Vicky Vale was not a female character created just for the film, like Dr. Chase Meridian for Batman Forever. She really is a reporter that appeared in Batman comic books, and of course was a ''love'' interest for Bruce Wayne, Batman's alter ego.

But Vicky is dealing with other matters as well: she has a crush with Gotham's well known millionaire philanthropist Bruce Wayne (Michael Keaton), an enigmatic loner of uncommon intelligence. Intrigued by, yet suspicious of this attractive yet reclusive man, Vicky wants to discover what he's really all about. Bruce Wayne is very taken with Vicky but hesitates to return her phone calls. ''My life…,'' he explains awkwardly, ''is very complex.'' If only she knew.

Of course it is complex. Because when the sun goes down and the criminals of Gotham come out, Wayne emerges as the Batman, a creature of the night, a modern day ''Dracula'', bent on a deathwish against crime.

''Being in Batman was like being inside a surrealist painting,'' comments actress Kim Basinger. ''Gotham City is a place where forbidden things happen and good things come out of forbidden things. And that's the ultimate dark fantasy.''

In the film, The Joker turns to Vicki Vale and purrs: ``Ahhhhh, you're beautiful . . . ``In an old-fashioned way.''

Jack Nicholson nonchalantly delivers that line to Kim Basinger, turning the notion of the Batbabe's beauty into a joke as much as a reality. And that's the way Basinger herself treats Basinger. She can be just the sweetest little ole southern belle one second, and an earthy, 35-year-old career actress and businesswoman making all the right decisions the next.

She even bought a town this year, paying $20 million with her partners for Braselton, Ga., just across the tracks from her own hometown of Athens. Basinger says future plans for the town will be clarified in the fall. Batman was a right decision, too, it seems. Future plans involve sequels and big bucks.

Basinger grabbed the role when Sean Young, who had already been cast, fell off a horse on a recreational ride during the first week of shooting. She had to be replaced. Basinger plunged into Tim Burton's project with zeal. ``There was no real substance to any of it,'' she says of the Batman script when she started. ``That's what was so great about this film. Maybe some people will be disappointed. But it's not a cartoon. It's a real movie. And we got to make the characters up as we went along. We did a lot of the writing. We did a lot of the creating. It was a lot of hard work. The acting was just like a vacation.''

Now producer Jon Peters (who might be just a little prejudiced because they were lovers for a spell) concurs and credits Basinger with helping to shape the film. But he talks ga-ga over her too. ``To me, it's not a dark movie,'' Peters says, ``because Kim Basinger is pink and wonderful.''

This pink person finds herself caught between Michael Keaton's controversial Batman/Bruce Wayne and Nicholson's psychotic Joker in the story. Basinger found that fascinating and peculiar. ``She's not afraid,'' the actress says of Vicki Vale. ``That's what sort of sucks her into this. She's like an Alice in Wonderland or a Dorothy in The Wizard Of Oz. ``I never really see my films until they come out on video or I'm forced - at the threat of death and gagged and dragged. But I did see this and thought: I really do look like Dorothy. Really lost. What's going to happen to me next? I didn't know what to do. And I think, when you don't have anything else to do, you fall in love.''

Basinger laughs. Somehow, in every conversation, the topic swings around to romance and sex. Her own love life is a private matter - ever since she split from her marriage of seven years to painter and make-up wizard Ron Britton. But she'll talk about movie sex. Vicki Vale's romance with Bruce Wayne is chaste on screen (although they do bed down together on their first date). Basinger's descriptions of the Batman mystique are anything but innocent.

``I don't know what it is,'' she muses, ``but he (Batman) looks like a magical bubble gum card to the little set. Then you get a little older and he's kind of intriguing in his mysterious Hallowe'en way. Then, all of a sudden, you're up there and SEX has a lot to do with it. It's a beautiful, powerful, sexy image, it really is, and it's anything you want it to be. That's why Batman is so strong.'' She wanted to add her own sex flourish in Batman, as she has in many other films from No Mercy to 9 1/2 Weeks. ``Well,'' she drawls, suddenly sounding all coquettish, ``I wanted to take off my dress but they wouldn't let me. Actually, we did go over this. There was a scene when The Joker shot Batman (actually, he shoots Bruce Wayne in a love feud). I said, `How do you stop a fight faster than standing there naked?' So I said, `Jesus, that's what I want to do. I want to take my dress off right here.'

``Nicholson said: `I'm all for it!'