UNMASKED.

What does it take to shake a movie fan? Whether we are critics or bug-eyed buffs, so many of our evenings are spent in the company of crimes and misdemeanors that we can hardly be blamed for developing the hide of a pachyderm. Just occasionally, something slips through--a thin shudder of monstrosity, enough to remind us of what it means to be afraid. And so it came about, this week, that I gazed at a black screen and saw words so calamitous that they might have been written in my own blood: "Screenplay by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Joel Schumacher."

It couldn't be any better, really, could it? The pairing of the tasteful genius behind "Batman & Robin" and the ...