BATMAN: THE SHARK KNIGHT RISES

The first big screen outing of Batman is a blast, and we don't just mean because it has an exploding shark.

Michael Keaton, Val Kilmer, George Clooney, Christian Bale, Ben Affleck and now Robert Pattinson in The Batman. All have donned the Cape and cowl of Batman on the big screen.

But the first caped crusader to be writ large at the cinema was none other than Adam West. Batman, or Batman the movie as it is sometimes known, was released in 1966.

It was released after the first season of the successful TV series in the US, and was used to promote and introduce the series in the rest of the world.

One of the most iconic scenes is at the beginning, where Batman gets attacked by a shark.

The opening scene of Batman finds the Caped Crusader's tracking a yacht. When Batman descends onto it...it vanishes. It turns out it is just a trick and is a hologram. Batman and the ladder ends up being dunked in the water, he's pulled back up with a giant shark clamped onto his leg.

Batman punches and kicks at the (ahem) shark - sometimes he'd go away, sometimes he wouldn't go away.

Even when I was little, the shark looked exactly like what it was, a rubber shark that was only moving because Adam West was flaying his legs around on a ladder on the end of the Batcopter.

But that doesn't stop it being a wonderful scene, it's not meant to be taken seriously, and it still gets referenced over 50 years later.

He's aided in his dilemma by Robin (Burt Ward) who gets the handily available shark repellent bat spray and passes it to Batman whilst hanging upside down.

Shark sprayed it falls off into the ocean and explodes, bearing Chief Brody to exploding a shark at sea by almost a decade.

And all from the pen of Lorenzo Semple Jr, who would pen the scripts to the brilliant The Parallax View, Three Days of the Condor, King Kong (1976) and Flash Gordon. Alas, none of those films would feature a rubber shark.

The Jaws series also has a Batman link, as Michael Caine who played Hoagie in Jaws the Revenge went onto play Alfred, Bruce Wayne's butler and confident, in The Dark Knight trilogy which was directed by Christopher Nolan.

Words by Dean Newman

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