The Lost Giger Bat-Mobile

I consider Joel Schumacher to be one of the worst directors Hollywood has every handed a $100 million film budget. Even the one film he had a hand in that I enjoyed (PHONE BOOTH) felt as if he was trying to find a way to screw it up from the opening minutes. Thankfully the Larry Cohen script was tight enough to keep him from sabotaging the story and it remains a taut little thriller.  But I am happy to find that not every idea he ever had was crap, although they might not have made it to the screen.

When Schumacher was tapped to take over the Batman series in the mid-90's he commissioned the mad genius H. R. Giger to redesign the Batmoble. Yes! The man responsible for countless nightmares because of the monster he built for ALIEN (1979) was given a shot at creating in the world of Batman! What an idea! Of course, it didn't fly with the filmmakers and was dropped at concept stage allowing Schumacher to go ahead and create a truly crappy film that made enough money for him to helm an even worse Bat-film afterward. Giger's designs certainly would not have guarantied a better film than BATMAN FOREVER (1995) - we're talking about a director with incredibly poor cinema sensibilities - but it would have added some spice to Schumacher's neon-splashed mess. A shame and a missed opportunity.