One of Batman’s Best Villains Was Inspired by These Universal Horror Legends

Clayface (Don Donahue) holding a knife in 'Batman: Caped Crusader.'

The Big Picture In the vast catalog of Batman villains out there, few come close to having the longevity and creativity of Clayface. Sure, he's not Joker, the Penguin, Two-Face, or Catwoman, but Clayface has made his own mark on the Batman mythos in ways that many Golden and Silver Age antagonists could only dream of.

The Batman: Caped Crusader episode "...And Be a Villain" expertly adapts the plot of this iconic Batman tale into animation. While Julie Madison doesn't appear here and Dick Grayson's Robin is noticeably absent , the Caped Crusader adaptation does the character, and his mythos, total justice. Basil Karlow goes up against the titular Dark Knight after he first kills members of the feature film production, while kidnapping the woman he's come to love.

"I shall never forget the scene in which the Phantom's female captive ripped the mask from his face," Kane recalled. "This was one of the most shocking scenes ever seen on film." The Phantom's appearance in his original 1925 silent film was the basis for Kane's appearance for the original Clayface, giving him the same ghastly cadence as Lon Chaney. But Chaney wasn't Kane's only source of inspiration for the monstrous killer.

In real life, both Boris Karloff and Lon Chaney embraced their strange careers, and each had their own unique esteem for their respective monsters. "I wanted to remind people that the lowest types of humanity may have within them the capacity for supreme self-sacrifice," Chaney once wrote about his films, highlighting The Phantom of the Opera and The Hunchback of Notre Dame in particular . "These are the stories which I wish to do.

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