EPISODE NUMBERS: 15-16, Production Code 8715

PLOT SUMMARIES:

The Joker Goes to School:
The Clown Prince Of Crime, The Joker, attempts to undermine student morale at Woodrow Roosevelt High School in order to recruit high school dropouts for his gang of Bad Pennies by rigging the school vending machines to give out silver dollars and negotiable stocks and bonds instead of milk. Alerted by Commissioner Gordon, Batman races out to the school. An immediate assembly is made by the school's student leaders: including Richard "Dick" Grayson, Pete, and Susie, the school's head cheerleader. Batman shows up to show slides of mug shots of The Joker, when suddenly, out of the blue, he pops up right in full view of everyone! The Batman attempts to arrest him for loitering on school grounds, but The Joker manages to get off on a mere technicality. Meanwhile, across Gotham City, a bar is held up by a gimmicked jukebox which when activated spouts a double-barrell shotgun; then two stocking-masked hoodlums, actually two of Joker's Bad Pennies, Nick and Two-Bits, rush in to rob the bar's reciepts from the register!

The Joker reconvenes with Nick and Two-Bits at their hideout, The One-Armed Bandit Novelty Company; unbeknownst to everyone else, Susie is also a member of The Joker's Bad Pennies! She arranges to swipe some important exam papers to that The Joker can use them in a blackmail scheme, and also leads The Dynamic Duo into a trap set by The Joker. The Homicidal Harlequin and his Bad Pennies snag The Duo with one of the rigged vending machines which, instead of giving out silver dollars, locks them in shackles and emits sleeping gas! Batman and Robin are transferred to the inside of an insidious moving van, where they are strapped to electric chairs; on the wall is a one-armed bandit, which when activated will release instant and inescapable 50,000 lethal volts of electricity should it turn up three lemons!!!!

He Meets His Match, the Grisly Ghoul :
Just as the deadly one-armed bandit spins 3 lemons, Gotham City suffers a massive blackout! The Joker and his gang beat a harried retreat, just as the cops arrive just in time to cut Batman and Robin out from the electric chairs before the power comes back on! After replaying the audiotape The Caped Crusader secretly made while in the van, The Dynamic Duo were able to make out Susie as one of the members of The Joker's criminal gang, much to Robin's shock. So Robin, in the guise of Dick Grayson, Undercover Agent, tries to trick Susie into leading him into The Bad Pennies and The Joker himself. Unfortunately, Bad Penny member Nick catches immediately on and sends Dick on his way....but not before tipping him off on an impending robbery at a local bar. The Dynamic Duo enter the bar, trigger the gimmicked jukebox which spouts a double-barrell shotgun, deflect its bullets with The Batshield, and use a Batbomb to destroy the crooked machine! They then realise that Susie is in danger and rush to her aid, just as The Joker, realising that The Dynamic Duo is on to Susie, gives her some perfume, which he instructs her to use only after she has planted answers to some important Nationwide Pre-College Exam papers she stole inside one of the rigged machines, not telling her that the perfume has been poisoned!

In the gym, Batman and Robin confront Susie and warn her of impending danger, but she brushes them off. When she applies the poisonous perfume and slumps unconscious, Batman and Robin save her's life by using the Universal Antidote Pills in their utility belts, and she repays them by revealing the whole criminal scheme. Meanwhile, Joker, Nick, and Two-Bits arrive at the school in time to snap an incriminating picture of The Woodrow Roosevelt High School basketball team clutching the exam papers complete with the answers, which the team recieved from a rigged milk machine. The Joker then reaches a new low in crime: he plans to use the picture to disqualify and suspend the otherwise innocent teammembers for cheating, and stop them from playing Disko Tech in the night's big game, for he bet his cash on the opposite team and with the home players out of the game, the opposing team, Disko Tech would win from default. The Dynamic Duo suddenly swing down from the rafters on their Batropes to inform the students that the exam papers were phonies which they planted, rendering The Joker's picture useless. The Caped Crusader and The Boy Wonder then proceed to deliver the punch line, putting The Joker and his Bad Pennies out of circulation! Susie, by the way, is sent to The Wayne Foundation Institute For Delinquent Girls.

WRITTEN BY: Lorenzo Semple Jr.

DIRECTED BY: Murray Golden

CAST:
Cesar Romero (The Joker)
Donna Loren (Susie)
Kip King (Nick)
Greg Benedict (Two Bits)
Bryan O'Byrne (Principal Schoolfield)
Tim O'Kelly (Pete)
Cherie Foster (Cheerleader #1)
Linda Harrison (Cheerleader #2)
Sydney Smith (Vandergilt)
Glenn Allan (Herbie)
Donna Di Martino (Third girl)
Dick Bellis (Joe)
Joan Parker (Fourth girl)
Breeland Rice (Cop)
Jim Henaghan (Fulton)

INTERESTING NOTES:
- Donna Loren main claim to fame was the fact that she was the only real teenager in the "Beach Party" films.

- Linda Harrison (Cheerleader #2) later portrayed Nora in the 1968 20th Century-Fox scifi classic Planet Of The Apes; she was married to Fox president Richard Zanuck at the time of thie episode's production.

- In November 1965, Semple concocted a new villain named The One-Armed Bandit, "whose peculiar kick is gimmicked coin machines of all sorts." The idea ultimately wound up in these episodes with Joker in charge of the One Armed Bandit Novelty Company and vending machines that churned out silver dollars, quarters, answer sheets to exams and knockout gas

- The Joker originally was scheduled to be the first "Bat Villain" to appear, but a scheduling conflict prevented Cesar Romero from appearing on the debut episode.

- The exact same electric chairs to which Batman and Robin are strapped inside the moving van are used again in Season-2 episode #9707-Pt. 2, "Ma Parker."

- The Joker's Las Vegas bookie is named Pete The Swede.