The Wild World of Batwoman

(Batwoman switches the poisoned drinks)
Crow: Now you may think that the iocane powder is in this one!

It’s a reference to The Princess Bride starring Robin Wright (at the time not yet Robin Wright-Penn) and Cary Elwes…and Peter Falk and Wallace Shawn and Andre the Giant and Mandy Patankin and Billy Crystal and a slew of other stars, including but not limited to: Fred Savage (the kid from “The Wonder Years”) and Carol Kane (the Ghost of Christmas Present in Scrooged). Everyone loves The Princess Bride. Every girl had a crush on Cary Elwes (from what I can remember) and why shouldn’t they? The blond hair, the black leather pants, rolling down the hill yelling “As you wish!” The scene Crow brings up is one of the funniest of the movie: Wallace Shawn, the smartest man in the world, has challenged Elwes to a duel of wits (since Elwe's already won the Duel of Strength and the Duel of Swords). Elwes puts poison in one of the goblets and Shawn has to choose between one. He goes on for about five minutes about why it’s one goblet and not the other. He ends up being poisoned. I won’t tell you how Elwes did it. Off topic, though—Christ, wasn’t The Wild World of Batwoman one of the worst movies ever? Jeez, I’m watching it right now…man.


(two girls hiding behind some trash [don’t ask—it won’t make any sense in the movie either])
Crow: Calling Michelle Pfeiffer.

Michelle Pfeiffer is a leading actress—she was named by Entertainment Weekly as one of the 100 greatest movie stars of all time. Pretty good, considering her first movie was the incredibly bad sequel Grease 2 (but don’t judge an actor by his first movie—Steve McQueen started in The Blob and Renee Zelweger’s first movie was the god-awful Empire Records). Pfeiffer went on to make better movies like The Fabulous Baker Boys (there’s the famous scene with her singing on top of a piano [I can’t help but think of Lauren Bacall singing on top of the piano while Harry Truman played]), Married to the Mob, and What Lies Beneath (with mah boy Harrison Ford). Other works include Batman Returns (not a great movie but she’s probably the coolest part of the film), Stardust, and Hairspray. She’s a pretty cool chick, if I do say so m’self, and also a pretty good actress.


(at the very beginning, a shot of empty buildings)
Tom: I’m as mad as hell!

Part of the most famous line in Network, starring William Holden, Faye Dunaway, and Peter Finch. It’s more than likely that you’ve heard it before—the insane anchorman Finch tells viewers during a telecast to “…go to the window now. I want you to open the window and yell, ‘I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!’” People do. He’s labeled as “the mad prophet of the airwaves”. Network is a classic satire that pretty much reams the television world; it portrays every TV executive as greedy little bastards who will do anything—anything—for a jump in the ratings. It’s as relevant today as it was when made (1976). It was written by Paddy Chayefsky, arguably the best satirist in film history. Go watch his film The Hospital, in which he sticks it to the American health care system. You’ll never check into a hospital again.


(there’s an explosion)
Tom (singing): I’ll shoot myself if we ever meet again, doesn’t matter where, doesn’t matter when…

Ha. The song itself is “We’ll Meet Again” by Vera Lynn, and was one of the signature WWII songs for the British army—kind of a British equivalent to the Bing Crosby’s “I’ll Be Seeing You”. The song actually goes “We’ll meet again/ don’t know where/ don’t know when/ but I know we’ll meet again some sunny day”. It’s actually a very sweet song. But how does it pertain to film, you ask? Well, it was the song played during the A-bomb montage at the end of Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. Strange way to end a film, I know—originally the film was to end in a huge pie fight between all the occupants of the War Room. It was scrapped for two reasons: firstly, the director, Stanley Kubrick, didn’t like it. Secondly, the fight was to contain a line wherein George C. Scott (as Frank Turgidson) would cry as the President, played by Peter Sellers, is hit by a pie, “Men! Our young president has been struck down in his prime!”, which would hit too close to home as the real American president John F. Kennedy would be assassinated in Dallas a month or so before the film was to open. Incidentally, you can still see the table with all the pies in the finished film. There’s also a scene in which Slim Pickens rummages through a survival kit (containing, among other things, a gun, bullets, a grenade, cigarettes, stockings, and bubble gum) and says, “A guy could have a lot of fun in Dallas with this stuff.” For the same reason as above, the line was edited, changing “Dallas” to “Las Vegas”. You can see Slim Pickens’ lips say “Dallas”, if you look closely.