Silent Shadow of the Bat-Man #2 - Retro 1920s Dark Knight - "The Man Who Laughs"

Part 2 (of 3 so far) - The first two entries in this series are halves of a 12 minute short depicting the origin of "The Bat-Man" - Bob Kane, Bill Finger, and Jerry Robinson drew on a lot of silent films and pulp to create Batman and his enemies: here they are re-arranged to tell us about Bruce Wayne's crusade against crime. A bit of fun not intended for sale or commercial exploitation... what with the huge commercial value of silent films and everything.

Featuring the Joker... Oswald Cobblepot, AKA The Penguin... The Cat-Woman! The unspeakable horrors of the Scarecrow! The scientific genius of R'as Al Ghul!

Be sure to check out part one for the story of how young Bruce Wayne got into such a weird racket anyway.

Jack Pickford as Bruce Wayne
Conrad Veidt as The Joker
Werner Krauss as The Penguin
Olga Baclanova as The Catwoman
George Beranger as The Scarecrow
J. Carrol Naish as R'as Al Ghul
Louise Fazenda as the Woman of Ill Repute

--

Then - brace yourself for the followup.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JD4XqYT1-JU

"Arkham After Midnight"
Chapter One: "Mark of the Mad Hatter."

The Darkest, Most Depressing Knight!

Written and Edited by Andre Perkowski. Music by Kristin Palker and Andre Perkowski.

What? You want MORE? Grant Morrison expert and astute comic pundit Timothy Callahan just put up an endless interview with some jerk about the cobbling together of these forbidden experiments in animating the flesh of the silent dead:

http://geniusboyfiremelon.blogspot.com/2008/08/1920s-batman-arkham-after-midn...

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• experimental
• Batman
• Dark
• Knight
• Joker
• Catwoman
• silent
• expressionist
• surreal
• found
• footage
• Pre
• Golden
• Age

[AnDr3yOfficial]

This is a batman movie?1920?But batman was invented in 1938

[terminalpictures]

@AnDr3yOfficial You'll find that clicking "show more" and reading the description was invented in 2005

[Luciie1993]

I think that these short films you have made using clips from classic silent cinema are, and I think that these are the only words adequate to describe them, "Pure genius". Your cutting of them and putting them together to re-create the mythos of Batman using the characters is impeccable.

[beeniestudios]

the joker is so scary in this! just look at that smile

[adrianmolm715]

@Vortigern99 batman was invented in ’38 or ’39 not 1920’s,

besides that it is a fake movie, there are to many clips of words, compared to a Charlie Chaplin- the funny movies like The General, ect…

Too much Inferring, for a old movie

[Vortigern99]

@adrianmolm715 Sure, I'm aware the silent film era pre-dates the 1939 debut of the Batman. But the modern creator/editor of this video has a superb grasp of what the character is and represents. It's fun to see terminapictures edit old silent footage into an ingenious dramatization of the key characters and themes of the Batman series. I don't know a thing about your "grandpa".

[adrianmolm715]

@Vortigern99 how is is a (false) lie- batman was invented in ’38 or ’39 not 1920’s

besides Inferring that my grandpa was a bastard, and that he didn’t know too much

Too much Inferring

[alxgunshot]

that Joker is scary...

[wtfitsjohn]

pretty nice. joker indeed was creepy

[ThePhantasist]

You know, if a man in flowing black robes with the head of a demon-rat came up to me and said, "Go and be decent" I think I'd have to listen.

[Johnrichardsjazz]

fascinating, great work