Review Detail

A most impressive achievement of AI technology and fan commitment! While maintaining all the pros of the original Red Book Edition – that is the noir feeling through colour desaturation, the removal of a great deal of cheesiness and the integration of deleted scenes, in case you haven’t seen it – this Enhanced version manages to fix, for the most part, the faults of its predecessor. Although there’s still some small colour and contrast mismatch compared to the rest of the film, the deleted scenes do not stick out anymore thanks to the AI enhancement. The added heavy film grain is something that, as a kid of the VHS era myself, I can really appreciate, and the same goes for the desaturation and colour contrast in some scenes which reminded me of Sin City – and that is definitely a good thing! INIGHTMARES also fixes some of the choppy cuts that were present in the original fan-edit by Scaperat, like when Dick Grayson saves that woman from the hands of a street gang.

As for the cons, the Enhanced Edition carries that problem of the original studio cut with it, which no amount of editing could ever salvage. That is, its two antagonists who mostly act and talk like complete goofballs! The Riddler being essentially Jim Carrey I can live with, but Two-Face is still insufferable and out of character, no matter what.

Even so, INIGHTMARES’ Enhanced Edition is by far the best viewing experience of a highly problematic film, tainted by WB studios’ interference, and as far as I’m concerned the definitive cut of it. As I’ve written before in my review of Scaperat’s work, it successfully highlights not only some of its darkest aspects that were butchered in WB’s editing room, but also a stellar performance by Val Kilmer. And justifies, at long last, why Batman is Forever.