Limited to 3000 units, La La Land’s newly expanded CD of Nelson Riddle’s BATMAN follows and adds three new tracks to the previous limited-edition release by Film Score Monthly from 2000. It is not to be confused with Riddle's highly-recommended BATMAN - EXCLUSIVE ORIGINAL TELEVISION SOUNDTRACK ALBUM (issued in October 2014 but still findable); this is a 50th Anniversary issue of the music which Riddle composed and orchestrated for Leslie H. Martinson's 1966 feature film, which has since become a perennial cult favorite.
Listening to this fun and lively score, divorced from its imagery, it’s remarkable how well the music and instrumentation (hybrid orchestra and rock) evoke and enlarge all the highlights recalled from the movie. Some of the music is distinctly (albeit colorfully) “Mickey Mousey,” in that it was intended to shadow and comment on the onscreen action and suspense, but Riddle’s various character themes are remarkable in terms of how fully they flesh-out and lend larger-then-life menace to the various personalities, especially the villains - the Joker, the Penguin, Catwoman and the, um, Riddler. Especially notable: 20th Century Fox contract player Lee Meriwether played Catwoman for the first and only time in this feature (she's my favorite), temporarily replacing Julie Newmar who essayed the role on television, and she is given her own unique arrangement of Riddle's mewing Cat-theme, which is here more suggestively lethal and erotic. The flamboyance of the respective villains, the nautical themes (Schmidlapp yacht, Penguin sub), the woozy Dean Martin-like quality of the romantic schmaltz (even the Giovanni Martini source song “Plaisir d’amour” is included) are wonderfully evocative, and the various Bat-themes are so exciting that they lend Adam West all the alacrity, dynamism, armor, and might that later Batmen had to make literal. It’s a remarkable and endlessly enjoyable document.
With a running time of 72:13, the disc presents the mono score as it is heard in the film; in fact, one of the cues included here - "Submarine Attack" - had to be reconstructed by restoration expert Mike Matessino, working from the existing Blu-ray of the film. Also included is a full-color illustrated booklet with liner notes by John Takris, which focus as much on telling the background story of the ABC series as on the film in question. I was particularly pleased to lift the disc from the casing to find a full list of Riddle’s session musicians listed beneath. I’ve often wondered if any of the players on these sessions had been part of the legendary Wrecking Crew, and the answer is... apparently not. But the drummers Riddle hired for this session really swing and could easily pass for the likes of Hal Blaine or Eddie Hoh in my ears.
Where to order:
https://lalalandrecords.com/batman-the-movie-1966-re-issue/
(c) 2026 Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.
