The Clock King’s Crazy Crimes – Batman season 2
After a robbery aided by a rigged timepiece, Batman and Robin deduce the Clock King must be in Gotham City.
Oddly enough, decades later Batman: The Animated Series introduced a serious villain as the Clock King, named Tempus Fugit. Who became a serious adversary, and later part of the Suicide Squad.
Quotes
[Batman and Robin climb up the side of a building. They come up to a window, which opens and out comes Sammy Davis Jr]
Sammy Davis Jr.: Hey! Batman and Robin! What are you guys doing?
Batman: Just routine crime-fighting
Sammy Davis Jr.: Would you like to come inside? I’m rehearsing.
Batman: Thank you, citizen, but our pursuit of justice allows us few diversions.
Sammy Davis Jr.: Oh.
Robin: Be seeing you.
Sammy Davis Jr.: Bye, Robin. [Batman and Robin climb past] Hey, you guys come and catch my act some time! I dig yours! [to offscreen band] All right, fellas, one more time [sings]
Sammy Davis Jr.: From a whippoorwill [shuts window]
Car Hop: May I recommend Batburgers?
Batman: Batburgers? [car hop pulls out a sign]
Robin: [reading] “Trouble stealing your appetite?”
Batman: [reading] “Arrest it with our new Batburger.” I’m honored by this tribute, miss. Two Batburgers, medium-rare, and two glasses of orangeade… doubles.
Millie Second: You’re marvelous, Clock King.
The Clock King: That, my dear, is because I plan every move like a timetable, as my archenemies Batman and Robin, will soon find out, to their detriment. Thinking. Every minute… every second… thinking.
The Clock King Gets Crowned
Then, in part 2, Aunt Harriet purchases a clock as a birthday present for Bruce Wayne, unaware that it is a plant by the Clock King. With Walter Slezak as the Clock King, and Herbert Anderson.
The Clock King: [to Batman and Robin, in the cliff-hanger death trap – a giant hour glass] Some people kill time, but this time, time is going to kill you.
Quotes
Second Hand Three: That’s right, your highness. You’ve done what nobody else could have done: you finish off Batman and Robin. [breaks into applause, Millie and Second Hand Five join him]
The Clock King: Thank you. I deserve it of course, but I thank you.
The Clock King: No! It can’t be true. You’re dead. You have to be dead!
Robin: [sarcastically gritting his teeth] Maybe we’re living on… borrowed time.
Batman: But now, it’s round-up time!
Millie Second: [gushing with admiration] Oh! I didn’t know you could fly a helicopter.
The Clock King: Millie, for a million dollars, a man can do almost anything.
Batman: And I find it only fitting that Clock King, who made times serve his crimes, must now serve time himself.
Trivia
- Bill Finger, this episode’s co-writer, was the co-creator of many Batman characters; such as Robin, Commissioner Gordon, The Joker, The Penguin and The Riddler.
- One of the “famous paintings” that the Clock King is attempting to steal appears to be Salvador Dali’s surrealist masterpiece, “Persistence of Memory”. If you’ll look closely at this painting, though, you’ll see that it now includes impressions of Batman and Robin, being attacked by monsters as they fall through convoluted space!
- Other pop-culture trivia from this episode: in an earlier scene, the Duo stop by the Dunbar Diner, looking for a waitress named Thelma Timepiece, who used to be the Clock King’s moll before she went straight. They’re met by a new waitress, who tells them that Thelma quit the previous week, to go “back to her small town in the Midwest”; this is a reference to “Peyton Place“.
Cast of characters
- Adam West (The Outlaws is Coming) … Batman
- Burt Ward (Batman the Movie) … Robin
- Alan Napier (The Mole People, House of Horrors) … Alfred
- Neil Hamilton (Tarzan the Ape Man, What Price Hollywood) … Commissioner Gordon
- Stafford Repp … Chief O’Hara
- Madge Blake … Mrs. Cooper
- Walter Slezak (The Princess and the Pirate; The Inspector General) … The Clock King
- Herbert Anderson (The Yellow Cab Man) … Harry Hummert
- Eileen O’Neill (Burke’s Law) … Millie Second
- Michael Pate (McLintock!) … Second Hand Three
- Ivan Triesault (The Amazing Transparent Man) … Benson Parkhurst
- Jerry Doggett … Fred Forbes
- Louise Lorimer (Compulsion) … Mrs. Frontenac
- Linda Lorimer … Car Hop
- Sandra Lynn … Girl
- Roger Bacon … Boy
- Sammy Davis Jr. (Ocean’s 11 (1960)) … Himself