IN TRIBUTE TO A GREAT MOVIE FRANCHISE..

By all accounts, the newly released The Dark Knight Rises is a cracking piece of entertainment.  It's the third and final installment of films made by Christopher Nolan and starring Christian Bale in the main role as Batman.  I'll hopefully get round to seeing it soon.

That's now a total of eight Hollywood films about Batman that have been made, going back to the wonderfully camp and funny 1966 version that was a spin-off from the long-running TV series and which starred Adam West to the four movies released between 1989 and 1997 when the main man was played by Michael Keaton, Val Kilmer and George Clooney although all the films featured blockbuster-names in the roles of the various villains (e.g. Jack Nicholson, Michelle Pfieffer, Danny DeVito, Jim Carrey, Tommy Lee Jones, Uma Thurman and Arnold Schwarzenegger).

The other thing about the 89-97 series was the extensive efforts that Warner Bros made to link the music of their recording artists to the movie soundtracks, often by having well-known names record all sorts of new material specifically for inclusion. It was Prince who was most associated with the 1989 film which was simply entitled Batman:-



Then in 1995, it was the turn of Bono and the boys for Batman Forever:-



While 1997 saw Smashing Pumpkins take the spotlight in Batman & Robin:-

 

The exception was the 1992 film Batman Returns which was very much an orchestral score composed by Danny Elfman, but there was one other bit of more commercial music added for release as a single, a copy of which sits in the collection:-

mp3 : Siouxsie & The Banshees - Face To Face

The track is a co-composition by the Banshees & Elfman with uber-producer Stephen Hague operating the desk. Here's your other tracks:-

mp3 : Siouxsie & The Banshees - Face To Face (Catatonic Mix)
mp3 : Siouxsie & The Banshees - I Could Be Again
mp3 : Siouxsie & The Banshees - Hothead

Released in July 1992, it reached #21 in the UK singles charts. Oh and the Catatonic Mix is the work of 808 State.