Superfans of the Adam West Camp Classic teevee series may want this disc for their collection. It was apparently rushed into production back in 1966, after the show became the sensation of the season and someone saw an opportunity to add one more item on to the endless list of "Bat" items available for purchase. For the most part, it sounds like it.
Unsurprisingly, when the first Michael Keaton "Batman" movie was in theaters in 1989, launching a reinterest in all things Bat, this collection appeared on CD, again, a "cash-in" opportunity.
You can't fault Nelson Riddle, though. He was brilliant at orchestrations, and he produced quality work. See also the Movie soundtrack for "How To Succeed In Business" for similar and even better examples of the Riddle touch.
Here, though, interspersed between and during Riddle's arrangements are dialogue clips from early episodes of the first season of the show, Frank Gorshin as the Riddler, Burgess Meredith as The Penguin, George Saunders as Mr. Freeze, Anne Baxter as Zelda The Great, Jack Kruschen as Eivol Ekdal, our heroes, West as the Caped Crusader, Burt Ward as the Boy Wonder and the bombastic "Desmond Doomsday" the narrator of each episode, who was, in reality, Producer William Dozier.
The music on the disc is direct from the TV soundtrack, so collectors will like this... however, there is a lot of filler here, and really, when you are talking about a very short disc (under 30 minutes total), filler has no place.
Bet cut on the album is titled "To The Batmobile!" It gives you a great sequence starting with the famed "Atomic batteries to power, turbines to speed" opening, and a brilliant blending of the Bat and Riddler's theme with the sound of the Batmobile's engines revving. It is excellent! A couple of other gems included are the moody "Gotham City," "Holy-Hole-In-The-Doughnut" which is a series of Robin's famed exclamations set to the incidental music they always used for cocktail parties on the show, and the track "Zelda Tempts Batman" which later became the theme for Caesar Romero's Joker.
It's amusing, but not quite amusing enough, and it's not quite long enough. But for what it is, it's not bad.
TFS 4180
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