The bat and the cat

Back to the angst.

Awhile ago I compared Star Trek to the Batman and Spiderman series, and afterwards I began thinking about, specifically, the second Batman movie. The one with Michael Keaton, Michelle Pfeiffer as Catwoman, Danny DeVito as the Penguin, and Christopher Walken as another bad guy whose name I can’t remember.

I thought this movie suffered from one too many bad guys, by the way. Christopher Walken was born to play the villain in a Batman movie; they should have stuck with him and left the Penguin for another time. Preferably never. I can still remember the scene where DeVito – blackened teeth oozing – eats a raw fish.

Who wants to see that? Who wants to pay to see that?

Although this movie is far from a favorite (I never got over the fish) it does have one scene that remains indelibly in memory: Michelle Pfeiffer -- mysteriously returned to life after been thrown out a window by Walken – goes medieval on her apartment, and trashes the girl right out of it.

I experienced this scene viscerally. In fact, it is one of only two movie scenes that I have ever had that kind of gut-deep reaction to (the other one being the first Russian roulette scene in The Deer Hunter).

I’m not sure men had the same reaction to that scene. I’m not sure a younger woman would have that reaction. I’m not even sure I’d experience it the same way today. But at the time it was the entire feminist movement rolled up and made concrete. I could almost feel Michelle Pfeiffer tearing up her bedroom under my own fingertips.

At the end – she’s made herself a skin-tight cat-suit in the middle of all the demolition – she stands in the window and says (to her cat?) “I don’t know about you, Miss Kitty, but I feel so much yummier.”

Now, that’s sexual revolution. And worth the whole movie.

Unfortunately, angst takes over from there. Of course, Catwoman and Batman fall in love. Of course they can’t be together, what with him being rich and her being beautiful and . . . yeah, I don’t know either.

At the end Batman reveals himself to her as Bruce Wayne. And she says:

“Bruce...I would..I would love, to live with you in your castle...forever just like in a fairytale . . . I just couldn't live with myself. So don’t pretend this is a happy ending.”

Nice line. But why the hell not have a happy ending? Geez, people, lighten up.

I always thought there would be another movie where Catwoman and Batman get together; it never happened, and life moved on.