Beetlejuice

BEETLEJUICE (15)

D: Tim Burton

Warner Bros./Geffen (Richard Hashimoto, Larry Wilson & Michael Bender)

USA 🇺🇸 1988

92 mins

Comedy/Horror

W: Michael McDowell & Warren Skaaren

DP: Thomas Ackerman

Ed: Jane Kurson

Mus: Danny Elfman

PD: Bo Welch

Cos: Aggie Guerard-Rodgers

Geena Davis (Barbara Maitland), Alec Baldwin (Adam Maitland), Michael Keaton (Beetlejuice), Catherine O'Hara (Delia Deetz), Glen Shadix (Otho), Winona Ryder (Lydia Deetz), Jeffrey Jones (Charles Deetz), Sylvia Sidney (Juno)

A delightful and surreal treat which made Tim Burton a household name purely for his occult, off-the-wall visual style. Geena Davis & Alec Baldwin play a middle-aged couple who have an automobile accident in their small New England town and spend the afterlife in their home trying to scare off a family of yuppies who have just moved in. They summon the help of 'Betelguese', a mischievious demon who claims to be an expert at scaring people off, but he does more harm than good.

The movie amassed a huge cult following since it's 1988 release and is often considered one of the best comedy-horrors of all time.

Michael Keaton steals all the laughs at the demonic ghost and the special makeup effects are absolutely brilliant, even by modern day standards. Unfortunately, the other special effects don't look as good by comparison.

8/10

Did You Know:

The original script was a horror film, and featured Beetlejuice as a winged, reptilian demon who transformed into a small Middle Eastern man to interact with the Maitlands and the Deetzes. Lydia was a minor character, with her six-year-old sister Cathy being the Deetz child able to see the Maitlands. Beetlejuice's goal was to kill the Deetzs, rather than frighten them away, and included sequences where he mauled Cathy in the form of a rabid squirrel and tried to rape Lydia. Subsequent script re-writes turned the film into a comedy, and toned down Beetlejuice into the ghost of a wise cracking con-artist, rather than a demon.

The studio wanted to change the title to "House Ghosts", and even "Scared Sheetless" when Tim Burton mentioned it as a joke.