BATMAN: “TRUE OR FALSE FACE” (1966)

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

Stephen Kandel’s “True or False Face” takes almost nothing from Bill Finger’s story “The Menace of False Face” (BATMAN #113, 1958), except the basic idea of a disguise-master villain of that name. The False Face of the comics-tale is a small-time heist artist, using his skill with disguises to pull off robberies. At the story’s end the Dynamic Duo pull off his mask, exposing him as a “frightened criminal”—after which he never made another comic-book appearance.

To be sure, Kandel’s False Face (Malachi Throne) only makes a single appearance on BATMAN ’66, but he’s revised into a formidable supercriminal whose warped devotion to all forms of falsehood makes him as much a world-beater as Joker or Penguin. Aside from those times when he’s fully in disguise—during which times False Face’s character is played by another actor than Throne—the villain wears a face-fitting plastic mask whose mouth does not move and through whose eyeholes the eyes can barely be glimpsed. Though one might expect the episode to end with Batman ripping off this false face, neither he nor any else chooses to unmask the master manipulator as he’s taken into custody—possibly a repudiation against the way the one-shot comics-villain is duly humiliated.

False Face leads off his reign of terror with a robbery that bears no relation to his grand plan. Afterward, following the usual pattern, the guest foe throws down his gauntlet to attract the Crusaders’ attention. This time said challenge takes the form of a message hand-delivered to Commissioner Gordon’s office when the Commissioner and Chief O’Hara are conferring with the heroes. Batman, in addition to deciphering False Face’s clue about his next crime (a little too patly, it must be said), discerns that the old man serving as a messenger is False Face’s henchwoman Blaze, no mean master of disguise herself. Blaze then escapes with a daring leap from a high window, marking her as one of the more active gang-girls. She;s later seen in the villain’s hideout, as False Face’s henchmen congratulate him on his successes. The villain’s Bizarro-style response is, “Thanks, men. I know you didn’t mean it.”

Even though BATMAN ’66 is never a purely ironic construct, its dalliance with the camp aesthetic means that the show’s characters are a lot like False Face: nothing they say can be taken at absolute face value. The Duo chase down False Face’s clue, but an apparent armored-car hijacking—in which the villain carelessly parks near a fire hydrant—turns out to be an ambush. The heroes eventually work out that the evildoer’s plan involves counterfeiting, though not until the episode’s second part do they work out that he plans to flood the country with false currency, so that “nobody could tell true from false.”

During the ambush, the Duo take Blaze prisoner, though False Face crosses them up by abducting Chief O’Hara and taking his place during the next conference in the Commissioner’s office. Though Gordon tries to take a hard line with Blaze, Batman’s more liberal view—“even False Face has a conscience, somewhere”—makes him vulnerable to Blaze’s pretense at repentance. She leads the Duo into a trap in Gotham’s subway line—but the prospect of actually killing her opponents, rather than just tricking them, sours her on the criminal life. (She’s also the first female villain to be swayed, at least in part, by Batman’s manly charms.)

False Face’s deathtrap—that of leaving the heroes epoxied to the railway tracks, as a train comes bearing down on them—is almost exceeded by their method of escape. Back in the Batcave, Alfred hears a coded message on the radio that encourages him to call Batman on his radio. Fortunately, Batman doesn’t need his hands free to access this device, and he tells Alfred to activate the radio’s self-destruct capacity. This breaks one of Batman’s bonds, and since once again the villain doesn’t remove the Duo’s special belts, he uses his weapons to break Robin and himself free. Later the heroes dope out that the radio message came from Blaze.

Back at False Face’s HQ, he’s all but decided that Blaze has switched loyalties. Yet, instead of killing her, he takes her along, albeit handcuffed, during his next escapade. Batman finally decides to beat the villain at his own game, that of “falsehood,” and suckers False Face into entering a trap. There follows the liveliest car-chase scene in the series, and False Face is caught, with the usual promise to return.

For once the coda at Wayne Manor may not actually transpire immediately after the events of the episode. Aunt Harriet, who generally seems to have little to do with the Wayne Foundation functions, tells Bruce and Dick that the foundation’s rehabilitation wing has announced a new reformed criminal, who turns out to be Blaze. Perhaps, unlike Zelda, Blaze got a full pardon, for she’s apparently free to leave the country for New Zealand, where she will keep house for her “poor but honest’ sheepherder brother. This entire exchange between the four actors stands as one of the best camp-scenes, as they all utter these absurd lines with complete conviction.