Not quite fanfilm, not quite mashup, the movie Silent Shadow of the Bat-Man is actually a work of art. Filmmaker Andre Perkowski brought together a series of silent films from the 1920s and 1930s to tell his own version of the Batman story. The results are spellbinding. Everything from the moody style reminscent of Murnau’s Nosferatu to the haunting music is expertly blended together into a Film showing what the Batman would have been like for a silent film audience.

Considering that the Batman was actually first published in May 1939, silent films were long since replaced by talkies and studios were already releasing big-budget color films using the three-strip technicolor in the mid-1930s, there would never have been a silent Batman film.

Have some fun looking at these clips and reminiscing about a film that could have been but never was. Just like the time in 1946 when Orson Welles was looking at producing a Batman movie.

Oh, you never heard about that? For good reason – it never happened. The Orson Welles Batman project was the creation of Mark Millar in 2003, where he penned a column that was essentially a hoax. But what a hoax it was. Here’s a page that describes the Batman Orson Welles hoax in detail.

Let’s file that under movies that should have been, but never were.

Enjoy the film.

“According to the article, Welles had talked George Raft signing up for the role of Two-Face, James Cagney as The Riddler, Basil Rathbone as The Joker and (get this) Marlene Dietrich as Catwoman!
As to the role of Batman, the column said that was a sticking point between Welles and the studio.
Welles wanted to portray Batman and Bruce Wayne, and the studio wanted Gregory Peck.”