ANI-MOVIES, *Batman Vs. Two-Face

In his final performance, Adam West plays the campy 60's version of the Caped Crusader one last time in this special made-for-video movie. Batman Vs. Two-Face shows the premiere of the classic DC Comics villain in the "Dozierverse", although the character was planned for an abandoned episode featuring Clint Eastwood as the divided bad-doer. This time though, he's voiced by William-effing-Shatner, and modeled after the Captain Kirk take used in Filmation's Star Trek, who also did the original Batman cartoon.

Set sometime after Return Of The Caped Crusaders, Batman and Robin are asked to witness an experiment conducted by Hugo Strange(with a cameo by his assistant, Dr. Quinzel!), where he plans on extracting the evil from five of Gotham's worst villains. But the bad guys mojo proves to much for Strange's contraption, which spills out on to Harvey Dent, the local district attorney and Bruce Wayne's old college friend. Harvey now is a living half-Mr. Hyde as the new criminal called Two-Face. After a few crime sprees during the opening credits, Harvey is finally captured and physically restored to his old self thanks to plastic surgery. Despite his insane criminal activities, Dent is allowed to become the assistant D.A., just as King Tut and Bookworm each go on their own heists. Batman and Robin solve both cases, but realize that each caper dealt with duality, pointing to Two-Face being behind the whole thing. After confronting Harvey Dent directly, the Dynamic Duo aren't totally sure if he's the guilty party. Two-Face however emerges, captures them, and ties them to a giant coin. After deducing their true identities, Two-Face gets Hugo Strange to remake his device to transfer the evil from some villains he invited to bid off Batman and Robin's fate. Catwoman breaks out of jail though to rescue the Caped Crusaders, while Two-Face takes the bad-guy formula to spray all over Gotham. With most of the city now transformed into Two-Face versions of themselves, Batman and Robin take down the actual Two-Face, while Batman has a final confrontation with Harvey who is battling between his two personalities. Harvey eventually purges himself from Two-Face, and returns seemingly not knowing the Dynamic Duo's secret identities.

Batman Vs. Two-Face is slightly superior to Return Of The Caped Crusaders as it folds out more like a 3-part TV episode, where as the prior feature was like several comic book chapters bonded to single plot. The original voice actors are back, with Shatner doing a brilliant job as the duplicitous Two-Face, with shades of the mirror universe version of Kirk from Star Trek, also making for probably the most memorable portrayal of the character so far. There's a quick bonus on the Blu-Ray featuring a possible addition to Batman's rogues gallery, although given that there would be no way to produce another Batman '66 feature without Adam West, it doesn't seem likely that this will go anywhere. However, that shouldn't stop you from enjoying this film that honors both the 60's TV series, and the ongoing legacy of the "Bright Knight"!