Bat Battle: Who's The Best Movie Batman Ever?

Coolness of Costume
In a word: dignified. That's what Adam West's Batman isn't. Tiny little nubbin bat-ears, a bat emblem that looks like it's slid halfway down his sallow, pectorally-absent chest, and a cape so wrinkled it makes one wonder if Batman had a long layover in Houston with his costume bunched up in his carry-on.

The worst offense, though, has to be the painted-on eyebrows. The point of Batman's costume is to strike fear in the hearts of criminals, not to make them wonder why he always looks surprised to see them, like he recognizes them from high school or something. "Tom... Tom Franklin? You son of a bitch, get over here, you!"

Also, we didn't bother to include a picture of Batman's bat-package (you're welcome), but let's just say '60s Batman's genital-hugging blue satin panties don't leave a lot to the imagination. Ignorant as to whether or not Adam West is circumcised? Anybody who watched Batman: The Movie can't, unfortunately, say the same.

Ass-Kicking Ability
BatWest fights like someone having a stroke. To be fair, Batman: The Movie's supposed to be campy. To once again be unfair, it looks like they didn't so much choreograph their fights as just run around flailing their arms like the set just caught on fire:

[whistling] Man, let that in. BatWest just got his ass handed to him there by a quacking Burgess Meredith with a pillow under his tuxedo. That's the point in your crime-fighting career where you just need to stop and frankly assess some things that might have gotten away from you. If BatWest had to fight a six-year-old girl on crutches, frankly, it could go either way.

Those Wonderful Toys
BatWest had the Batmobile, the Batcopter, the Batcycle, and the Batcave. But whatever-every Batman has those. What puts BatWest's bat-gadgets head and shoulders above any other movie Batman's gadgets was his magical utility belt, which housed roughly 60 billion bat-themed doohickeys that could be pulled out in any situation whatsoever. Need something soldered? Batblowtorch! Getting gassed by the Penguin? Anti-Penguin gas pills! Want a sandwich sliced? Batlaser! Motherfucker even had Bat-shark repellent on hand:

Smoothness with the Ladies
BatWest must have realized how not macho he looked running around in tight satin panties, and so overcompensated with his alter ego Bruce Wayne, swinging '60s bachelor. The sly grin, slicked-back hair, and ascot (right) combine to make him look like the guest star on an all-sexual predator episode of The Love Boat. Come. And. Get it, ladies.

Plus, if the tell-all autobiographies written by the cast are to be believed, Adam West spent the majority of the TV series and motion picture getting drunk, doing drugs, and attempting to nail any co-star with a pulse and a vagina. Whether or not this was a good thing or a bad thing depends, we suppose, on your stance on this sort of behavior and whose autobiography you're reading.

Posse
Robin "helps out" (i.e., gets kidnapped every 10 minutes), and Commissioner Gordon and Irish stereotype Chief "Bless Me Shamrocks" O'Hara could be counted on to be useless enough to need Batman's assistance on pretty much every single crime committed in Gotham City. Take a breath mint from the Commissioner's desk without asking, and he'd be leaping across his office to the Batphone to get some help cracking the case.

Homoerotic Subtext?
BatWest got around that whole "living (and fighting crime in his underpants) with a minor" thing by having Aunt Harriet move in with them, presumably to keep an eye out for any shenanigans of the homosexual variety. Having said that, they managed to hide secret identities and a vast underground cave fortress with a helicopter pad from her, meaning she was either pretty liberal about the whole thing or had the observational skills of a particularily stupid dead hamster.