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It's Christmas time in Gotham City -- the perfect setting for Tim Burton's dark and violent take on one of comicbook's most popular heroes. Coated with the innocence of snow and revenge in the form of blood, Batman Returns is a visual nightmare of disguised identities and character conflicts, with a volatile unpredictability that will leave you in awe.

Going a few steps further than the first Batman, Burton's distinct, visual style takes the series into territory that is more grotesque and moody. Bruce Wayne/Batman (Michael Keaton) is still a loner, who lives on the outskirts of the city, looking in on all the corruption as a powerful business named Max Shreck (Christopher Walken) is scheming to build a dangerous power plant.

Meanwhile, there is a rumour circulating about a deformed creature named "The Penguin" (Danny DeVito), who lives under the sewer. Abandoned at birth and rejected as a "normal", he has since grown to hate everyone, and decides the best way to conquer Gotham is to blackmail Shreck into helping him run for mayor, whilst all the time fooling people into thinking he's searching for his parents.

Batman, of course, knows there is more to this than meets the eye and vows to stop him, but another freak of nature, named "The Catwoman" (Michelle Pfeiffer), decides to intervene. She was once a lowly, timid secretary working for Mr. Shreck, but after been pushed out of a window and molested by cats, she's had a physical and mental makeover and is far from a pushover.

Much like the first film, Batman Returns focuses primarily around Batman's enemies. DeVito and Pfeiffer receive a fair share of the screen time to depict their character evolutions, while Keaton's Batman is kept lurking in the shadows. Shrek being in-between Penguin and Catwoman also means that we are able to analyse the twisted psyches of these fascinating characters that little bit more.

DeVito is simply brilliant as The Penguin. With his webbed hands, oversized gut and blackened teeth, he looks truly disgusting, snarling at everyone and everything with hateful conviction. When women cross him he becomes ultimately perverted, and when enemies cross him he becomes erratically violent. One scene, he even bites off a man's nose after munching on a raw fish, prompting a gush of blood in front of his campaign employees (let it be known: Batman Returns definitely isn't meant for children).

Pfeiffer as Catwoman is equally as brilliant, and I don't mean just for her leather outfit and her occasional whip-cracking (which is undeniably hot). As well as being obviously kinky and dangerous, she is a deeply troubled individual who has a hateful vengeance for men.

The ten-minute, continuous shot that gives insight into her transformation from Selina Kyle is particularly chilling. Here, Burton confidently allows his female star to take centre stage and disrupt the pink rooms of her own apartment, whilst the sombre music plays in the background. This is one of the most memorable scenes in the movie.

Ideally, I would've ideally liked to have seen more of Batman/Bruce Wayne. Of all the characters, Michael Keaton's is probably the least developed, and die-hard comicbook fans, especially, will be disappointed by the amount of screen time the character receives.

Even with the little time he has, though, I still really like Keaton's portrayal of the cape crusader: As well as being a selfless humanist, he manages to be incredibly laid-back and seem very comfortable in both Wayne and Batman's shoes. Furthermore, he has the best Batman "voice" to date (much better than Christian Bale's overdone hoarseness).

Bruce's short-lived fascination with Selina is also profoundly done, mainly thanks to the chemistry between Keaton and Pfeiffer. As their characters' love interest develops, eroticism mixes with the dark nature of the film, heightening the anticipation for when these two troubled souls meet with one another face-to-face, wearing their masks.

Whilst all this is going on, of course, Burton is lavishing the New-York-inspired surroundings with gothic overlays, making Batman Returns just as much a fascinating and somewhat disturbing exhibition of styles as it is a mysterious, identity-stricken duel of the freaks.

(C) Andy Carrington, 2011.