Dracula Week: The Batman vs. Dracula!

It’s been a while since we’ve had a good Theme Week here on the ISB, so as Spooktoberfest creeps along on the scarifying drive to Halloween, I’m declaring this to be Dracula Week! Seven days of posts revolving around the Lord of the Vampires, and like so many things in my life, it all starts with Batman:

 

 

Released direct to DVD in 2005, The Batman vs. Dracula was a Halloween tie-in to the then-current animated series, The Batman.

Of all of Batman’s TV franchises, The Batman was the one that I’ve never really gotten into. It’s not that I have anything against it really, but it always seemed to air at an inconvenient time and what little of it I have seen didn’t really inspire me to make the effort to catch it, though in fairness, that’s probably more of a product of my affection for Batman: The Animated Series than anything else.

I will admit, though, that the character designs aren’t quite to my taste. The show’s animation is actually very well done–I’ll get to that in a minute once Batman starts beating up the elderly–but between the title character’s marked resemblance to a young Judge Dredd…

 

 

…and Rastafarian Joker (about whom the less said, the better), it just looks way more off-putting to me thanBruce Timm’s Fleisher-inspired designs or The Brave and the Bold‘s retro-’66 style.

Still, when you get right down to it, anything called The Batman vs. Dracula should be totally awesome. In practice, though, it falls a little short. It’s still good, but a setup with as much potential as we have here ought to outstrip “good” by the time it leaves the opening credits.

The whole thing gets started when the Penguin breaks out of Arkham and sets about looking for some loot (eventually revealed to be a Scrooge McDuck-esque pile of gold coins) that’s been stashed in a cemetery, which leads to him inadvertently resurrecting Dracula because, well, it’s Gotham City and that sort of thing tends to happen a lot there. It turns out the terrified populace of Transylvania eventually got tired of being snack food and, in the absence of a reliable Belmont, shipped Big D off to Gotham and had him interred in their cemetery, figuring that vanquishing evil with the morning sun and pawning off their problems on the New World were basically the same thing anyway.

Dracula makes short work of Renfieldizing the Penguin and before long, he and his ill sideburns are heading out to high society parties…

 

 

…where he patiently explains that no, he is not Ra’s al-Ghul, and yes, he gets that all the time.

He also introduces himself as (brace yourself) “Dr. Alucard,” and as far as pseudonyms go, that’s only about half a step above “Dr. Acula.” And the sad part is, it takes the World’s Greatest Detective at least ten minutes to figure this out, even with the help of visual aids.

Further complicating matters is the presence of foxy reporter and Bat-love interest Vicky Vale, who is introduced–no joke–with a lingering shot of her rack:

 

 

Vicky’s been spending a lot of time with Bruce Wayne lately as she’s been covering the latest development from WayneTech, a machine that collects and stores sunlight to be released at one’s leisure, which we’ll find out later is an exceptionally handy thing to have laying around when you’re going to go fight Dracula.

From there, the story procedes about like you’d expect: Dracula makes a bunch of Gothamites into vampires, which gives Batman the opportunity to wail on normal people in some beautifully animated fight scenes that, unfortunately, cut before he actually goes through with judo-throwing a nine year-old girl; eyewitnesses describe a bat-like creature preying on citizens, which leads to Batman being framed for Dracula’s crimes; Batman and Dracula have a scuffle that involves Drac uttering the immortal phrase “try as you might, you can’t out-bat me!”; and then the Joker gets turned into a vampire.

Yeah, you heard me: Vampire Joker.

 

 

Fortunately for the Joker–and therefore unfortunately for everyone else–Batman has seen Blade II and sets about synthesizing a cure for vampirism out of pure SCIENCE!, which he does just in time for Vicky to–surprise!–get kidnapped by Dracula so that he can use her life-force to resurrect one of his brides, and they fight until Batman cures everyone with his fists and then uses his amazing technicolor sunlight machine to take the Count out, keeping his no-killing rule intact thanks to a previous mention of sunlight being an “almost permanent” death for vampires.

Plotwise, that’s pretty paint-by-numbers, but like I said, it’s got some beautiful animation–the first Batman/Dracula fight sees Dracula fighting like a vampiric M. Bison, which is something I didn’t even know I wanted to see until today–and some very fun moments, like the revelation that Thomas Wayne used to go hunting with a crossbow, which would make him the Ted Nugent of Gotham City. Even though there are stretches where it feels like it’s been padded out to fit a Cartoon Network movie slot, it’s still highly entertaining.

Plus, it ends with Batman punching Dracula so hard that he explodes, and that alone makes it better than Red Rain.

43 thoughts on “Dracula Week: The Batman vs. Dracula!

  1. Seriously – is there ANY way to write a Batman vs. Dracula story that meets the expectations springing from the title “Batman vs. Dracula?”

    Batman could punch a thousand vampire 9-year-old girls in the face, and it still wouldn’t be half as many as he just punched in my head the moment I read “Batman vs. Dracula.”

  2. If one had to boil the essence of the ISB Experience down to three words “Batman Punches Dracula” would be an awfully good effort.

    You couldn’t be righter about “Alucard.” It’s like if Mephisto went around introducing himself as “B.L. Zebub” and mistaking everyone’s expressions of exasperation and pity to think he’d completely fooled them.

  3. I’m going to take on the thankless/blame-worthy task of defending The Batman’s portrayal of Joker. Yes, I cringed at the Rastafarian aspect, but, with his broad shoulders and bare feet, it’s the first version of the Joker I’ve seen where it’s actually credible that he could be a physical threat for Batman in a fight. This is particularly true in the early seasons of the show, when Batman was new to the job and still a bit shaky.
    Plus, The Batman has one of my favorite Joker bits. Deciding he could do a better job defending Gotham, he dresses up as Batman and wages a war against jaywalkers and parking violators. And when Bruce comes to stop him, Joker injects him with laughing gas. So you have a Joker dressed up in a Bat costume spouting serious, brooding cliches, and a Batman that’s cackling hysterically. It’s awesome.
    The Batman/Dracula movie is the one thing from the series I haven’t seen. But if you’re really just here to see Batman punching old ladies, here’s the youtube remix:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8LcKev4k1Q

    Don’t worry, she was a plant.

  4. The Batman was actually not bad. Granted, not bad really is not enough when you’re talking about Batman. Naturally, just as it was getting good, they canceled it.

    That Dr. Alucard bit bugged me, too. I mean, I know this is a younger Batman but COME ON….

  5. That’s a pretty gamey version of Dracula. Looks like John Lithgow playing Dr. Lizardo at the Oscars ceremony.

  6. It sucked, Chris. It really, truly sucked. And I’m not being punny with the head vampire in question. The Batman was mediocre at best until the last few seasons, and The Batman Vs. Dracula was truly horrible, VampJoker and all.

  7. Amazing. Draculalalalaaaaa week is gonna be the jam.

    I just watched this a few days ago myself. And, coincidentally, I made a comment about how it was redeeming in the end once Batman punched Dracula so hard that he turned him into a skeleton.

    Also, it’s worth mentioning for the INCREDIBLE Antidote Beatdown 5000 that he gives to all the Gotham vamps. I think I watched that scene 5 times.

  8. “the first Batman/Dracula fight sees Dracula fighting like a vampiric M. Bison”

    Wait, M. Bison as in Balrog or M. Bison as in Mike Tyson? (I think this is the nerdiest thing I’ve ever written, but I know it’s not. It’s just a different kind of nerdy.)

  9. My automatic first thought on hearing about this movie was “That’s stupid. Dracula isn’t real.”

    I think I meant “Dracula tends to exist in different fictional universes from Batman”, but maybe not.

    For as Voltaire nearly said “If Batman did not exist, it would be necessary to create him.”

  10. Batman ISN’T real…. yet. I gotta have a son, then take him to a Zorro movie when he’s eight.

  11. It’s funny you should mention that it feels like it was padded in spots to fit a Cartoon Network movie slot, because that’s exactly where I saw this film. In fact, I believe it aired on Cartoon Network before the DVD came out.

    And in defense The Batman, I have to say that I liked the portrayal of Catwoman on that show more than the later appearances of Catwoman on TAS (the later period when they revamped the show and got rid of the Fleischer inspired look for characters; what was the deal with that, anyway?).

    One thing I don’t get about The Batman, though, was why they replaced the pretty cool music for the opening credits with the reminiscent of Hawaii 5-0 theme.

  12. The Batman definitely suffered from coming after Batman: TAS. Kudos to them for trying something different, but, well.

    It did get better in the last couple of seasons. Harley Quinn as a selfish little sociopath, Clayface getting cured… they were trying, they really were. One or two of the late episodes were as good as anything on B: TAS. The one with the guy who could replay time? That can stand beside anything in the Timiverse.

    But yeah, most of them were pretty mediocre.

    Doug M.

  13. Okay, this raises a question: which of the two Dracula On The Moon issues are you going to do? The original Dr. McNinja one (which is awesome)? Or the Captain Britain one (which is also awesome)?

    Let me pitch in my $.02 worth: do them both. There’s no reason not to have /all the awesome there is/.

    Doug M.

  14. Scott: The theme music for the first season was done by The Edge from U2, so I’m guessing they didn’t want to keep paying him.

    Which is just dumb.

  15. I’m pretty sure I remember reading something years ago about “Alucard” as a canonical (from the original novel, perhaps?) pseudonym for Dracula. But a quick web search doesn’t turn up anything helpful, because it appears to have been used dozens of times since then in vampire-related spinoffs.

  16. As near as I can tell Son of Dracula was the first use of Alucard, and since then it’s been bandied about from being a pseudonym to the name of his son and back again.

    Of course given how many different version of Dracula there are, much less vampires, who knows!

  17. Dr. Alucard? That’s the best they could do? Really? Then again, most anime series don’t seem to work very much harder at disguising vampires going “incognito.”

    Marginally off-topic, Scott asks: (the later period when they revamped the show and got rid of the Fleischer inspired look for characters; what was the deal with that, anyway?).
    They streamlined the look of BTAS to bring it in line with the new Superman the Animated Series, both to make it easier to animate (esp. when sent overseas because the studios had widely varying abilities to stay on-model) and to allow crossovers to happen.

  18. I always enjoyed “The Batman” for it’s very different art style than the Bruce Timm version. The action was pretty good also.

  19. Sol Says:

    I’m pretty sure I remember reading something years ago about “Alucard” as a canonical (from the original novel, perhaps?) pseudonym for Dracula. But a quick web search doesn’t turn up anything helpful, because it appears to have been used dozens of times since then in vampire-related spinoffs.

    It was definitely used a lot in the Hammer Horror films and may have originated there, in a film where Alucard fights Helsing’s grand-son in a disco.

  20. I tried to make it through this movie. I really did. But once we got to the point that Rasula shows up at the party…

    More importantly, I’m thrilled to see you’re listening to “Scream, Dracula, Scream.” God, I love that album. Speedo can really sing.

  21. OH GOD

    I REMEMBER THIS MOVIE

    I WAS ON VACATION WITH MY BOYFRIEND AND WOULDN’T GO MAKE OUT WITH HIM BECAUSE I [i]HAD TO SEE IT[/i].

    …Anyways, it was pretty good. Vampire Joker sufficiently scared the CRAP out of me, but I just have to wonder.

    What sort of shitty blood bank stores all it’s blood in giant glass tubes on rickety shelves with no refrigeration?

  22. Never did get around to seeing this, though I still want to one of these days, because while The Batman got off to a pretty rough start, it did start getting better around Season 3, I think. Whenever they brought in Jim and Barbara Gordon, anyway, and the whole thing finally started to resemble, you know, Batman. Then you get Barbara becoming Batgirl, the intro of Robin and this series’ version of Harley (that episode was written by Dini himself, which was pretty cool) and then finally the JLA… it got good there at the end.

    Rastafarian Joker was still hard to take, though, but at least he traded in the straightjacket for something like his regular suit. And I HATED what they did to the Riddler. He looked like his first crime was knocking over a Hot Topic.

  23. I’m going to take on the thankless/blame-worthy task of defending The Batman’s portrayal of Joker. Yes, I cringed at the Rastafarian aspect, but, with his broad shoulders and bare feet, it’s the first version of the Joker I’ve seen where it’s actually credible that he could be a physical threat for Batman in a fight.

    But…the Joker’s not meant to be a physical threat to Batman. I would go so far as to say that if Batman and the Joker are engaging in fisticuffs, they’re being written poorly.

  24. The film SON OF DRACULA was indeed the first use of the Alucard alias; it was pretty lame even then, which is why later Universal films used the name “Baron Latos”.That “Hammer disco vampire” film is DRACULA A.D. 1972, with a Dracula wannabe calling himself “Johnny Alucard” reviving Chris Lee as The Count.Yes, I own all these films.

  25. I was fine with The Joker, and even Criss “The Riddler” Angel, but the friggin’ Penguin sucked so hardcore.

  26. Wait, M. Bison as in Balrog or M. Bison as in Mike Tyson? (I think this is the nerdiest thing I’ve ever written, but I know it’s not. It’s just a different kind of nerdy.)

    Which do you think I meant?

  27. Even for the Hammer films, the backwards name is just silly.

    That said, I’d like to write a story where we meet Mr. Namflow and Dr. Nietsneknarf and learn that it’s not meant to be a disguise at all, but rather that Transylvania has a wacky folk custom where Wednesdays are Backwards Days.

  28. Alucard is a pretty safe pseudonym in a universe where the U.S. Navy sells a surplus nuclear submarine to a Mr. P.N. Guin.

  29. I remember seeing this on the Cartoon Network and thinking it was okay, but still hating the revamped, natty dread Joker.
    A Night of the Ghouls reference AND one of the best RFTC albums (Live from Camp X-Ray is great, too, but not really thematically appropriate) in the sidebar? That made my day.

  30. “Which do you think I meant?”

    I don’t know but I hope you meant Mike Tyson. I’m down for anything involving Mike Tyson.

  31. Edward Liu says:

    They streamlined the look of BTAS to bring it in line with the new Superman the Animated Series, both to make it easier to animate (esp. when sent overseas because the studios had widely varying abilities to stay on-model) and to allow crossovers to happen.

    Thanks. I knew they changed Bruce Wayne’s look (mainly giving him big baby blue eyes) to make him different from Clark Kent for the crossovers, but I never understood what they did to the Joker or Catwoman (they made her seriously weird looking). Fortunately, they put the Joker back to normal (?!) in that Batman Beyond movie and Justice League (if you’ve never seen that two parter where the Joker is going to blow up Vegas, you’re missing something).

    On the Alucard thing: the only time it wasn’t totally lame was in Dracula: The Series (I think that was the name), where Dracula posed as a wealthy businessman named Alexander Lucard. If I recall correctly (it was a long time ago) they even put a French pronunciation on the Lucard to disguise it even more. As I said, it wasn’t totally lame; more like only 50% lame.

  32. The riddler’s look in the batman was terrible, but his riddle’s/plans were actually pretty good and at least he was treated like a legitimate challenge, not a joke.

  33. “the first Batman/Dracula fight sees Dracula fighting like a vampiric M. Bison”

    like in Darkstalkers? man i love those games
    and Alucard makes me just want to play more Castlevania
    the sunlight gun sounds like its from Boktai

  34. I’m down for anything involving Mike Tyson.

    What is “Things Overheard at a Roman Polanski Dinner Party,” Alex?

    Now let’s close out the category of Jokes That Might Be Innappropriate, Even for the ISB, for $1000.

  35. The Riddler’s look was IMO one of those “let’s try something really different… well, okay, didn’t work out” deals that The Batman was littered with.

    Agreed with Earl that his riddles were actually pretty good. The Riddler was actually one of the weaker spots in Batman:TAS — borrowing the virtual reality trick from the movie was not a very good idea, and he went downhill from there.

    Also, they played him as a brilliant, tragic nerd — a legitimate genius but with real, major psychological problems. Which was a really interesting take IMO, and much better than the smug, smirking jerkoff of B:TAS.

    Doug M.

  36. Scott, I had missed that with the blue eyes! Good catch.

    The Joker two-parter is indeed brilliant. In fact, any Justice League ep in which Batman plays a key role is likely to be very-good-to-excellent.

    Come to think of it, the first season of JL really found its feet with the Society of Super-Villains two-parter. In which Batman spends most of the second ep tied up, and still manages to kick the villains’ collective ass.

    Doug M.

  37. I didn’t see this above, but I’m actually pretty sure “Alucard” as a pseudonym comes from the original Bram Stoker book.

  38. Weird how there’s so many Christmas episodes in the DCAU, but nothing for Halloween, isn’t it?

    (I was actually trying to find an appropriate Halloween episode to review, but I guess I’m going to have to make do with the Werewolf episode from BTAS)

  39. Huh. I watched this when it aired on Cartoon Network or Kids WB, and found it, of all things, incredibly boring. The pacing seemed horrendous, and wasn’t helped at all by the afore-mentioned “paint-by-numbers” plot. It was actually when I think I gave up on trying to follow the series.