A contemporary adaptation of the iconic 1914 serial, The Perils of Pauline is one Hail Mary of an action comedy, patched together from three episodes of an intended TV series canceled before it could air. The production attempted to capitalize on the mad, mod, quasi-parodic pop sensation known as ABC’s Batman — and boy, is that evident, for good and ill. 

Aging out of the orphanage that’s raised her since infancy, the virginal Pauline (Blue Hawaii cutie Pamela Austin) enters the real world and gets into and out of one scrape after another. Her trouble begins in Africa, where she tutors a 12-year-old royal prince (Rick Natoli, Hang Your Hat on the Wind) who wants her for his harem. The kid’s so horny, he chases her around the palace. She’s also pursued by tigers, dangled over a pit of stock-footage sharks and kidnapped by a gorilla — twice! 

From the sewers to the high seas to even outer space, Pauline’s inadvertent adventures find her pursued by the three über-wealthy men, including Terry-Thomas (The Vault of Horror) and Edward Everett Horton (It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World). But the only one who has her heart is an age-appropriate fellow orphan (’nilla crooner Pat Boone), who spends a chunk of Perils in a block of ice floating in the ocean. Trust me; it’s a long story, figuratively and literally. 

Innocence personified, Pauline doesn’t go chasing waterfalls; they just seem to find her. Every time she faces danger, the parlor piano music kicks in and the film is sped up, all the better to ape its chapter-play origins. Pre-“talkies,” silent films, including serials like The Perils of Pauline, relied on exaggerated physicality to help impart emotions. That performative spirit haunts this update through barn-broad slapstick — a style that pays off in the whimsically entertaining prologue, then lacks ingenuity thereafter. The real cliffhanger is how much of your bat-time you’ll cede before changing the bat-channel.

Try as the producers might to cobble the individual eps into a functional feature, it just doesn’t work in the more demanding format of cinema — even the semi-spoofy kind. Prestige TV, Pauline ’67 was not. Adam West’s Batman influence notwithstanding, this flick lands amid the female-fronted, spy-fi likes of Fathom, Modesty Blaise and Deadlier Than the Male. As with Pauline, each is a sexed-up send-up of pre-existing IP … and we know how those turned out: best viewed via their posters. —Rod Lott