User Reviews

"The Unkindest Tut of All" marks the fourth appearance of Victor Buono's King Tut, following a trio of two part episodes the first two seasons. This time our famed Yale professor gets a bump on the head at a love-in, and as Tut becomes a prognosticator of crime, setting up the theft of a priceless set of Egyptian scrolls at Barbara Gordon's library, while the police are away on a wild goose chase. One of his Tutlings manages to bug the Batmobile, enabling the monarch to decipher the location of the Batcave right under Stately Wayne Manor, meaning that Batman and Bruce Wayne are one and the same! Buono is, as always, an absolute joy in the role, tossing off what appears to be ad libs directed at the square Batman and dullard Bruce Wayne. Originally scripted by Stanley Ralph Ross to be a single two part storyline that ended up being made separately, the connection between the two the twin dummy used to fool the Egyptian, his squeaky voiced moll played by pretty Patti Gilbert. Larry Duran is credited as Tutling Nubis, though the better known James Gammon is curiously unbilled as Osiris. This episode's one-time-only librarian is played by Cathleen Cordell, about to die of strangulation while Batman goes off on yet another lecture on good citizenship!

Installed in a tent, King Tut organizes several press conferences in which he pretends to predict future crimes to confuse the actions of the police and to be able to seize some valuable Egyptian papyri that are exhibited in the National Library. At the same time, he gets one of his henchmen to place a hidden transmitter in the batmobile to track it down and discover the exact location of the batcave. An extremely funny episode with a hilarious script and brilliant performances by Victor Buono and Patti Gilbert.

Some great moments to be found here. In my youth I really liked the sci-fic start with Dick communicating with Bruce by talking into a glowing ball. Kid's like that stuff and it was a nice change from the usual start to a Batman show.

King Tut is a scream with "A delayed echo in here?" and "He's going to go straight to the Bat-cave and put on that corny blue outfit". Even in my youth I found these lines funny.

On the negative side. More of those cheap sets with a black, totally black, background. And Gordon goes for one of the oldest and dumbest jokes in the book, when talking to someone on the phone he says: "You don't say, you don't say, you don't say?". You know the rest.

This is well worth watching for Victor Buono as King Tut as Tut is the second most amusing bad guy on the series, The Joker is the most amusing.