968

Genre:  Superhero, Action, Science Fiction

Director:  René Cardona

Starring:  Maura Monti, Roberto Cañedo, Hector Goody

MST Season:  13

Host:  Emily

The Movie

*I HAVE SURVIVED WATCHING THIS MOVIE UNRIFFED*

This movie that is totally copyright infringing on the original property of The Wild Wild World of Batwoman is a film from Mexico so obviously it is also about wrestling.  Wrestlers have been turning up dead with their pineal glands sucked of their fluids, which is a part of the diabolical plot of a mad scientist, who intends to use the fluid to create a race of fish men to do his bidding.  The authorities call for the help of the superheroine Batwoman, wrestler by day and bikini-clad crimefighter by night!  Batwoman deep dives (no pun intended) into the mystery to uncover the diabolical plot, but she puts herself at risk of being mutated into a fish woman herself.

This film is of course a flick that toes on those copyright laws while it tries to cash in on the success of the 60's Batman TV show.  The film largely seemed to have gone unnoticed back in its day, but Wild Wild World of Batwoman also seemed to slip through the cracks so maybe the DC offices didn't care.  Wild Wild World seemed less intent on copying Batman than The Batwoman is, as that was just a vampire beach comedy with a similar name to a popular show.  The Batwoman is more shameless, as it's a gender-swapped superhero tale that shows skin.  But it's weird to think they were both able to use the name "Batwoman" as DC had already established a Batwoman in the comics back in the 50's.  She didn't really get adapted into film media until post-millennium projects (notably a recent Batwoman TV series on the CW), but her roots had already been established.

Outside of its dubious connection to the Batman franchise, the first thing you realize about Batwoman is that it's a very thirsty flick.  Lead role actress Maura Monti is a statuesque and shapely Italian beauty, and this production wants to show that off.  The majority of her scenes in this film feature her in a purple bikini, which is her crimefighting outfit for some reason.  I get that the standard tights for superheroes wasn't even all that protective in the 60's, but this is an outfit that doesn't seem all that protective from even a nip slip.  But hey, at least it's free flowing for maximum movement!  It's a movie that very much wants you to look at the breasts.  Even when Monti is wearing less revealing clothing, the cleavage is abundant.  The girls down there are the star of the show.

The production at least has the advantage of being a more professional looking movie than The Wild Wild World of Batwoman.  That accomplishment wasn't hard to do though.  The movie at least has some good location work to make it feel expansive, but when it comes to special effects work you can see the pennies being pinched.  The science lab scenes are full of plastic with little convincing while the villainous fish man monster makes the Horror of Party Beach look dignified, with a flabby rubber costume and a toothy grin that is admittedly less creepy than the one Matt Gaetz has.

Less a fault of the production itself, the worst thing about this movie is the dub.  It's more recent than a lot of the dubs you'll hear on movies this age (I theorize it was commissioned in the last few years) but it is shoddy work.  I've heard fan dubs that are more professional than this.  The audio quality is very sharp, feeling laid over the movie instead of integrated into it.  You can definitely tell something is off during crowd scenes, where they just use crowd audio from the movie and lay an English line that doesn't match it over the top of the gabbing crowd.  Meanwhile there is a scene late in the movie has one of Batwoman's male companions fighting a fish man while you can hear Batwoman's awkward grunting and moaning noises during the struggle from offscreen.  It's weird, it's awkward, it feels like it was rushed.  It's quite possibly the worst dub I've ever heard.

All of this taken into consideration, The Batwoman is an enjoyable enough diversion in trashy cinema.  It constantly has sex appeal and it utilizes camp as a strength.  It's goofy fun, occasionally funny and not always intentionally.  And it does try to make you laugh.  The last scene of the movie has Batwoman and her partners laughing about surviving the danger they just faced, but Batwoman starts screaming and jumping into their arms because she saw a mouse.  You see, because the mighty Batwoman is still a member of the fairer sex and it's funny because she does super things but is afraid of something so little and harmless.  Irony!  Because of how cringe and on-the-nose it is, it's not very funny, but this backwards attempt at being clever is so dumb that it almost accidentally becomes funny again.  And that sums up Batwoman, it's accidentally fun.

The Episode

Boy, this riff hit at an awkward time.  We get to watch female Batman variant film immediately after a nearly completed film based on Batgirl was tossed in the trash by Warner Bros. via tax break shenanigans.  That movie was officially licensed and is now ash, meanwhile this flick was made through shady loophole jumping and actually got released.  I respect the latter more than the former.  And even if it wasn't Mystery Science Theater's intent with this episode, they allow us to have a lady version of the Caped Crusader, even if it's not the one we planned on.

"Bat-Keeba!"

Quip quality is a bit all over the map on this one.  There are a few gut-busters that got a solid belly laugh out of me, while large portions made me think "That's cute," while a sizable fraction didn't really feel like it was playing the movie up like it should.  You know for a fact that if this movie were riffed during the Sci-Fi era, we would have toed a naughty line with the jokes, thinking Horrors of Spider Island style.  As stated above, the movie is thirsty, and it makes sense to fire thirsty material back at it.  But the new MST3K seasons have seemed to snap back into being a family friendly comedy, and less family friendly humor probably isn't going to fly.

Still...why do a flick showing this much skin if you aren't going to go there?

I'd hate to say this, but perhaps Emily's crew was a wrong fit for this one.  I get why you'd want to give it to them, because with the film's faulted feminism, having a crew of riffers that are two-thirds women probably seems like a solid line-up to make fun of it.  But they aren't really playing that angle up either.  A lot of the humor seems sterile; trying to make it out without hitting on anything too sensitive.  Jonah's cast might have hit harder on this movie, maybe working up a bit of a frat house rowdiness in the theater.

I'm not going to knock the commentary too hard, because it's spirited, even if it is going through the motions.  It's a fun movie to watch, and Emily and the Bots seem to be enjoying themselves.  There are some cute nods, such as noticing a boat in this movie is named "Reptilicus," which prompts a Spanglish rendition of Every Country Has a Monster, and they seem to keep their beat in a musical mood throughout the episode.  In fact, most of the theater segments end by having them dancing on their way out to the movie's groovy 60's tunes.  And one of my favorite jokes of the episode has the bikini'd Batwoman entering a car and yelping, causing Servo to respond "Sorry Batwoman!  We should have told you about the hot vinal seats!"

I had a lot of fun with the visuals of the host segments in this episode, though few of them stood out to me as being very funny.  For example, the Billionaire Vigilante Gala is fun to watch because the costume designs are so good, though I didn't quite find the dialogue as engaging.  There's a fun segment that has Emily captive by the Bots who plan to turn her into an animal monster which has a great rope prop that Emily keeps playing with, but the scene it's parodying happens much, much later in the movie and it doesn't quite land as early as it's placed.  And the Batwoman kit is cute, though it doesn't hit the bullseye of jokes they could be making about her costume.  But then again, perhaps we shouldn't be asking any of our castmembers to go full-on Batwoman bikini.

In the previous episode, Kinga and Pearl decided to go on a family bonding trip and left Max in charge of Moon 1.  If you're dying to know what happens from there, there's not a whole lot of pay-off to it except the final scene.  Synthia is actually the most featured Mad in this episode, while it also gives the most screentime for Mega-Synthia since she was introduced (and it's about time, poor Yvonne has been shushed in the corner long enough).  The Invention Exchange features a Vin Diagram of Vin Diesel movies while Mega-Synthia has a Duck Tape Dispenser for duct tape.

I don't know if watching the latest RiffTrax Live hours before this episode dropped tuckered me out, but I did feel a bit winded while watching Batwoman.  Ultimately I didn't find the episode inducing many laughs, at least not quite as many as the last two episodes.  What I did feel from this episode was a sizable amount of good vibes.  It's fun to watch and it felt like our riffers were having a blast doing it.  If good vibes are what an episode offers, then that's enough for me to consider it an enjoyable endeavor.  It's clearly Emily's weakest episode yet and the weakest episode since Robot Wars, but that just makes it the lowest on a totem of consistency.

⭐⭐⭐

Good

The Livestream

Okay, before I talk about the livestream for this episode, I want to bring up something that was brought to my attention immediately after it ended and I was retroactively disappointed that the stream did not address.  Yvonne Freese has been absent from these streams for a while (I think the last time we saw her was Beyond Atlantis) and it has gone without comment so far.  I heard some rumblings that she was ill, but like all rumors you take it with a grain of salt.  Then after the premiere festivities I saw confirmation that Yvonne had been diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis, which is absolutely heartbreaking to hear.  Our hearts and prayers are with you, Yvonne.

Right now she needs help with medical bills, so if at all possible, please contribute to her GoFundMe.  And if you have no change to spare, please share the link around and hopefully it will be reached by many people who can help.

https://www.gofundme.com/f/yvonnes-ms-medical-costs

I'm not going to offer too much harsh judgment on the stream not bringing this up.  It's meant to be a celebration of the series and we don't want to dampen the fun (it's also very possible Yvonne didn't want them to bring it up).  But at the same time, MSTies would care about this and MSTies would want to help.  This is definitely a missed opportunity to raise awareness for someone in our fam.

All of that aside, how is the livestream?  Just like the episode, no hysterics, just good vibes.  Seeing that our guest cast is Emily's crew (including Yvonne, for the first time in months, albeit with crappy internet in the middle of a thunderstorm), which is usually the rowdy group of the bunch, brings expectations of a complete off-the-rails show where everyone goes off script and makes everyone double over in laughter, but they are light on that here.  I don't know if they're restrained because they want to keep it orderly or if they just didn't have the opportunity to completely sink this boat, but they're on their best behavior tonight.

Talking points usually revolve on the goofiness of the film.  Master of ceremonies Matt McGinnis admits he was a little flustered about choosing this movie, for reasons such as...it's so thirsty.  He says her outfit was "not flattering."  I disagree.  Maura Monti looks flattering in anything.  Whether or not it was tasteful is a different story.  Meanwhile there is talk about how much the cast loves these Spanish Luchador movies and Emily specifically requests for more.  There is also comparison between Santo and Batwoman, of which the cast just about universally prefers Batwoman.  They also compare this Batwoman and the Batwoman from Wild Wild World of Batwoman.

The fan questions are mostly softball hypothetical questions, like what superhero would look good in a bikini or who's your favorite superhero.  There are some colorful answers, though I would have preferred some spicier conversation starters.  I'm not going to whine about not being picked, but one question I submitted had to do with the costumes during the Vigilante Gala, which I'm sure we could have had an interesting discussion on.  I was mostly curious about Emily's and whether she was only wearing an above counter costume, because I could only envision wearing a dress over a puppet trench to be an issue both in safety practicality and...well, functionality.

(#ClaraGIF)

(those who follow me on Twitter understand)

(Yes, I only brought this up so I could post this GIF, what about it?)

That's just an example of questions that could have been asked that were more about production and less about filling time with fluff.  The stuff talked about here is cute, but I didn't really feel the urge to watch this stream a second time for review like I normally do because I think I soaked in everything I needed to the first time around.

But whatever.  It's a fun but soft stream to a fun but soft episode, though very little of the night will prove to be a memorable one down the road.  We've had more wild nights, but I'm not gonna complain about hanging with our peeps for a night of just chillin'.

"The Wonder of Reproduction" & A Tribute to The Pumaman (MST3K Special)

The Short

Learning all about the birds and the bees...from fish!

Let me tell you, with a title like this there were a number of ways this short could have gone and not all of them (0.01% of them) would have been family friendly.  I didn't expect it to be about a bunch of kids bugging some dude about seeing his new fish, but here we are.  How did these fish get here?  Well, it's the wonders of everyone's favorite social activity:  reproduction!

Just be glad we don't have to blow bubble nests or keep our eggs in our mouths, otherwise sex would be much more awkward than it already is.  I built a bubble nest once.  That date did not go smoothly.

This short is from a series of educational shorts called the "Wonder Series."  Whether every short is fish related or if this is just a one time deal, I couldn't tell you.  I'm not sure how many kids are interested in fish reproduction (unless they're a little too into The Little Mermaid), especially if what they know about human reproduction is up in the air.  All I know is I don't like fish.  Their giant eyes creep me out.  The less I know about how they have sex, the better.

Emily's crew takes on this short, and for the most part they keep it clean.  There are a lot of openings for some blue humor and it seems on the tip of their tongue, but this is a family show so restraint is probably for the best.  Still, if you're trying to please family audiences, then maybe a reproductive short isn't your best bet for material.  Emily's crew does well with the short regardless, though it's not a riot by any means.  It feels a bit safe to me, and while that's good for a few chuckles, openings for better jokes make me long to hear them.  But, you know, family show.  Maybe RiffTrax wouldn't have been afraid to take the shot.

Thumbs Up

👍

The Livestream

This livestream is less a celebration of an episode but rather a celebration of...upscaling, I guess.  Something that has been happening behind the scenes of the Gizmoplex is something that Joel Hodgson and Matt McGinnis refer to as "surgical enhancement."  Basically this means that they're working on a sort of digital remastering of the episode library of the original series.  Now, since the classic series was filmed and released in standard definition, there isn't a lot you can do, but they're working on making the best possible picture quality for these episodes anyway as our home media experience becomes more scrutinizing with video quality.  We have 4K home media discs now and TVs are up to 8K now (despite there being very little 8K content at the moment).  To expect classic Mystery Science Theater to meet those standards is unreasonable, but making the episodes look as sharp as possible is a prospect worth looking into.  Not to mention that new episode transfers could potentially drive traffic to the Gizmoplex for classic era MSTies who don't give a damn about new episodes.  It's something that could boost the MST library for a few decades in streaming.

So what is this, exactly?  Mostly it's an upscale.  Those of us who have seen classic MST on blu-ray releases has an idea of what it can look like (at least the better transfers), though they're also working on enriching the colors of the films and episodes.  Joel hosts an opening intro to this stream showing a side-by-side comparison, showing how faded Pumaman originally when the episode aired in the 90's while also showing off how colorful the enhancement is.

It looks fine.

Look, I'm of two minds of this.  I think altering the looks of the movies could potentially collide with the comedy of the episodes, since some jabs could mock the prints of the films themselves which would ruin the punchline.  Embarking on something like this is a thankless task that could potentially hurt the episodes.  But as stated above, video quality gets more important for media watchers by the year so there is a payoff, even if it could be a limited one.  So sure, work your library how you can.

But please, for fuck's sake, don't crop it.

What really grinds my gears about this stream isn't the remastering itself, it's that they cropped the episode.  They zoomed in to try and minimize the theater seats as much as possible, and it's not even enough to take away the full frame experience, so cutting off even that much is pointless.  However it should be noted nothing is cropped during the host segments (and I did ratio comparisons to confirm this) so all we're losing is a batch of black at the bottom during the theater segments.  But no matter what is cut off from the picture of the episode, altering an aspect ratio is something that doesn't sit well with me.  I even get pissed off watching Gamera vs. Guiron and seeing how the video on the film in that movie is stretched vertically.  I don't want it and if this is what "surgically enhanced" is bringing to the table, I'm not buying.  Luckily Joel does stress that the original versions of the episodes will still be available to viewers who don't want this.

So the last few paragraphs are just me wasting time getting to the point of me saying I don't care.  But there are probably people that do, so do it for them.

While the "enhancement" is the star of the show with this stream, let's not forget that Pumaman is a great episode (review here).  This stream doesn't have much to offer it except a few cute new host segments with Emily, Jonah, the Bots, Pearl, and Synthia.  Bonus host segments feature the Bots trying to get superpowers in a variety of Marvel and DC related means, Crow throwing around conspiracy theories, and just about everyone debating the pronunciation of "Pumaman."  And like the Gamera vs. Gurion stream, we conclude with a bonus feature from the Volume XXIX collection, which is an interview with Pumaman himself, Walter George Alton.

This stream is less a friendly episode rewatch and more a look at more of what the Gizmoplex can offer the series in the long run.  I don't have much use for it myself (at least not in the way featured here), but I do appreciate the effort and think it could be for the best.  I just ask that they don't fall into the darker traps of what projects like these can do, which they disappointingly already have.  I hope they can pull themselves out of it, though.