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This past summer marked the 30th anniversary of 1992 follow-up Batman Returns from Tim Burton (Wednesday). The sequel, written by Daniel Waters (Heathers) with a “story by” credit for Sam Hamm (Batman), was a financial hit at the box office but still pulled in less than its predecessor.
Audience-wise it was divisive, with some thinking Burton made it too dark. But anyone familiar with Batman lore would counter that the hero’s entire backstory is incredibly dark, as are most, if not all, of his antagonists’ origins. To quote Robert Pattinson, the star of Matt Reeves’ The Batman, Batman is a freak, which people seem to forget.
Like most Batman movies, Returns begins with a villain. In a flashback 33 years prior to when the film’s events take place, we see wealthy, unspeaking couple Tucker and Esther Cobblepot (Paul Reubens and Diane Salinger) toss their monstrous child off a bridge, watching his basket float down into the sewer.
Later this is revealed to be the origin of Oswald Cobblepot, aka the Penguin (Danny DeVito), a frightening man with a beak-like nose, who is inexplicably able to speak perfect English despite being raised by actual penguins. Another mystery is how he managed to form the Red Triangle Gang, a group of circus freaks, to do his bidding. Poodle Lady is my favorite. But this is a movie that requires a major suspension of belief. If you want logic with your supervillains, Batman Returns is not for you.
Next, there’s Max Shreck (Christopher Walken), an icy-haired corrupt businessman with the quintessential villainous plan involving a power plant and tons of money. He demeans his frazzled assistant Selina Kyle (Michelle Pfeiffer) who is beautiful but has glasses and a ponytail which, according to movie tropes, means she’s unattractive. She’s an overworked, underappreciated cat owner living alone in a bubblegum pink apartment, who calls herself a “corn dog” for clamming up.
After spending roughly thirteen minutes learning about the baddies, it’s time for Bruce Wayne (Michael Keaton) to appear, and of course, the first time we see him he’s brooding in the dark. He suits up as Batman to save a gathering of Gothamites from an invasion of an evil circus troupe — made up of machine gun-toting clowns, destructive fire breathers, and an organ grinder firing bullets.
When Shreck finds Selina in the office after hours, he casually pushes her out of the window. The fall kills her, though she manages to only sustain a head cut and torn sleeve. A slew of random stray cats revive her with…their saliva? It’s a very Burtonesque origin story that makes zero sense but is visually satisfying. Most characters in a Burton project look half-dead anyway.
Selina returns home and just absolutely wrecks her dollhouse of an apartment, murdering stuffed animals via garbage disposal and spray painting the walls for some reason. She also smashes two bulbs in the oddly placed neon pink “Hello There” sign (in her bedroom, no less), leaving it to read “hell here.” Subtle. She then stitches together a skin-tight catsuit using material from a single jacket. (Remember, suspend that belief!) The bespeckled, sensibly dressed Selina Kyle is no more. The milk-chugging, latex-clad Catwoman lives. When she’s unmasked, her wild curls are simply stunning.
Penguin uses Shreck to waddle his way into Gotham’s elite but forms an alliance with the Cat in an incredibly sexually charged scene, though that could be said for all of Pfeiffer’s scenes after Selina’s transformation. She gets intimate with Bruce while dancing at a charity ball (because every Batman movie has to have one). A big complaint some people have with Batman Returns is the lack of, well, Batman. But I’ve always found Batman’s rogues gallery much more interesting than the hero himself. The villains also just get to have more fun. Catwoman’s scene destroying Shreck’s store is just oozing with glee.
The set design for Burton’s Gotham City looks like a theme park version of the city. The buildings and statues are unnecessarily massive and don’t even try to look real. When it’s decked out for Christmas, a giant tree and all, the town square looks like a demented Whoville.
Considering the movie takes place during the Christmas season — not to mention the tree lighting ceremonies, snowy cemetery speeches, and mistletoe puns — Batman Returns is undeniably a Christmas movie. With the Scrooge-like Max Shreck and a sewer-dwelling penguin person, the Gotham created by Burton and company is cartoonishly bleak, filled with psychologically traumatized people who just need one bad day to turn into a villain.
Colin Farrell will reprise his role as Cobblepot in the upcoming HBO Max series The Penguin, which picks up right after the events of The Batman. Since the film opened on Halloween night in Gotham, maybe the series will progress into Christmastime and we’ll get to see how Farrell’s Penguin handles the holidays.
Batman Returns is available to stream on HBO Max.
This past summer marked the 30th anniversary of 1992 follow-up Batman Returns from Tim Burton (Wednesday). The sequel, written by Daniel Waters (Heathers) with a “story by” credit for Sam Hamm (Batman), was a financial hit at the box office but still pulled in less than its predecessor.
Audience-wise it was divisive, with some thinking Burton made it too dark. But anyone familiar with Batman lore would counter that the hero’s entire backstory is incredibly dark, as are most, if not all, of his antagonists’ origins. To quote Robert Pattinson, the star of Matt Reeves’ The Batman, Batman is a freak, which people seem to forget.
Like most Batman movies, Returns begins with a villain. In a flashback 33 years prior to when the film’s events take place, we see wealthy, unspeaking couple Tucker and Esther Cobblepot (Paul Reubens and Diane Salinger) toss their monstrous child off a bridge, watching his basket float down into the sewer.
Later this is revealed to be the origin of Oswald Cobblepot, aka the Penguin (Danny DeVito), a frightening man with a beak-like nose, who is inexplicably able to speak perfect English despite being raised by actual penguins. Another mystery is how he managed to form the Red Triangle Gang, a group of circus freaks, to do his bidding. Poodle Lady is my favorite. But this is a movie that requires a major suspension of belief. If you want logic with your supervillains, Batman Returns is not for you.
Next, there’s Max Shreck (Christopher Walken), an icy-haired corrupt businessman with the quintessential villainous plan involving a power plant and tons of money. He demeans his frazzled assistant Selina Kyle (Michelle Pfeiffer) who is beautiful but has glasses and a ponytail which, according to movie tropes, means she’s unattractive. She’s an overworked, underappreciated cat owner living alone in a bubblegum pink apartment, who calls herself a “corn dog” for clamming up.
After spending roughly thirteen minutes learning about the baddies, it’s time for Bruce Wayne (Michael Keaton) to appear, and of course, the first time we see him he’s brooding in the dark. He suits up as Batman to save a gathering of Gothamites from an invasion of an evil circus troupe — made up of machine gun-toting clowns, destructive fire breathers, and an organ grinder firing bullets.
When Shreck finds Selina in the office after hours, he casually pushes her out of the window. The fall kills her, though she manages to only sustain a head cut and torn sleeve. A slew of random stray cats revive her with…their saliva? It’s a very Burtonesque origin story that makes zero sense but is visually satisfying. Most characters in a Burton project look half-dead anyway.
Selina returns home and just absolutely wrecks her dollhouse of an apartment, murdering stuffed animals via garbage disposal and spray painting the walls for some reason. She also smashes two bulbs in the oddly placed neon pink “Hello There” sign (in her bedroom, no less), leaving it to read “hell here.” Subtle. She then stitches together a skin-tight catsuit using material from a single jacket. (Remember, suspend that belief!) The bespeckled, sensibly dressed Selina Kyle is no more. The milk-chugging, latex-clad Catwoman lives. When she’s unmasked, her wild curls are simply stunning.
Penguin uses Shreck to waddle his way into Gotham’s elite but forms an alliance with the Cat in an incredibly sexually charged scene, though that could be said for all of Pfeiffer’s scenes after Selina’s transformation. She gets intimate with Bruce while dancing at a charity ball (because every Batman movie has to have one). A big complaint some people have with Batman Returns is the lack of, well, Batman. But I’ve always found Batman’s rogues gallery much more interesting than the hero himself. The villains also just get to have more fun. Catwoman’s scene destroying Shreck’s store is just oozing with glee.
The set design for Burton’s Gotham City looks like a theme park version of the city. The buildings and statues are unnecessarily massive and don’t even try to look real. When it’s decked out for Christmas, a giant tree and all, the town square looks like a demented Whoville.
Considering the movie takes place during the Christmas season — not to mention the tree lighting ceremonies, snowy cemetery speeches, and mistletoe puns — Batman Returns is undeniably a Christmas movie. With the Scrooge-like Max Shreck and a sewer-dwelling penguin person, the Gotham created by Burton and company is cartoonishly bleak, filled with psychologically traumatized people who just need one bad day to turn into a villain.
Colin Farrell will reprise his role as Cobblepot in the upcoming HBO Max series The Penguin, which picks up right after the events of The Batman. Since the film opened on Halloween night in Gotham, maybe the series will progress into Christmastime and we’ll get to see how Farrell’s Penguin handles the holidays.
Batman Returns is available to stream on HBO Max.
When it comes to anthology genre TV, Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone is the one most people hail as the best. It was by no means, however, the only show of its kind. In the wake of Zone, shows like The Outer Limits, Thriller, and One Step Beyond flooded TV in the 1960s. Alfred Hitchcock himself even had two separate series of suspense stories. By the 1970s, however, the well had started to run dry. It’d come back in the ’80s, but the last gasp of the first rash came in the form of Night Gallery, Serling and producer Jack Laird’s pure-horror (within reason) series. All three seasons of this oft-forgotten show are out on glorious Blu-ray from Kino Lorber, and it’s really worth a look.
History of Night Gallery
The production history of Night Gallery is fascinating and super complicated, so I won’t try to get into it too much, but suffice to say, unlike The Twilight Zone, this was not a full Serling joint. He hosts and he wrote a good number of segments, along with producing, however.
The premise of each episode has Serling walking around the titular “Night Gallery,” a huge and mostly empty space with paintings hanging from the ceiling. Each painting is a macabre interpretation of a different story. Serling sets up in front of a painting and gives a trademark opaque introduction for whatever story we’re about to watch.
The Night Gallery Pilot
The first Night Gallery episode was a feature length TV movie. It featured three separate stories; the first, “The Cemetery” is a riff on the M.R. James story The Mezzotint in which a painting changes, indicating something scary will soon attack. It features Ossie Davis as the long-serving butler of a wealthy Southern landowner on his deathbed and Roddy McDowell as the wealthy man’s nephew who stands to inherit everything.
The second story in the pilot is “Eyes,” directed by a young Universal contract director named Steven Spielberg. It finds Joan Crawford as a high society with vision impairments matron who undergoes an experimental surgery that offers her 12 hours to see. And the final story, “Escape Route,” has a fugitive Nazi facing ghostly comeuppance for his past crimes.
The Night Gallery pilot is very straightforward, though executed incredibly well, and was popular enough to get the series greenlit. The interesting thing, however, is that as the show went on, the kinds of stories got a lot wilder, with far fewer “gotcha” twists and more proper horror. The first season consisted of only six episodes, the second a full 22, and the third would be cut down to 30 minutes rather than 60, and has 15 episodes.
The Best Night Gallery Segments
In total, the show had 96 separate segments. Rather than try to talk about all of them, instead I want to talk about some of my favorites, to give you an idea of why I think Night Gallery is so special and why it deserves to be talked about in the same breath as The Twilight Zone.
Season 1, Segment 3b: “Certain Shadows on the Wall”
This is an excellent riff on a classic ghost story. Agnes Moorhead is an aged woman who dies under mysterious circumstances and, inexplicably, her shadow remains on the wall to taunt her sinister brother. This features some truly creepy visuals and mood, great work from director Jeff Corey.
Season 1, Segment 5c: “The Doll”
An adaptation of an Algernon Blackwood story, “The Doll” finds a child’s toy terrorizing a Colonial officer in Queen Victoria’s army. A lot of Night Gallery‘s best segments fit into traditional Victorian, Gothic horror tropes, which coupled with the ’70s TV aesthetic produces an especially unsettling effect.
Season 1, Segment 6a: “They’re Tearing Down Tim Riley’s Bar”
The longest single segment on the show, and also the most atypical. Serling wrote this tale of a has-been salesman (William Windom) who longs for “the good old days” when his life had promise. Upon hearing that his favorite bar will be torn down, the man begins experiencing ghostly visions of the past. This segment earned Night Gallery an Emmy nomination for “Outstanding Single Program” in 1971.
Season 2, Segment 10a: “The Dark Boy”
Night Gallery adapted several “weird fiction” stories from the early 1900s. “The Dark Boy” is one such, adapted from August Derleth’s story of the same name. In it, a young school teacher at the turn of the century takes up a position at a rural community. The welcoming committee tells her she’ll have 16 students, however when she gets to class she learns there’s a 17. Despite her attempts, this boy never seems to get what she’s teaching. Eventually she, and the audience, learn the sad and spooky truth of who this child is.
Season 2, Segments 11a and 12a: “Pickman’s Model” and “Cool Air”
In successive episodes, Night Gallery adapted two H.P. Lovecraft stories. The first, “Pickman’s Model,” finds an artist depicting terrible and nightmarish things in his paintings. Guess what? They’re real. This one would later end up in Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities, which I think is actually the better version.
The second, “Cool Air,” adapted by Serling, turns one of Lovecraft’s very short horror stories into a romantic, supernatural drama. In it, a young woman falls for her father’s colleague. The man has a very specific aversion to heat of any kind, pumping his rooms with a rudimentary air conditioning system. There is, of course, a reason for his needing cool air, and as you might expect, it’s not a happy one.
Season 2, Segment 17b, “The Ghost of Sorworth Place”
Another excellent ghost story for the series. This one sees an American tourist happen upon an estate in Scotland owned by a comely young widow who seems petrified of something. The man soon learns the woman fears the return of her husband, who died one year prior. It’s Night Gallery, so you can guess this probably isn’t just paranoia. The ghost effects here are some of the series’ best.
Season 2, Episodes 20-22
While looking over the segment list, I realized that all seven segments in the second season’s final three episodes are brilliant. They include: a student of sorcery trying to ensure a life of leisure; a “sin eater” in the Middle Ages meeting a grim fate; robots getting revenge for mistreatment; an expat in Borneo plotting a gruesome end to a romantic rival; and a psychiatrist who has to help a scientific genius process grief. All of them are just superb.
Season 3, Episode 2, “The Girl with the Hungry Eyes”
By the third season—saved from cancellation at the last moment—the network mandated the show go to 30 minutes. That meant, aside from two outliers, that was only one story per episode. Generally these episodes are not as good; however, the second episode is a crackerjack entry. It finds a photographer whose latest muse is not merely a beautiful woman, but the beautiful woman whom every ad agency wants as their spokesmodel. The trouble starts when, as the photographer gets more and more money, more and more men end up mysteriously dead. Succubus, babyyyyyy!
Season 3, Episode 6, “The Other Way Out”
An old man lures a murderer to a secluded farm house where the man seeks to enact his revenge. He places the murderer in a pit with no way out. All the old man (played by Burl Ives, no less) tells his prisoner is that he’ll be dealt with when “Sonny” arrives. We learn the extent of the murderer’s crime and hear his pleas for mercy, only to be met with an absolute gut-punch when Sonny indeed arrives.
These are just some of the best episodes of the show. Give it a look and see for yourself. All three seasons of Night Gallery plus the pilot movie are available on Blu-ray from Kino Lorber. Just as they did with The Outer Limits and Kolchak: The Night Stalker, they’ve poured dozens of hours of commentaries and extras for fans of horror media and old American TV. They are the best sets of their kind on the market.
Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Instagram and Letterboxd.
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The controversial discussion around Henry Cavill stepping down as Superman had the internet buzzing since the actor officially announced it on his Instagram.
In fact this riled up fans so much that the hashtag #FireJamesGunn became a trending topic on social media. To give some context here, James Gunn, most notably known for his work directing the Guardians of the Galaxy Marvel movies and DC’s The Suicide Squad and creator of The Peacemaker TV series was recently hired on as co-head of Warner Bros. Discovery’s DC Comics film and TV unit along with Peter Safran. James Gunn will now be the Kevin Feige of the DC cinematic universe.
The producers have decided to focus on the earlier parts of Superman’s life, leaving Cavill to pick up his pink slip from Warner Bros and move onto the next project. And while there are several articles out there speculating who should play the next-gen Kal-El (aka Superman), what about Val Zod? This is a character that Michael B. Jordan has expressed interest in playing and is set to executive produce a series for HBO Max currently in development.
So while we fan cast over who will wear Superman’s cape next, let’s explore the comic book canon Black superheroes in the DC universe that offer a unique, fresh and substantive story to the prolific action hero.
Calvin Ellis
Also known as Kalel, Calvin Ellis is an alternate version of Superman who appears in the multiverse of DC Comics. He is the President of the United States and the superhero known as Superman in the alternate universe of Earth-23.
Val-Zod
Val-Zod is a Kryptonian who is the second character to take on the mantle of Superman in the DC Comics Universe. He was raised on the planet Krakoa instead of Earth and is a member of the Justice Society of America.
Honorable Mention:
Kwaku Anansi
Kwaku Anansi is a character in the DC Comics universe who is a member of the superhero team known as the Global Guardians. While he is not had the actual mantle of Superman and is actually more aligned with being a Spider-Man-like character, he has powers and abilities similar to those of Superman. He is an Anansi, a mythical spider and trickster god from African folklore who claims to be directly responsible for the creation of Vixen’s Tantu Totem. His powers include super strength and the ability to fly.
As the shakeup begins over at Warner Bros, J.J Abrams’ Black Superman reboot is still happening. The controversy around the development of the reboot, a script penned by cultural critic Ta-Nehisi Coates decided to racebend Superman and make Clark Kent Black, instead of going with a canon Black character like Val-Zod or Calvin Ellis.
While it’s too early to tell what Gunn and Safran’s plans are for the DC cinematic universe are as it relates to this specific hero, one thing is for certain, there are a lot of options to create various stories, experiences and new franchises under the Superman mantle.
There’s also a conversation to be had around Milestone characters such as Icon, Rocket, Static and Hardware. Where will they fit into the new guard over at Warner Bros Discovery?
We’ll see what happens and in the meantime; reading up on these characters are a great way to kill some time while you wait.
The Hypno-Hustler is one of the most obscure, not to mention ridiculous, Spider-Man villains out there. And he is often ranked as one of the worst too. Despite sharing a creator with the man who gave the world Rocket Raccoon, Bill Mantlo. And yet, this musical criminal is going to be the subject of a live-action movie, starring none other than Donald Glover. The news comes straight from The Hollywood Reporter. But just who the heck is this obscure Spider-Man villain? We’re here to explain it all to you.
Hypno-Hustler, the Disco Devil
The Hypno-Hustler was one of many attempts during the peak of the late ‘70s Disco music craze to try to cash in on the phenomenon. (the other, far more famous example, is the mutant Dazzler). After Saturday Night Fever, everyone from Mickey Mouse to Count Chocula was cutting a Disco album, so Marvel wanted in on some of that action. Hence, the Disco-themed villain Hypno-Hustler made his debut in Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man #24 way back in 1978.
The Hypno-Hustler’s real name was Antoine Desloin. He was the lead singer of a Disco musical group called the Mercy Killers. They were scheduled to headline at a popular nightclub called “Beyond Forever.” But the club’s manager caught the Hypno-Hustler robbing his safe, so Desloin used his high-tech hypnotic equipment on the manager. He had a guitar that could emit hypnotic soundwaves, and also had some boots that spewed out knockout gas. He even had retractable knives in the soles. Later up on stage, Hypno-Hustler and the Mercy Killers used their hypnotizing equipment on the audience in order to rob them all. And it would have all gone according to plan, if not for that meddling wallcrawler.
A Fateful Encounter on the Dance Floor
As luck would have it, Peter Parker was dancing away at the club on that fateful night. And so, the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man was there to challenge the Hypno-Hustler. In the brawl, Spidey discovered that the Hypno-Hustler’s headphones protected him from his own hypnotic sounds, rendering him immune. Spidey then took his headphones off, therefore causing him to become a victim of his own hypnosis. In traditional Spidey fashion, Peter left Hypno-Hustler all webbed up for the police to take into custody. Interestingly enough, they introduced a Disco-themed villain who used music to hypnotize and steal on the Lynda Carter Wonder Woman TV series that same year.
Not Exactly an A-List Spider-Man Rogue
Hypno-Hustler did not exactly become one of Spidey’s recurring villains after this encounter. Within a year of his introduction, the Disco bubble burst. By the end of 1979, the terms “Disco Sucks” and “Dead as Disco” were on everyone’s lips. Everything pertaining to this genre instantly became tacky and passe. Thus, the Hypno-Hustler, with his all-silver costume and period-specific hairdo, seemed like an instant relic of a pop culture fad gone by. He has appeared a handful of times in the decades since. Usually as a background character cameo as the butt of a joke. He sadly did not survive the implosion of Disco like his fellow cash-in character Dazzler did. We last saw the Hypno-Hustler at a Vil-a-Non meeting for reformed villains.
We imagine Donald Glover will be able to have a ton of fun with a character like Hypno-Hustler. Especially if he makes the film an homage to the glorious excess of the Disco era. Maybe they make the movie a throwback period piece. Or maybe it takes place in the modern day, at a retro-themed nightclub. If we get a Spidey dancing cameo, that would make it all worth it. As long as Donald Glover wears a very close reproduction of the original Hypno-Hustler costume and embraces the absurdity, we’re here for it.
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