MOVIE NEWS – The lost filming video of Danny DeVito from Batman Returns has been resurfaced, so if you haven’t seen this masterpiece of film history, you can now…
Many film productions have stories that seem unbelievable. Danny DeVito’s story of having a monkey bite his testicles on the set of Batman Returns is up there with the best. Now, footage of the moment has resurfaced online after being “rescued” from a YouTube channel that previously hosted the footage but has since deleted it.
While many animal movies these days use CGI to replace furry characters, when Batman Returns was filmed in the early ’90s, the vast majority of animal characters were played by real animals on set. That was certainly true of the ape members of Penguin’s Red Triangle gang in Tim Burton’s 1989 superhero sequel.
Unfortunately for DeVito, this almost led to a nasty accident, which fans can now see for themselves in the grainy video footage captured at the time.
While the monkey’s action itself isn’t very visible in the dark footage, DeVito’s reaction is immediately visible and gives some context to how he previously recounted the incident in interviews last year. (See the video in the Twitter/X link below!)
Why was Danny DeVito attacked by a monkey on the Batman Returns set?
The moment when Danny DeVito almost got a very unorthodox amputation down there resulted from the star getting a little too authentic as Oswald Cobblepot while filming the scene. As the actor recalled during an interview on The Graham Norton Show in 2016, the scene involved Penguin receiving a message sent by Batman from an ape-like companion. While the first test went well, with the letter being handed over and the scene continuing, a later shot in which DeVito smothered his lips in black/green mouthwash elicited an unexpected reaction from the monkey.
“I put this mouthwash, kind of black and dark green mouthwash in my mouth, so that when I talked the Penguin stuff would ooze out and drip down. The monkey comes down, takes one look at me, and leaps at my balls. Swear to God it was horrifying. We took off the suit and there was a huge chunk taken out of it. So we did it again.”
While the actor was unharmed in the incident and gleefully recounts the story many years later, the fact that the actual footage of the moment circulates mostly unseen on the Internet is a travesty. But now, the short clip has been rescued from the black hole of the web once again for all to enjoy… though DeVito himself probably isn’t so eager to relive the experience.
Man, lucky I downloaded this video since the YouTube account that posted it disappeared.
For preservation's sake…here's a monkey biting Danny DeVito's balls on the set of Batman Returns. https://t.co/yCxoW4ue21 pic.twitter.com/MV6aSjET9W
— Mindd Kidzag (@MinddKidzag) July 20, 2024
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