Here’s the deal: I recently spent some time clicking through my medical records in my healthcare provider’s online portal. This is what has started to pass for entertainment after months upon months spent living in quarantine. Unbeknownst to me, my doctors/therapists/podiatrists were all required to enter notes in a digital log after each visit. I must say, I was shocked to see that a lot of the entries described me as being “easily agitated” and also suffering from OCD (not the podiatrist though...she just talked about my plantar fasciitis). My first thought was, “I can’t believe my doctor thinks I’m easily agitated! I’ll fucking KILL HIM!!!” After I slapped a couple of door jambs and calmed myself down, I tried to think rationally about these various secret diagnoses, particularly the OCD. I thought of the reviews on this website and how quite a few of them begin with a personal story about how I needed to see such-and -such film the minute it opened in theaters because my actual life depended on it. How many times have you heard me say “I was so upset that I missed the opening night of Uncle Buck, I cried for 48 hours straight and lost my sense of smell for six months?” Probably one time, if you read my review of Uncle Buck. I’m not a medical doctor, but I feel like the behavior I just described is textbook OCD. Having a pathological necessity to be the first in line for the latest hot flick or toy or gadget is hardly a unique phenomenon. Nor is cracking someone is the jaw when they grab that last Furby before you can get to it. If you want to spend four days living in a tent in subzero temperatures in the parking lot of a Best Buy just to be the first to get your hands on a PS5, who am I to judge!? Because, you see, there’s this one “first in line” episode from my past that stands out as particularly outrageous, especially considering that my interest in watching the film in question was middling at best. I’m talking about Batman Returns, Tim Burton’s follow up to his record-shattering 1989 flick Batman, a film that arguably gave birth to the summer mega blockbuster as we would come to know it over the last three decades. As I have mentioned time and time again, I do not enjoy superhero films. Any of them. I would rather spend three hours in a sensory deprivation tank than watch one of those Avengers movies. The Nicholson/Keaton Batman, though, was marketed aggressively toward 10 year-olds (like me) and I dove in whole hog. I had the trading cards, the ball cap, and that Prince soundtrack album with all of the weird sex songs on it. I still think it’s the only superhero movie worth watching ...but again...it’s one of a small handful that I have actually watched...so maybe don’t listen to me.
Batman Returns, which opened on June 19th, 1992, wasn’t even near the top of my Hotly Anticipated Summer Movies ‘92 list (the #1 spot was reserved for the Eddie Murphy flick Boomerang, which is horribly underrated, and also, screamingly inappropriate viewing for a 13 year-old ! I think we had to buy tickets for Cool World and then sneak into Boomerang). A crew of recent 8th grade graduates from Grafton Middle School were planning on rolling into the 12PM Saturday matinee of Batman Returns...and we were planning on rolling DEEP. At least a dozen heads, boys, girls, and all. In the week leading up to the screening, I would lie awake in my waterbed riddled with anxiety, trying to tour manage the event in my head. How the hell was I going to make sure that everyone got tickets!? AND twelve seats in the same row?? You see, kids (pulls out old man soapbox...clears throat) nowadays you can reserve your seat online and have a plate of steak frites with bearnaise sauce and a glass of Cab Franc waiting for you before they roll the coming attractions. Back in the early 90’s you just had to pull up and pray. I knew we’d have to show up at least an hour early, if not earlier. I ran the details of my latest neuroses-filled cinematic escapade by my mother, who also functioned as my long-suffering chauffeur. “I have to work early Saturday morning, so you’re shit outta luck,” she replied like a bucket of cold water. My mom is an ornery cuss just like me. It’s where my salty tongue comes from! I paced around our living room covered in flop sweat, gray hairs beginning to prematurely sprout around my temples. “But...but,...what if you just dropped me off on your way to work then?” I stammered. “At 7AM!?” she asked, “Hey, your dime, kiddo!” Everything was going to work out after all. 7 AM was five hours prior to showtime. I figured arriving on the scene that early would guarantee me a spot near the front of the line, right? Oh man...you have no idea! Early Saturday morning we pulled into the parking lot of the White City Triplex, which sat in the far corner of a shopping plaza on the banks of Lake Quinsigamond, which is apparently one of the top rated lakes in the country for hosting competitive rowing races. It’s also where our Datsun 280ZX went to its watery grave after it was stolen from outside of our three-decker...so there’s also that. Much to my surprise and my surprise alone, there was no one lined up to see Batman Returns at 7 AM. I hopped out of my mom’s car, walked to the front of the building, planted my feet, and just STOOD. For five hours. With nothing but the shirt on my back and the $3.50 in the front pocket of my Umbro shorts. No walkman to listen to my recently purchased cassingle of Tom Cochrane’s “Life is a Highway” on. No books, no magazines, no deck of cards, no yo-yo, no food, no water. NOTHING! Just me, alone with my own sick thoughts. I mean...spoiling a movie was a long, slow process in 1992. Why the hell was I standing out there for all that time? Bragging rights??
Off to my left ran Route 9, a four-lane thoroughfare that was, and still is, choked with traffic pretty much around the clock. At some point during my epic stand around, my reverie of blankness was interrupted by the sound of screeching brakes and shattering glass. Two cars in the eastbound lane had collided! A dude in an ‘86 Dodge Caravan rear ended a dude in a Honda Prelude, causing the Honda to gently careen into the jersey barrier. It was a fairly low stakes car accident as car accidents go. Maybe a broken tail light or two and some minor cosmetic damage. These dudes were hopping mad, though! They leapt from their respective vehicles all “motherfucker motherfucker...I’m gonna sue/kill you!!” Not much I could do, being a child and all, but some brave couple in a Ford pickup pulled over and got between the dudes while someone ran into Burger King to call 911. Within 20 minutes the scene was swarming with police cars, ambulances, and firetrucks. Even the Umass Life Flight Helicopter did a flyover, but prolly only because the hospital was a literal stone’s throw away, on the opposite side of the narrow lake. Maybe the chopper pilot was having a slow morning or something...I don’t know. It was abundantly clear that no one was injured, but both drivers requested medical attention and were both eventually laid out on the asphalt with collars on their necks and oxygen masks on their faces. They were loaded into ambulances for a $1000 ride to the hospital that was 1/18th of a mile away. Next came the flatbed tow trucks to sweep up the debris and remove the still-drivable vehicles from the road. This little car crash side drama took about 90 minutes, soup to nuts. And by the time the last remnants of the minor violence had been cleared from the scene, I was STILL the only person standing there waiting for the goddamn movie! Like, the ushers and popcorn hustlers were probably still riding the snooze button and I had already spent three hours in front of their place of business, waiting for them to come sell me a ticket and tear it in half. When my friends finally started to trickle in around 11:15 they refused to believe the car accident story, which was already ancient history by that point. Nary a red sliver of busted tail light remained as evidence. I was possibly in a manic state by then, swinging wildly from “I can’t believe we’re finally gonna see Batman!” to “Fine I don’t care I don’t even want to see this stupid fuckin’ movie I don’t care I’ll go see Sister Act instead I don’t even care!!!” People did eventually start to queue up, and the movie was sold out, but it wasn’t THAT sold out! We could’ve easily strolled in at 11:45 and still purchased tickets. Once we had our Butterfingers and extra large Mountain Dew’s we finally took our seats in the dark, air conditioned theater and watched Batman Returns. What I remember is that I remember everything that happened in the five hours I spent waiting to watch Batman Returns far more vividly than I remember anything that happened in Batman Returns.
I decided to watch Batman Returns for only the second time because it is Christmas Week and I am shit out of Christmas flicks to write about. Before you get all aggro and hurl your hot chocolate and peppermint schnapps at your tablet, please know that I plucked this film from someone else’s list of Xmas movies. I realize there are reams of contentious articles that have been written about whether certain films (Die Hard, Gremlins, etc) are actually Xmas movies or merely Xmas-adjacent. This would/should be amusing but people are serious as a heart attack about this shit. Check out the comments section of one of these articles if you have a minute to waste. Peg T. from Malden, MA says that Die Hard bears Satan’s fingerprints and is an affront to her family’s Christian values! Holy smokes! Me? I could give a figgy fuck either way. Right now I can’t run to the 7-11 across the street from my apartment for a bag of Hershey’s Kisses without worrying about potentially contracting a deadly virus...so I tend to worry more about that and less about whether The Ref is still a Christmas movie even though Kevin Spacey is a sexual predator. Does the flick have a Christmas tree? Works for me! Does Eyes Wide Shut make me want to spin my Nat King Cole vinyl and also attend a masked orgy? Yes and Yes. Double win! Man, I am RAMBLING! We should really get around to talking about Batman at some point. I’m surprised those doctors didn’t include logorrhea on my rap sheet!
Anyway, what happens is this: We open at a mansion in the City of Gotham, where a couple of local upper crusties have just given birth to something fetid and foul. We know this baby child is no bueno ‘cuz he grunts and growls in his bazinet and chows the family cat. His mom and pops look on in terror, clutching their martnins, and HOLY CRAP the dad is Pee Wee Herman!! He was persona non grata in Hollywood by 1992. Maybe he filmed his cameo before he got busted doing the five knuckle shuffle in a Florida porno theater. Big kudos to Timmy Burton for leaving his scenes in this flick. Pee Wee and his wife look at this fell ghoul and shoot each other looks of “ain’t nobody got time for this shit!” They wrap this what-have-you in swaddling clothes, take him to the nearest river, and dump him in the drink. He floats on down down down, ok, down through the subterranean tunnels below Gotham, where he is taken in by a raft of penguins. The opening credits roll. Right away I noticed that the screenplay was written by Daniel Waters, whose big credit up to that point was the profoundly un-kid friendly flick Heathers. I wonder if this means that Batman will ask someone to fuck him gently with a chainsaw!? I guess we’ll see! Also--whereas Gotham ‘89 was all sleek and supermodern, this film looks like it’s set in the early 1900’s. The gentlemen all wear top hats and carry canes and newsies prowl the streets hawking their morning editions. The main set piece, Gotham Square, is an homage to Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, a flick I discussed endlessly during my four years at film school but never actually watched. I feel like the producers went to Burton and said “look, since you made us a chunk of change on the last pic we’ll let you do your sad outcast jig if you promise to blow a bunch of shit up at the end.” And Burton said--cool. If Nightmare Before Christmas Burton is your Burton, there’s much to like here visually.
We settle into present day Gotham City, which is decked out like the wide aisle of a CVS in the middle of December. We meet local business bigwig Max Shreck, who is played by the world’s most impersonated actor and man who has been 75 for the last 30 years Christopher Walken. Shreck is supposed to be an homage to the Nosferatu vampire, not the green ogre who did not yet exist when this film was made. Shreck is discussing his plans to open a massive power plant with Gotham’s mayor but the mayor is refusing to play ball. While Shreck and the mayor trade unpleasantries, Shreck’s secretary Selina Kyle (Michelle Pfeiffer) dawdles around in the background looking all mousy. We know she is unsexy because she wears eyeglasses. Shreck and the mayor head outside to attend the lighting of the Gotham Christmas tree, which is all the proof I need that this film is a Christmas film. You don’t go lighting Christmas trees in non-Christmas movies, DO YOU!? Before they can do the honors, a massive gift box creeps on the scene. It’s being driven by the guy who played the subway ghost in Ghost and real life Ghost Vincent Schiavelli, so you know that can’t be good! The gift box explodes, raining evil henchmen all over the town square like lollipops. The gift box is equipped with a friggin’ Gatling Gun so old Vincent takes aim at the crowd and blows holes in about 200 innocent bystanders. Not really, though. There’s a lot of gunplay in this film but few people actually receive gun-related injuries. The bullets mostly hit the Christmas tree and shatter bulbs and lights (“Shoot….the glass!”--Hans Gruber). Nothing a really solid dustpan and brush couldn’t take care of. A voice screams out for Batman and the Bat-Signal suddenly illuminates the night sky. Meanwhile at Wayne Manor, our dude Michael Keaton is lounging around in his Bruce Wayne costume, looking all glum, chum. Maybe he’s thinking “if only Pacific Heights had done better at the box office I wouldn’t be stuck putting on this silly ass cape again.” But suit up he does. He hops in the Batmobile and rolls into town pressing all of the right buttons, neutralizing about a dozen bad guys. Le sigh. In the middle of the melee, Shreck is kidnapped and brought to the multipurpose underground city zoo/villain lair, where he comes face to face with...The Penguin! Oh shit, remember that gross baby from two paragraphs ago?? I guess he was raised by penguins and went on to form an evil crew of fucked up carnies and Crow (the movie) cosplayers called The Red Triangle Gang. What does The Penguin look like? A jaundiced potato stuffed inside of a pair of shit-stained pajamas with the head of Tiny Tim (the dead ukulele player) and the voice of Danny DeVito (because it is Danny DeVito). The Penguin tells Shreck that he’s a reasonable dude...that all he wants to do is to enter society and not be scorned because of his appearance. He also wants to search for his birth parents. Shreck is like “I’d love to help but I gotta practice my dance steps for that Fatboy Slim video. Maybe try Ancestry.com?” But see--The Penguin has the goods on Shreck. He knows that he’s crooked as a barrel of snakes and plans on profiteering with his power plant and whatever whatever. Shreck knows he’s dead to rights, so he agrees to bring the Penguin up to Gotham and help him press some flesh.
Meanwhile aboveground, Selina arrives home from work and spends a good ten minutes talking out loud to herself about how slovenly and unloved she is. She plays a bunch of disappointing answering machine messages and laments that her cats are having more exciting sexual escapades than she is. Dude...WE GET IT! No one loves nasty ass Michelle Pfeiffer! Move on, already! Selina realizes that she left the Xerox machine on and has to rush back to the office, where she encounters Shreck. He’s in a foul mood, as one tends to be post-kidnapping. She unwisely mentions that she accidentally accessed Shreck’s secret files and knows of his nefarious plot to steal power from Gotham with his, umm, power plant. Ok, so this movie is like Chinatown but with no incest and power instead of water. Got it! Shreck is super PO’d. Selina says “you can’t kill me..I...OH DAMN!!! He throws her right out the fuckin’ window! An awning breaks her fall, but when you are thrown from the 80th floor, there’s not much fall to be broken. She’s dead. Within seconds, she’s smothered in kittens, which is adorable! Then they start to gnaw at her flesh, which is less adorable. She wakes up but now she’s some sort of...cat zombie? She returns to her apartment, where she immediately chugs a gallon of milk, which is terrible for cats!! They didn’t know about all of this back in ‘92, but if your cat really needs something to wash down their free range, grain free chicken pate, give them a squirt of organic oat milk. Here I should mention that I have a cat named Gary, who has about five times as many Instagram followers as this website you are reading does. That’s OK--I still love ya, Gar! Anyway, after she’s full of dairy, Selina puts all of her stuffed animals in her garbage disposal, destroys her own apartment, and starts licking her own butt. Now only two of these things I just told you are true but I ain’t saying which ones! She tears open her closet and pulls out her one BDSM outfit and voila! It’s Catwoman! Let the double entendre’s flow like skim!
The Penguin makes his entree into society by foiling a bogus kidnapping plot. They hook him up with an attic apartment and agree to let him search for his parents, who are dead as Dillinger. He learns that his birth name is Oswald Cobblepot, which sounds an awful lot like Chester Copperpot, who was a character in a movie that is better than this one. I see here that I wrote “Danny DeVito crawls out of a couch naked” in my notes, but I think I was just trying to remind myself to watch a certain episode of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Over at the Wayne Manor, Bruce is flipping through articles about the Penguin’s gang on microfiche while his long suffering butler Alfred decorates the Xmas tree. Actually, Alred still has TWO Joel Schumacher Batman flicks to act in, so maybe he’s only medium suffering at this point. Or simply: suffering. Bruce thinks that The Penguin’s has more malicious intentions because he’s a gruesome talking penguin. He brings his concerns to Shreck, who brushes him off. While these two are chatting, Selina appears sans eyeglasses, hair all mussed into an I’ve-just-been-sexed shape. Remember: glasses=homely house frou. No glasse=sex bomb! Oh, she also has a bandaid on her forehead, cuz falling out of an 80 story building will scratch up your dome something awful. Bruce gives her the elevator eyes. Hard.
Shreck goes to see the Penguin bearing two gifts: a dead fish (for eating) and news that he has started an exploratory committee to feel out the Penguin’s prospects for being elected mayor of Gotham. Dude has got a campaign office and everything! Shreck figures he can use the Penguin as a puppet while he siphons power from Gotham, literally and figuratively. “You’ll be my own personal Reichstag Fire,” Shreck tells him. Man, all of this shit went WAY over my head back in the day. Who knew that the Penguin from Batman Returns would foretell the rise of Donald Trump!? While The Penguin is being introduced to his staff, a campaign worker makes a comment that rankles the Penguin, so he grabs the guy and bites his friggin’ nose off. Blood is spilled all over the office. Happy summer movie season, kids!!
As night falls on Gotham, the Catwoman heads out to Catwoman it up. She meows a bunch and snaps the heads off of mannequin dolls with her whip. She attempts to blow up one of Schreck’s department stores but Batman intervenes and they have the first of like 15 rooftop fight scenes. Batman is all like “who ARE you!?” and I’m like DUDE--her face is barely obscured! She’s clearly that secretary you were eyeballing in Schreck’s office earlier in the day! Duh! So now these two hate each other like cats and bats. The next day, Catwoman goes to visit the Penguin in his boudoir. When he sees her he says “just the pussy I’ve been looking for!” She says she wants him to help her frame Batman for some future murder becuase, what, she already hates him THAT MUCH!? This all feels a bit thin to me, y’all. The Penguin asks why he should trust “some cat broad.” They talk about scented ointments and Catwoman sprawls out on the bed to give herself a tongue bath. The Penguin gets all excited and micturates all over himself. I wonder how many children walked out of this movie and asked their parents to drive them to MacDonald’s so they could order a Happy Meal with a Batman Returns toy inside. My guess: zero children.
In a crazy twist that I’m sure NO ONE saw coming, Bruce Wayne asks Selina Kyle if she’d like to join him at his manor for an obligatory dinner scene (all of these flicks have one). While Alfred dutifully tops off their glasses of riesling, Selena asks Bruce if he has ever been in a serious relationship before. He says yes--to Vicky Vale, but that their relationship ended badly when Vicky Vale let Prince record the two of them having sex and set it to music before releasing it as a single that few people purchased. They make out a little, Bruce and Selena do, but they keep it over the clothes. The next night, though, they’re back in costume and back kicking and scratching and licking the shit out of each other. Catwoman even manages to piss off the Penguin, who calls her a lousy minx and threatens to have her spayed. He throws her off yet ANOTHER building, but now that whole “cats have 9 lives” countdown begins in earnest (7 to go, according to my math). Batman tries to hightail it back to the Batcave but the bad guys done gone ahead and jacked up the Batmobile. He careens around town smashing into everything in sight, driving the movie’s budget skyward. He escapes unscathed but now he’s wicked cheesed. At some point, he burns a CD of the Penguin clowning on the people of Gotham. When the Penguin goes to give his next stump speech, Batman hacks into the PA and plays the Penguin popping off. (“And when you’re famous, they let you do it!”). It’s his Access Hollywood tape moment! The Penguin looks at Shreck like “help a Penguin out here, man!” but Shreck looks back at him like “ehh, you’re on your own now, bird buddy!” The crowd starts to boo and throw eggs and tomatoes. Luckily, the Penguin carries an umbrella with him at all times. Unluckily, his umbrella is also a machine gun, which he trains on the crowd before opening fire (again...loads of bullets...no deaths!). Mayoral hopes dashed, the Penguin decides to bare his teeth. “I’m not a human,” he howls, “I’m an animal!” He announces that he’s going to kidnap all of the firstborn sons and daughters of Gotham while they sleep in their beds and send them to a dark, icy grave. Like, holy shit, dude! You are gonna murder CHILDREN!? This shit might give me nightmares now and I’m in my FORTIES.
Despite this credible threat, Max Shreck refuses to cancel his annual holiday masquerade ball. Dude’s still gotta get HIS, right?? Everyone and their friggin’ mother shows up and they have scallops wrapped in bacon going ‘round and a cover band that only knows how to play Rick James’ “Superfreak.” Looks like a good ass time! Bruce Wayne arrives sans mask (irony). He locates Selena and they dance to this Siouxsie and the Banshees tune that was the only pop song associated with this movie. Don’t get me wrong--I love Siouxie Sioux as much as the next cat...but one single single isn’t much of a substitute for an uncomfortably sexual full-length Prince album. Bruce and Selena kiss under the mistletoe and reveal their true identities to each other. Like they didn’t already know!? “Does this mean we have to start fighting now,” Selena/Catwoman asks. That’s a solid line...I’ll give ‘em that. Suddenly, the room is rocked by an explosion and the Penguin emerges from underneath the ballroom floor like the Buzz Killington that he is. He glances around the room at the people dancing the Roger Rabbit and noshing on tuna tartare crostinis and screams “look at all of you dressed up like a bunch of JERKS! My minions are out there RIGHT NOW preparing to kill ya kids!” You know--I’m on the Penguin’s side here. He DID tell them that was his plan! These rich assholes have no one but themselves to blame! The Penguin releases waddles upon waddles of penguins with frickin missiles strapped to their backs onto the streets of Gotham. Apparently Warner Bros. got some serious static about this scene because they used real penguins...but it died out quickly. It’s not like they used real missiles for chrissakes. The killer baby penguins are supposed to blow up Gotham but Batman jams the signal and redirects the missiles toward the zoo. The bombs start to fly and it’s like ten straight minutes of explosions. My eyes start to glaze over. The Penguin kidnaps Max Shreck aaaaaagin and retreats to his underground lair. Batman flies his Batplane right up in there like what’s up and knocks the Penguin into a river of toxic waste, where he turns into Jack Nichiolson’s Joker from the last movie. I mean...I wish. Shreck tries to escape but Selena shows up with her Catwoman costume shittly applied. She’s hanging out of that thing big time. If there was any doubt about her true identity it has evaporated like my desire to finish writing this review. Batman tells Catwoman that they should apprehend Shreck and turn him over to the proper authorities. He even rips his own mask off, Batman does, and it looks chintzy as fuck! Was it made out of rubber?? It looks like one of those costumes you used to buy in a box at Toys-R-Us back in the day, remember those? Shreck pulls out his pistol and shoots Batman but dude is impervious to the effects of bullets. He starts to shoot Catwoman, who still has a few lives to spare, but her tank is on E! Catwoman grabs a live powerline and shoves it in Shreck’s mouth like he’s the shark at the end of Jaws 2. She gives him an open mouth power kiss and they both explode! The Penguin emerges from the toxic sludge looking like Jason Voorhees at the end of Friday 1 and promptly drops dead. The penguins carry him off to his penguin grave. I’m gonna miss that nasty bastard, not gonna lie.
One night however much time later, Bruce Wayne is being chauffeured around town when catches a glimpse of what he thinks might be Catwoman in an alley (she possibly used up her 9th life in that big explosion? It’s super unclear). Bruce calls out for Alfred to stop the car. He runs into the alley but it’s a real cat...not an adult woman actress miming cat. He decides to take the cat home with him. I don’t know, dude--you got a litter box and toys and scratch posts at home? Cats can be a lot of work! They head to the manor for a subdued Xmas celebration. Alfred wishes Bruce a Merry Christmans “and goodwill toward men (long pause) AND women!” Alfred the butler--practicing inclusivity since ‘92! The flick ends with a shot of the Batsignal burning up the sky above Gotham City. Before we fade to black, the outline of Catwoman’s head appears at the bottom of the screen! She still had more lives to live after all! Me? I feel like I used up most of my lives waiting to watch this movie that Saturday morning back in 1992. But wait--why didn’t Catwoman get her own movie then?? Was the Catwoman they made with Halle Berry supposed to be a belated follow up to this flick? I know people HATED that Catwoman but I’m not sure if it was because the movie was terrible or if people are just racist. Probably both. I suppose they could still make a direct sequel to Batman Returns though, right? Keaton? He’s been hot again ever since Birdman. DeVito and Walken are still alive, even if their characters are not. I saw Michelle Pfeiffer play Bernie Madoff’s wife in an HBO movie a few years back and she looks like she could still rock some bondage gear at 62. Bring back Tim Burton to direct and I would totally watch this new Batman on opening day...on HBO Max on my couch in my own goddamn living room just like everyone else. The end.