AUF WIEDERSEHEN, DE FLEDERMAUS MENSCH

RIP to the wonderful, deadpan Adam West, passed on at the surprising age of 88, older, somehow, than he seemed. I never met him, even though I was, oddly, in the same movie as him: The Best Movie Ever Made, aka Battle for the Planet of Cheese, Chris Lamont and Steve Bencich's soul-stirring epic of 1994. I played some sort of galactic big-shot, and West appeared very briefly as himself, shamelessly plugging his memoir Back to the Batcave.

West was, also, among my first heroes when I was very small, watching Batman in its original run. The character's virtuousness was absurd, but also unmistakably appealing, and I aspired to it; as glamorous as the show's bizarre, obsessive villains were, The Caped Crusader's primly civic-minded gestalt was curiously preferable to them, and the enthusiastic pedantry of West's line readings had a lot to do with this.

Anyway...

Monster-of-the-Week: ...in West's honor, this week the nod goes to...

...the "Neosaurus," a dubious genus of dinosaur that Egghead (Vincent Price) plans to hatch in the Batman episode "How to Hatch a Dinosaur."

If any proof is required of what a trouper West was, in this episode he had to authoritatively utter the line: "You know your Neosauruses well, Robin. Peanut butter sandwiches it is!"

UP AGAINST THE WALTER

Check out my list, on Topless Robot, of ten triumphant Tracey Walter credits.

RIP to the seriously adorable Yvonne Craig, passed on at 78. She’s hard to forget as the primly high-kicking Batgirl in the third season of the ‘60s Batman series...
 

 ...but she should also be remembered as the green-skinned, ill-fated Marta, consort of Steve Ihnat’s LOOOORD Garth in the Star Trek episode “Whom Gods Destroy.”

She’s also an example of what Mars needs in Larry Buchanan’s Mars Needs Women. Get in line, Mars.