"Have you ever danced with the devil in the pale moonlight?"

In a dark, dirty and crime-ridden Gotham City, it's sometimes hard to tell the good guys from the bad. Taking its cue from Bob Kane's original Batman comics of the 1930's and 40's, director Tim Burton's Batman was considerably gloomier than the campy 1960's TV series and the jokey cowled crusader of the cartoon world. With the help of production designer Anton Furst (who won an Oscar for his work), Burton turned Batman into a visual treat, complete with oppressive cityscapes, a Gothic mansion and of course, "those wonderful toys."
The Batman story remains mostly unchanged in the film version: As a boy, Bruce Wayne watched his parents get gunned down by a thug in a dark alley. Putting his inherited fortune to use, Bruce devoted his life to fighting crime as the masked, caped Batman. Striking in the night, Batman uses his arsenal of gadgets (utility belt, bat-a-rangs, the armor-plated Batmobile, etc.) to cast fear into the hearts of evildoers everywhere. And they are everywhere… Gotham is so overrun with hoodlums that the city's 200th Anniversary celebrations are in danger of being cancelled. Police Commissioner Gordon is powerless against the forces of crime boss Carl Grissom, but Grissom has troubles of his own, mostly coming from his treacherous right-hand man, Jack Napier.

Meanwhile, ace photographer Vicki Vale has arrived in town, and she's intrigued by the stories of a vigilante "bat." She and reporter Alexander Knox meet millionaire playboy Bruce Wayne at a benefit, but Bruce is soon called away by butler Alfred (the only man who knows his double identity). Grissom has set Napier up for a fall, alerting the cops to Napier's presence in a chemical factory, and Batman joins the hunt. During the ensuing shootout, Napier falls into a chemical vat, seemingly dead. He does survive, but his skin has been bleached, his hair turned green, and his face frozen into a permanent evil grin. Taking the name The Joker, Napier sets out to become "the world's first fully functional homicidal artist."

The Joker's plots, which include sabotaging the city's beauty products with a deadly chemical called "Smilex," brings him in contact with both Vicki (whom he instantly adores) and Batman (whom he instantly despises). A series of battles, kidnappings and escapes leads to a dizzying finale atop a skyscraping church, a duel to the death between Gotham's two social misfits.

The pre-release hype for Batman was enormous, including a merchandising blitz that put that familiar black-on-yellow bat logo onto nearly every tee shirt in the country. Bat-fans both young and old were whipped up into a frenzy, and when the film was finally released, they responded with enthusiasm.

Arriving in a summer that included both an Indiana Jones film (Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade) and a Ghostbusters sequel, Batman easily became the biggest U.S. hit of the year, and one of the highest-grossing films of all time. Both Danny Elfman's score and Prince's song soundtrack became hit albums. The merchandising machine continued, scoring hits in the toy, video game and fashion worlds. In a single summer, a new superhero film franchise was born, leading to three feature sequels (so far), several hit cartoons and a wave of Batman fever that continues today.