CHRISTMAS SPECIAL: Batman Returns (1992)

Happy holidays, listeners! Every year, we take on an unconventional Christmas movie around the Yuletide season, and this time we (along with returning guest Mark Soloff of Blastropodcast) dip back to investigate Tim Burton's deeply strange, fascinatingly weird superhero flick Batman Returns!

After Burton's first Batman revitalized the superhero movie as a pop culture phenomenon, he decided to get real strange with it in Batman Returns. Ostensibly, the film features a pitched battle between the Caped Crusader (Michael Keaton) and his arch-nemeses, the Penguin (Danny DeVito) and Catwoman (Michelle Pfeiffer); but it manifests itself in a strange story about mayoral races, masquerade balls and fake news campaigns to discredit Batman. The most dastardly plan anyone has in the film is Trumpian billionaire Max Schreck (Christopher Walken), who schemes to, like... build a power plant? 

None of the plot dressing matters, though, since the film itself is a dazzling display of Burton's biggest idiosyncrasies - pale outcasts with mountains of guyliner, Gothic cityscapes, and mountains of quirky Danny Elfman scoring. This is the least Batman-y Batman film to date (and we should know), which might well be the biggest point in its favor.

Anyway, listen to us debate the film's finer, freakier points, along with our custom drinking game!

(Thanks to our sponsor Safehouse Chicago as part of the Chicago Podcast Coop!)