BEETLEJUICE (1988)
BEETLEJUICE is the movie that made Tim Burton “Tim Burton.” It’s hard to communicate the uniqueness of this movie now that his brand has been going for thirty+ years strong. In 1988, there was NOTHING like him. He was a defining cultural marker of the late ‘80s/early ‘90s and BEETLEJUICE is the lodestone that possible everything else in his Golden Age (BATMAN, EDWARD SCISSORHANDS, BATMAN RETURNS, THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS, ED WOOD).
What makes this such a touchstone movie? First of all, the concept is clean. The Maitlands—Adam (Alec Baldwin) and Barbara (Geena Davis)—are a happily married young couple spending their staycation renovating their huge colonial revival house in fictional Connecticut hamlet Winter River, where they live. Well, maybe not “live” as they drown eight minutes into the movie. They quickly return to haunt their house and discover the unspeakable horror of new tenants.
A family of trendy New Yorkers moves into their idyllic manor. Burnt-out architect Charles Deetz (Jeffrey Jones) is a benign enough presence but his abstract artist wife Lydia (Catherine O’ Hara) is a threat of a whirlwind, determined to (in her own words), “gut out this house and make it [her] own” and if her demands are not met, she is quick to inform Charles that she “will go insane, and I will take you with me!”
It’s an inversion of GHOSBUSTERS: The living are the pests that need disposing. The ghostly Maitlands need to scare off the Deetzs to retain some piece of Home Sweet Home but they find themselves powerless as the afterlife is an impenetrable bureaucracy. Seeking help is a ghastly DMV, where victims of freakish demises pass time bored in a waiting room purgatory while muzak plays eternally. So it’s understandable when Adam and Barbara turn to a very dangerous solution: the self-described “bio-exorcist” Betelgeuse (pronounced Beetlejuice), played in a career-high performance by Michael Keaton.
The movie’s comedic conceit is that the ghosts are the most normal characters. The Maitlands are surrounded by bizarre eccentrics and ghoulish yet overworked after-life social workers. The only solutions are supernatural hijinks that wouldn’t feel out of place with Joe Dante, a similarly cartoonish auteur whose work (THE HOWLING, TWILIGHT ZONE: THE MOVIE, GREMLINS) paved the way for Burton to flourish. Death is a sight gag. Ghosts seem made of silly putty, transforming themselves into the macabre doodles kids scribble on notebook margins.
BEETLEJUICE, in short, is the best use of Burton’s aesthetic in a live-action film. The at-the-time novelty of his gothic style reveals itself fully formed. It also feels evergreen because the aesthetic plays well in proportion to the movie’s more “realistic” aspects. In Winter River, every extra is out of Normal Rockwell and the house’s evolution is an unspoken narrative within itself.
Its walls are the battleground where Bo Welsh and Tom Duffield’s exemplary design work plays out. Maitland’s classic Americana is contrasted with Deetz’s Memphis-style postmodern furniture and sharp edges. Once you get to the afterlife, Burton’s trademark style EXPLODES. The black and white stripes, the black eye makeup, the German Expressionism makes more of an impact since it feels like an organic part of the universe.
We’re always seeing this through the eyes of the Maitlands, our audience surrogates.
Baldwin and Davis navigate the tricky task of not vanishing into the background as chaos reigns. They exude warmth and sweetness, even when aging into oblivion. Davis, in particular, finds the hidden quirks in Barbara and the world around them.
She has a sly smile even while wearing the ugliest button-down dress in the history of cinema. I wish she worked with Burton again. Like Michelle Pfeiffer, she knows how to center his weirdness in humanity. Burton’s later films would place the oddballs as the protagonists, leaving us without a strong emotional frame of reference.
Situated at the crossroads of these styles is the youngest Deetz, Lydia (Winona Ryder, in her star making role).
Dressed in all black and self-described as “strange and unusual”, she’s one of the original goth kids. If Hot Topic was a person, it’s Lydia. Winona immediately charms as she attempts to bridge the gap between the living and the dead.
She becomes a surrogate daughter to Adam and Barbara, which makes her a target of desire for the lecherous Beetlejuice.
Even though he’s the title character, Beetlejuice is only in the movie for 17 minutes. Like Anthony Hopkin’s Hannibal Lecter, Robin William’s Genie, and Heath Ledger’s Joker, Michael Keaton casts a spell over the entire endeavor.
He’s a ball of chaotic energy, laying waste to every scene with kamikaze energy. Burton gives him the most insane sight gags, leaving you eager for more. But the movie never confuses his actions.
Beetlejuice was quickly (and wrongly) reinterpreted as an anti-hero in the spin-off cartoon that followed the movie’s success. Here we never forget he’s a perverted bug that needs to be stamped out.
One of the other great strengths of the movie is the tight tight tight script by Michael McDowell and Larry Wilson with polishes by ‘80s script doctor Warren Skaaren. The movie is only 92 minutes yet creates a whole universe in that time. There’s a metric ton of world-building with dozens of classic lines generously spread around the cast. Catherine O’Hara takes the villainous stepmother archetype and transforms Delia into a masterclass of comedic narcissism. She feels like a dry run for O’Hara’s later role as Moira Rose in Schitt’s Creek. Glenn Shadix also kills as Otho, Delia’s facetious interior decorator (“Deliver me from L.L. Bean”). Sylvia Sydney takes two scenes as Juno, the Maitland’s exasperated caseworker, and imbues pages of exposition with cigarette-voiced poetry.
Even with a medium-range budget, every behind-the-scenes aspect of the movie is top of the line. Danny Elfman brings one of his first defining film scores. With this and SCROOGED (later that same year), he locked down his signature carnivalesque style (Oingo Boingo meets Nino Rota and Bernard Herrman).
Costume design by Aggie Guerard Rodgers is iconic, Barbara’s dress aside. Thomas E. Ackerman’s cinematography provides more color than we’re used to in Burton’s monochromatic work. The images have a saturated cartoon vibrancy. And Steve La Porte/Ve Neill/Robert Short’s makeup deservedly won an Academy Award that year.
So how is it still funny? The verbal comedy plays straight while the sight gags have a childlike glee. Visual after visual are thrown away (we never get to see Beetlejuice’s “scary” face, an undead office worker dangling from a noose drops paperwork on the desk of a skeleton). The movie teases darker content (Wait. Did Beetlejuice just KILL Maxie Deen and his wife?!) that we forgive due to its breakneck pace.
Plot mechanics that pop up out of nowhere (the third act exorcism and wedding ceremony) make sense in the child-like rules of the universe. It makes us want to dance along to Harry Belafonte. If The Handbook of Recently Deceased reads like stereo instructions then maybe, just maybe, we can cope with the darkness life has to offer with some grace.
It’s that lightness in the face of death that makes BEETLEJUICE Burton’s masterpiece.
