Adam West’s final film puts him back in the cowl facing off against ’60s television hero William Shatner in Batman vs. Two-Face.
With co-star Burt Ward by his side, West and company reunite with other cast members of the ’66 series, most notably Julie Newmar as Catwoman and an appearance by Lee Meriwether as Lucilee Diamond.
Shatner plays a Batman ’66 version of Harvey Dent / Two-Face, a character that unusually never appeared in the show. The Dynamic Duo faces the entirety of Gotham’s rogue gallery that includes Hugo Strange, The Joker, The Riddler, Penguin and even King Tut and this reviewer’s personal favorite, Bookworm.
The story kicks off with Strange and assistant Harley Quinn extracting evil from all of Gotham’s bad guys.
When the machine goes Ka-Blam!, the essence wipes out star district attorney Harvey Dent and transforms him into Two-Face.
Batman and Bruce Wayne are naturally disturbed by this turn of events. Wayne uses his resources to restore Dent’s face to its natural look, but the evil Two-Face could very well be lurking below the visage.
The pace and tempo of West’s dialogue, long ingrained into our collective consciousness, is slapped right up against Shatner’s staccato delivery, making you wonder if we haven’t been missing Shatner in the Batman Universe for our entire lives!
In 2014, “The Two-Way Crimes of Two-Face,” an episode written by sci-fi and Star Trek writer Harlan Ellison was released in comic book form from Len Wein (RIP) and artist José Luis Garcia-Lopez as Batman ’66: The Lost Episode #1. After seeing these pages, we’d love to build a time machine and persuade the network to make this happen with William Shatner in the role.
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