One of my most most memorable film-going experiences was seeing Batman (1989) in a theater with actual bats flying around during the movie. Back in college, the choices for movie theaters were rather limited. On campus we had Rudder theater where you could see cult films like Rocky Horror and sneak previews of movies like Action Jackson. The 1989 Batman came out in June 1989. I remember seeing it in that theater 30 years ago. In reality, I probably saw it that fall or the following April at AggieCon XX — not when it first came out since I wasn’t in town that summer. Whenever it was, I was my first time seeing the movie.
Rudder theater is a pretty good size theater. I saw the Bolshoi Ballet perform The Nutcracker there at year later. Into this volume, a few bats had managed to get in. They were content to hide up in the rafters. As the crowd assembled for the movie, I guess they got a little agitated from the noise and began to spontaneously fly around. There were probably only a half dozen. The lights dimmed and the movie began. The bats continued to fly around the theater adding a fourth dimension to the Tim Burton film reacting to the noise of the audience.
