Product Details

• Actors: Arnold Schwarzenegger, George Clooney, Chris O'Donnell, Uma Thurman, Alicia Silverstone
• Directors: Joel Schumacher
• Writers: Akiva Goldsman, Bob Kane
• Producers: Benjamin Melniker, Michael E. Uslan, Mitchell E. Dauterive, Peter Macgregor-Scott, William M. Elvin
• Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Letterboxed, Widescreen, NTSC
• Rated: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Warner Home Video
• VHS Release Date: April 14, 1998
• Run Time: 125 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 2.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (598 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 0790734451
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #578,320 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Batman
Thanks to the ambitious vision of director Tim Burton, the blockbuster hit of 1989 delivers the goods despite an occasionally spotty script, giving the caped crusader a thorough overhaul in keeping with the crime fighter's evolution in DC Comics. Michael Keaton strikes just the right mood as the brooding "Dark Knight" of Gotham City; Kim Basinger plays Gotham's intrepid reporter Vicki Vale; and Jack Nicholson goes wild as the maniacal and scene-stealing Joker, who plots a takeover of the city with his lethal Smilex gas. Triumphant Oscar-winning production design by the late Anton Furst turns Batman into a visual feast, and Burton brilliantly establishes a darkly mythic approach to Batman's legacy. Danny Elfman's now-classic score propels the action with bold, muscular verve. --Jeff Shannon

Batman Returns
Tim Burton's sequel to his phenomenally successful 1989 "Batman" doesn't try to top the first picture, either with splashier special effects or with loftier pretensions to significance; nor does it simply go through the motions, repeating the surefire stuff with a self-satisfied air of professionalism. It's a blend of playful novelty and reassuring familiarity-a difficult mixture to get right. This time, the hero (again Michael Keaton) does battle with a greedy businessman named Max Shreck (Christopher Walken) and the roly-poly arch-criminal known as the Penguin (Danny DeVito). And whenever Batman ventures out on one of his nocturnal crime-fighting missions, he runs into a mysterious woman who dresses like a cat and carries a whip. The hilariously twisted relationship between the hero and the Catwoman (Michelle Pfeiffer) plays like an apache dance in animal costumes, and it's the glory of the movie. The cat clothes seem to release something strange and wild in Pfeiffer: her performance is ferociously sexy and uninhibitedly, over-the-top funny. As in the first movie, Burton gives the material a luxurious masked-ball quality and a sly contemporary wit without violating the myth's low, cheesy comic-book origins. He's an artist who's comfortable with both the higher aspirations and the lower instincts of his nature as an entertainer: he and Batman are an ideal match.

Batman Forever
When Tim Burton and Michael Keaton announced that they'd had enough of the Batman franchise, director Joel Schumacher stepped in (with Burton as coproducer) to make this action-packed extravaganza starring Val Kilmer as the caped crusader. Batman is up against two of Gotham City's most colorful criminals, the Riddler (a role tailor-made for funnyman Jim Carrey) and the diabolical Two-Face (Tommy Lee Jones), who join forces to conquer Gotham's population with a brain-draining device. Nicole Kidman plays the seductive psychologist who wants to know what makes Batman tick. Boasting a redesigned Batmobile and plenty of new Bat hardware, Batman Forever also introduces Robin the Boy Wonder (Chris O'Donnell) whose close alliance with Batman led more than a few critics to ponder the series' homoerotic subtext. No matter how you interpret it, Schumacher's take on the Batman legacy is simultaneously amusing, lavishly epic, and prone to chronic sensory overload. --Jeff Shannon

Batman & Robin
Following Val Kilmer's portrayal of the caped crusader in Batman Forever, the fourth Batman feature stars George Clooney under the pointy-eared cowl, with Chris O'Donnell returning as Robin the Boy Wonder. This time the dynamic duo is up against the nefarious Mr. Freeze (Arnold Schwarzenegger), who is bent on turning the world into an iceberg, and the slyly seductive but highly toxic Poison Ivy (Uma Thurman), who wants to eliminate all animal life and turn the Earth into a gigantic greenhouse. Alicia Silverstone lends a hand as Batgirl, and Elle McPherson plays the thankless role of Batman/Bruce Wayne's fiancée. A sensory assault of dazzling colors, senseless action, and lavish sets run amok, this Batman & Robin offers an overdose of eye candy, but it is strictly for devoted Bat-o-philes. --Jeff Shannon

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

44 of 48 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Good value, but the quality is terrible., January 14, 2010

By 

Jonathan Kui (Cold Spring Harbor, NY) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Batman Collection: Four Film Favorites (Batman / Batman Returns / Batman Forever / Batman & Robin) (DVD)

I'll admit that the price is cheap. Having all four films for less than $10 is great, but upon watching the first disc, I find that the quality of the transfer is absolutely terrible. Lots and lots of pixelation artifacts, especially when there's black on the screen, and let's face it, BATMAN was not a brightly lit film. The quality is barely, BAREly above VHS. I feel like they hooked a VCR up to a DVD recorder and had at it. I'm not even talking about grain (which I would expect from an older film transfer), but rather poor resolution. There are no solid diagonal lines, everything is blocky. The video looks like an SVCD that was poorly upconverted to DVD.

It's good value, if you're just looking for an affordable way to complete your collection, but if you're used to DVD-quality video, you will be disappointed...

21 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A review of the set, not the individual films., November 23, 2009

By 

Matthew D. Davis (Ventura, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Batman Collection: Four Film Favorites (Batman / Batman Returns / Batman Forever / Batman & Robin) (DVD)

This set is amazing! It is all 4 movies for a very low price of 10 bucks. I picked this up at my local Target on Thursday and watched all the batman movies through the weekend. This set includes four Batman films. Batman (1989), Batman Returns (1992), Batman Forever (1995), and Batman & Robin (1997). The special features include some character facts and production notes. It is all very basic reading material on the disc, but I found a lot of it to be very interesting. They could have had absolutely no special features at all, and I still would think this set is worth it! Is this set better than the Motion Picture Anthology? Well it depends on how much you care about these movies to want to watch all the special features for them. I would say I wouldn't mind watching the special features of the first two movies, but the last two I could do without. As far as the price goes, this set is better because it is only 10 bucks and the anthology is $80. As far as picture quality goes, all the films looked great to me. You can't really go wrong with this release, you get 4 films for 10 bucks in a single DVD case on 2 discs (and the discs are double sided with one movie on each side for those worried about compression)! Talk about saving shelf space! I am thinking of buying the other sets in this series like the superman and matrix collections and replacing my existing DVDs with them just to save shelf space alone! Anyways this is the first of the "4 film favorites" collections that I have bought and I am very happy with the purchase. Sure not ALL the films are that great, but your going to be spending more than 10 bucks for just one of these films and I can tell you that 2 of the films should be owned by everyone.

20 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Holy Budget DVD, Batman!, November 1, 2009

By 

K. Fontenot "Prairie Cajun Lives!" (Louisiana) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Batman Collection: Four Film Favorites (Batman / Batman Returns / Batman Forever / Batman & Robin) (DVD)

Way back in 1989, long before the current influx of superhero films, millions of people lined up to see Michael Keaton put on Batman's cape.....nah, let's be honest, people lined up to see Jack Nicholson's version of the Joker. However, Keaton's wonderful performance shocked audiences and so began a string of successful films that got progressively campier over time.

If you're like me, you thought "Batman" was excellent, liked "Batman Returns" even though alterations were made to the Penguin, enjoyed Val Kilmer, Tommy Lee Jones and Jim Carrey in "Batman Forever" despite the campiness, and thanked the good Lord above that "Batman Begins" and "The Dark Knight" managed to wipe away the stain of the fourth film in this collection, "Batman and Robin."


This "Four Film Favorites" collection gives fans of Batman and superheroes in general all four of Warner Brothers' late century versions of Batman on two bare bones discs. According to the box, each film comes with production notes. What this boils down to is a stills gallery, brief actor bios, and a few lines about makeup, special effects, and Batman's wonderful toys.

The actual films are presented in a widescreen format and appear to lack any major clean-ups. The first film is a bit grainy at moments and the third film had faint traces of pixellation in close-ups, but the second and fourth film look visually excellent.

I won't waste any time reviewing each film in depth. If you want this collection, you probably already know why you are getting it. I purchased it primarily for the first and third films in the franchise. Being a completionist, though, I wanted to get the second and, yep, even the fourth film in this collection. This two-disc set gives you all four films for a wonderful price.

Highly recommended to fans of Batman or comic book films who want all four of these movies without breaking the bank. It will give you a taste of some of the best and some of the worst moments in comic film history!