Na-na-na-na-na-na-Bat … woman?

On the not-so-sullen streets of Acapulco, a lone vigilante of the daylight stalks her chubby prey using a sporty convertible, a few police pals and, best of all, a lucha libre alter ego with the exact same name: the Batwoman.

When fellow wrestlers are found dead on the beach, she’s called in to help solve these crafty crimes in her very sleek and hyper-sexy costume, which is basically a black bikini with a Batman cowl; if I saw her in real life, my knees would shake, too, but probably not out of fear.

The murderers are (somewhat) evil scientists and their middle-aged henchmen, lounging in lab coats on a luxury yacht near the beach. So powerful is their supposed reign of terror, that at one point the Batwoman shows up on a much smaller speedboat, only to be told to go home … and it works!

In between chasing down leads, of course the Batwoman tears up the mat, practicing wrestling moves and lucha throws, oddly enough in an even bulkier Bat-costume — think her superhero outfit, but as a sweatsuit instead. Still, the various bouts are a great way to stretch out this already thin superhero soup.

Maura Monti, as the Batwoman, is a defiantly sensual presence who does a good job of talking down baddies and clothespinning opponents alike. It’s a strong message The Batwoman should have really gone out on, but instead, it ends with her utterly afraid of a mouse while her police pals laugh at her expense. —Louis Fowler

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In space, no one can hear you jog, trot and, most especially, run.

That’s actually pretty good, because crazed environmental astronaut Freeman Lowell (Bruce Dern) goes on the lam — the space-lam, that is — into the farthest reaches of the universe, all to protect his beloved plants, including flowers, shrubs and all the cute little insects and animals living in and around them. He’s silently running, see?

With Earth’s precious resources pretty much dead, most of humanity is encased in domes and that can’t be too fun to hang out in. On a massive spaceship carrying one of the few living gardens, Lowell — and a trio of irresponsible living bodies, natch — are in outer space, testing various theories about plant growth or something to that effect.

However, mission control eventually turns tail and decides to blow up the whole project for the sake of capitalism. Lowell goes suitably nuts and kills off his trio of shipmates — thank you, by the way — and heads out into deep space with his newly reprogrammed robot pals in order to save the lives of the remaining plants.

As simplistic as ’70s sci-fi can be, Silent Running is a strange amalgam of subgenres, from, of course, the environmental fear film to a wacky robots flick, but it mostly works thanks to a delightfully off-kilter Dern; in every scene, he looks close to strangling someone, but hopefully not director Douglas Trumbull, who gives the sci-fi film his special-effects all.

Like the spaceship in the film, in the end, Silent Running just explodes under the weight of its own self-importance, something that is, by me, sorely missed in many prophetic science-fiction films, the Joan Baez soundtrack definitely included. —Louis Fowler

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