BATMAN: “THE CURSE OF TUT” (1966)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *psychological, sociological*

Robert C. Harris and Earl Barret concocted King Tut, probably the most popular of all the villains created for BATMAN ’66. In the comics Batman and Robin occasionally battled foes who turned criminal due to some trauma, but none of them became convinced that they were reborn Egyptian pharaohs. Possibly the role was tailor-made for actor Victor Buono, whose flamboyant peforming-style required characters of mythic stature—and of course, studios in Hollywood had ample access to costumes and paraphernalia designed for many historical eras.

King Tut’s brief backstory—that he, a Yale professor, became demented after being injured during a student riot—suggests a half-baked commentary on the collegiate unrest of the time, filtered through the Bat-fantasy. No one voices any particular reason as to why a fully-grown, rather obese professor would think himself to be the long-dead Tutankhmen, who died in his teens. And despite the episode’s title, no one connects King Tut’s plot with the proverbial curse of the real Tut’s tomb. It’s likely the boy pharaoh was merely chosen because he was a name for Harris and Barret to conjure with.

Tut lays down his gauntlet in High Egyptian style, having his thugs drop off a sphinx-statue in Gotham Park to make pronouncements about the new pharoah’s coming reign. Batman erroneously claims that the statue is a good reproduction of the “Sphinx of Gizeh,” which is not true, given that the giant stone sphinx takes the form of a lion with a man’s head, and the oracular statue has the body of a man with a ram’s head. There were ram-headed sphinxes in Tutankhamen’s time, and some of these may have had oracles associated with the god Amun. However, Harris and Barret don’t really get much mileage out of the statue’s presence in the first half of “Curse,” nor out of Tut’s female henchperson Nefertiti.

Indeed, Tut doesn’t really have much of an overacring plot, except that he wants to kidnap Bruce Wayne, apparently because Wayue is a donor to the Gotham Museum, which is displaying Egyptian antiquities. Wayne shows up at the museum, giving a tour as if he were a docent, explaining the culture of Egypt to reporters. He stops at a very wide sarcophagus, coyly not naming the mummy in the coffin before he opens the lid. But the very corpulent mummy falls to the ground, apparently alive, and Wayne acts as if he believes it’s really an Egyptian citizen come to life. Presumably the writers meant to suggest that Batman’s alter ego was putting on an act. Yet Adam West sells the scene as if his character really has fallen for the charade—which is, of course, Tut in mummy-wrappings. Tut’s goons kidnap Wayne, but he falls into a deathtrap that is, for once, totally unintentional on the part of the villains.

Wayne survives the deathtrap, but Tut still wants to kidnap him. Batman attempts to set up a Bat-trap, but it goes wrong and Batman himself is captured. While Robin and Alfred try to work out the Crusader’s location, Nefertiti swoons over the manly Bat-captive—and Tut retaliates by sticking both his ex-princess and his foe into an Egyptian torture designed to drive them mad. Batman, at least, escapes this fate—Nefertiti isn’t so lucky, but the script largely forgets about her—and he and Robin ring down the curtain on the phony Pharoah. The episode’s main merit lies not in the gimcrack script, but in Buono’s spirited performance.