User Reviews

Shane (Cliff Robinson) appears for the first time in season three.

Many people (even Adam West) have noted that the problem with season three is that it was so fast paced with short 25 minute plots....there was often no time for the silly small talk we got in the first two seasons. Well this two-parter proudly returns all that campy pointless chit chat that has been sadly missing sometimes (but not all the time) in year three.

This two-parter is basically just a good old laugh and I might add that part two is even more funny than part one.

Note: it you look carefully at Shane's hide out you can see that large stair case prop in the background, which was seen only in the recent Londinium three-parter.

"The Great Escape" proves that regular writer Stanley Ralph Ross was still capable of turning out an enduring classic even in this budget conscious third season, marking the return of Cliff Robertson's cowboy villain Shame, this time co-billed with real life bride Dina Merrill as new girlfriend Calamity Jan, accompanied by her mother and ever present chaperone, Frontier Fanny (Hermione Baddeley). Jane and her Fanny bust out Shame in a rented tank, hiring the two single best henchmen the series ever had, Victor Lundin and Barry Dennen. Lundin, previously The Penguin's goon Octopus in "Fine Finny Fiends"/"Batman Makes the Scenes," had also starred with Adam West in the 1964 "Robinson Crusoe on Mars," towering as Chief Standing Pat, decked out in buckskins and full Native American headdress, continuously bumping his head going in and out of doorways. Barry Dennen plays a slimy Mexican bandit called Fred, his initials for 'Fernando Ricardo Enrique Domingues,' who inexplicably speaks with a perfect upper class British accent, while the Chief communicates with smoke signals from his cigar. One classic exchange between the dimwitted cowpoke and the upper class Mexican twit: "the pleasure is entirely mine, you may be sure...your lucidity is surpassed only by your remarkable command and penchant for gibberish!" Shame's boast that he will steal a rock and a roll leads the Caped Crusader to the Gotham City Stage, an opera house where Leonora Sotto Voce (Dorothy Kirsten) is robbed of her diamond 'rock,' and partner Fortissimo Fra Diavolo (Brian Sullivan) is stripped of his massive bank 'roll.' Fear gas finds the Terrific Trio begging for mercy from the rejects from an old time Western movie, capped by Shame's comment: "how do you like that, scaredy bat!" Watch for LEAVE IT TO BEAVER's Jerry Mathers in an unbilled cameo as Pop, the stage doorman, about five decades too young for the job!

Shame escapes from prison with the help of his fiancee and mother-in-law. They organize the assault on a couple of tenors and manage to reduce Batman, Robin and Batgirl with a dose of a gas that causes attacks of fear. This is one of the best written scripts of this season, full of funny and intelligent dialogue. The interaction between Shame, his girlfriend Calamity Jane, and his mother-in-law Frontier Fanny is great, and his other two henchmen Fred and Chief Standing Pat make up the best gang of villains in the entire series.