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children, but the juvenile humor attracted many fans of the grown up variety too. Thanks to the popular TV series starring Burt Ward and Adam West, Batman had an audience ready and waiting. The film is a glorious technicolour fantasy, with our ever virtuous superheroes just as entertainingly inept as always.

ONE MILLION YEARS BC, JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS, THE THIEF OF BAGHDAD, PLANET OF THE APES

The 1960s also saw a spate of historical fantasy imaginings. Raquel Welch set many hearts-a-flutter, brazenly clad only in her cavegirl fur bikini in One Million Years BC (1966). This film boasted special effects genius Ray Harryhausen as visual effects creator, as did the hugely superior 1963 epic Jason and the Argonauts. The epitome of fantasy film-making, Jason and the Argonauts follows the Greek hero on a quest to find the golden fleece, and features amazing battles with monsters created by Harryhausen. Arthur Lubin's The Thief of Baghdad (1961) follows a similar epic quest. In stark contrast, Planet of the Apes (1968) imagines a terrifying future world where man has become enslaved by apes. The visual effects for all these films earn them a place in the fantasy drama history books.

YELLOW SUBMARINE, THE LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS
The Beatles were enjoying their heydey in the swinging sixties when Yellow Submarine (1968) was made. A multi-colored magical fairy tale, inspired by the music, and featuring a madcap animated world of wonder, Yellow Submarine is a vivid fantasy. A different, but equally crazy kind of film was The Little Shop Of Horrors (1960). This murderous story from B movie legend Roger Corman concerns a carnivorous plant who convinces his owner to start killing people for him to eat. It's played for laughs, and as such creates comedy of the very blackest kind.

The sixties was certainly a decade of great fantasy films, many of which are still remembered with copious affection today. The brief snapshot above gives a general flavor of the decades classics, although obviously there were many different kinds of films produced as well. As far as fantasy films go, it would appear the general theme of the sixties was escapism. This is something cinema has always been happy to provide, and, indeed, audiences have always been very happy to enjoy.

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