Beetlejuice is a film directed by Tim Burton, first released in the USA on March 30, 1988, and produced by The Geffen Film Company for Warner Bros. Pictures. It features two recently deceased ghosts, Adam Maitland (Alec Baldwin) and his wife, Barbara, (Geena Davis), who seek the help of an obnoxious bio-exorcist, Betelgeuse (Michael Keaton), to remove the Deetz family — metropolitan yuppies who recently moved from New York City and now occupy their old house. The Deetz family consists of Charles (Jeffrey Jones); his second wife, Delia (Catherine O'Hara); and moody goth teenage daughter Lydia (Winona Ryder).
| Beetlejuice | |
|---|---|
| File:BEETLEJUICE.jpg Beetlejuice movie poster | |
| Directed by | Tim Burton |
| Written by | Michael MacDowell Warren Skaaren Larry Wilson |
| Produced by | Michael Bender Richard Hashimoto Larry Wilson |
| Starring | Alec Baldwin Geena Davis Winona Ryder Jeffrey Jones Catherine O'Hara Michael Keaton |
| Music by | Danny Elfman |
| Distributed by | Warner Bros. |
Release dates | March 30, 1988 |
Running time | 92 min. |
| Country | USA |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $15,000,000 US (est.) |
The film
Template:Spoiler The name of the film is Beetlejuice, which reflects the pronunciation of Betelgeuse's name. Repeating this name three times is all that is required to summon him and also makes him leave. Adam and Barbara are not his only victims, for scams are his specialty. He used to be an assistant to Juno (Sylvia Sidney), the Maitlands' case worker, before getting into trouble. Betelgeuse is rude and vulgar, eats insects, and loves to terrify people.
The film was originally titled The Maitlands, as Adam and Barbara are much more the protagonists than Betelgeuse is, and was originally meant to be less humorous than it ultimately became, but Tim Burton decided to go for a more humorous approach after Michael Keaton came on board as Betelgeuse.
In this typically dark and humorous Tim Burton film, most of Keaton's lines were apparently improvised on set. Notable guest appearances include those of Robert Goulet and Dick Cavett (Delia's art agent). Songs from Harry Belafonte are featured quite heavily in the movie, especially in a scene in which Delia starts belting out "Day-O" (The Banana Boat Song) in Belafonte's voice (thanks to some spectral trickery) at a dinner that she and Charles are hosting. The movie paints a picture of the afterlife as stuffy and bureaucratic rather than Dantean, with waiting rooms, oceans of red tape, and required reading (The Handbook for the Recently Deceased). People who commit suicide, for example, are bored civil servants (the receptionist Adam and Barbara meet who slit her wrists, Juno slit her throat, the worker who called Adam and Barbara jumped in front of a vehicle, and another worker hung himself) rather than trees, as in the Inferno. Adam and Barbara are trapped in their house. The world outside is a parched nightmare of sand dunes and a sandworm (Betelgeuse calls this place Saturn).When exorcised, spirits are trapped in the room of lost souls. Lydia is the only living character who sees the couple, and is tapped to help them deal both with her obnoxious parents and with the crass and impetuous Betelgeuse.
When characters die in the world of Beetlejuice, they apparently always return as ghosts. When first appearing as a ghost, characters do not seem to be able to understand what has happened to them. As time goes on, and characters become more and more aware of their ghost nature, they become more and more powerful. (Adam and Barbara make themselves look scary, but are apparently unseen by the new family. Adam and Barbara possess the new family during dinner and cause them to dance. Adam and Barbara allow Lydia to levitate at the end.) Betelgeuse has been dead for a very long time, and has almost limitless powers. He is seemingly banished to the model town in the attic of the house, where his powers are greatly reduced. When released, he is able to control inanimate objects to attack people, imitate other people, summon objects and people at will, and banish people to 'Saturn'.
Portrayal of the afterlife
Beetlejuice seems to be inspired by Jean-Paul Sartre's existentialist novel Les jeux sont faits (1952), which prominently features death as meaningless bureaucracy, albeit presented in a much less morbid fashion. Another, although not as extreme, example is the 2004 TV series Dead Like Me, in which the characters need to work as grim reapers before they can leave limbo. Also, in the LucasArts adventure game Grim Fandango, people who commit crimes in life are forced to work off their time at the nightmarishly bureaucratic "Department of Death". An interesting constrast can be made with Burton's later work Corpse Bride, where the afterlife is vibrant and exciting, and the land of the living is grey and boring. All these are examples of Bangsian fantasy. Various esoteric and magical elements, such as exorcism, incantations, and seances, are prevalent in the afterlife as portrayed in this film. Religion occupies almost no identifiable role in the film, aside from fleeting references to Heaven and Hell.
Effects work
Beetlejuice was not granted an extravagant budget, particularly after Little Shop of Horrors ended up costing more than expected. As a result of this—and of the director's improvisational style—some of the effects work may seem cheap and old-fashioned, especially by today's standards. Sometimes, however, the need to produce effects quickly and cheaply added to their quality. Scenes like the sand worm scene were shot in stop animation. And the shot of Barbara lifting up a toy horse in front of a mirror (demonstrating that while it cast a reflection, she did not) was achieved entirely in-camera, using an empty mirror frame, a partial set built beyond and two toy horses bolted together. The resulting shot is an illusion with no matte work and consequent loss of image definition.
TV series
An animated television series loosely based on the film, also called Beetlejuice, ran on ABC from September 9, 1989 to December 6, 1991, featuring the voices of Stephen Ouimette, Alyson Court, and Tara Strong. Lydia and Betelgeuse are friends, and she frequently visits him at home in the Netherworld (called the Neitherworld in the cartoon). Many of the jokes revolve around toilet humor and visual puns. Beetlejuice had a cast of wacky neighbors including Jacques, a French skeleton fitness buff; Ginger, a tap-dancing spider; The Monster across the Street, a boisterous Texas redneck; and a nasty clown named Scuzzo, who is his arch-nemesis. Notably missing are the characters of Adam and Barbara Maitland.
Universal Studios Florida
The Beetlejuice character was made into a live musical attraction at Universal Studios Florida. The show is called "Beetlejuice's Rock 'N Roll Graveyard Revue"
External links
- Beetlejuice at IMDb