The Bat Summer of '89

[K.B.]

^ great story SHADOWBAT69

Your collection turned out great btw

 

[Lazlo Panaflex]

While living in Ecuador the movie premiered there in November but I knew of the hype because I was reading imported U.S. Batman comics, but in South America news travels slow so the public wasn't even aware of a Batman movie until after it's U.S. debut.

I remember my theater was so packed that my mother, brother, sister and myself had to sit in separate seats but seeing the WB logo followed by Danny Elfman's theme blew me away.

But it seems that the Ecuadorian public were expecting something light like the Superman movies and were quite confused at the serious tone of Batman, and prior to the film Michael Keaton's earlier movies were rarely shown in Ecuador so the public didn't care for his performance or didn't even know of his casting controversy.

On the other hand a local TV station started re-airing the 60's Batman show but the public didn't tune in for it, go figure.

I haven't been back to Ecuador since 1990 so I don't know how the other Bat-films were received.

 

[Joker]

I was only 3...so yeah, I dont remember anything about the actual summer...I do remember the first time I saw it though, must have been in '91, so I would have been late 5 or early 6...my mom dropped me off at my aunts house cause she had to work and my dad was out of town (he's a musician, and back then he still went on little local tours with his band/s)...but anyway, she only had me for a bit, so she decided to just let me watch Batman, which she had on VHS...my aunt is rich, and even by todays standards she had a fairly big tv back then...I remember the opening, with the music, and the maze, and slowly realizing it was a bat symbol that we were going around...I remember the first scene ("there aint no bat!")...but mostly I remember how much Nicholson got to me. I knew he was the villain, but something with me just clicked with that performance...the over the top goofiness mixed with how sinister and crazy he was...him dancing in the museum among the bodies of the people he killed and destroying paintings...the moment it ended, I knew I was hooked...a year later, Batman Returns was the first movie I ever saw in a theater...

 

[Nepenthes]

wow, come to think of it Batman was probably the very first movie i ever saw in a cinema as well. I actually can't think of any other before it. It was 89 not returns though ^

 

[K.B.]

I can remember tons of movies I'd seen in theaters before B89, among them Legend, Carebears 1 and 2, Transformers (and I didn't cry when Optimus died like all the other whiney kids).

 

[Cain]

Man I was 6 and I spent that entire year getting involved with the hype. I had the TOPPS series 1 cards, I remember going to Alexander's with my mom and racking up on BATMAN and Ninja Turtles action figures, I had shirts with the oval on it, my birthday that year which took place after the film's release was based around the Neal Adams Batman. That summer was the year I became a Batman fan so it's extremely sacred to me. But what sucked was that I had left the country in the middle of June since I was sent away to the DR so I never got to see it on the big screen.

I was extremely salty with my mom about that but she made up for it by buying me the VHS tape the first day it dropped. It was one of the greatest things I ever saw up to that point. Funny before I saw the film all I knew it as was the big spectacle of the year. I remember seeing Batman crashing through the Flugelheim on Entertainment Tonight and just about **** myself. I was a Tim Burton fan before hand as Pee Wee's Big Adventure & Beetlejuice were both films I used to watch on a constant basis along with RoboCop & Commando (yes I was always allowed to watch R rated flicks). I had a habit of reading the credits before a movie and it wasn't till I read the credits that I knew Burton and Elfman were involved that just made me appreciate it even more at the time.

 

[superadam87]

The only memory I have of experiencing BATMAN in theaters was in the Summer of 1990. I had just turned 3 and my family and I took a vacation to Prague, Czech Republic. We knew one of the managers at the theater so we stopped by to say, "Hi." I remember walking up a long flight of stairs with a red carpet and walking into the theater and on the screen was Bruce Wayne and Vicki Vale in the Batcave revealing Bruce's secret. That's it...