It's hard to believe that
a movie as defiantly odd as the horror-comedy Beetlejuice even got made by a
Hollywood studio in the '80s, let alone that it became a substantial hit and a
sleepover staple. The title character—a pasty-faced, hollow-eyed,
green-teethed, bug-chomping corpse played by Michael Keaton—doesn't make
his first full appearance until halfway through the movie, and then comes
roaring across the screen like a pop-eyed beast from a Tex Avery cartoon,
belching and swearing and boasting. Chief among those boasts: that he can help
recently deceased couple Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis scare away the hideous
New York yuppies now inhabiting their charming country house. (Yes, Beetlejuice is pro-ghost.) Dry in
tone, packed with grotesque sight gags, and surprisingly sweet at times, Beetlejuice never seems concerned
with straightforward storytelling. First and foremost, it's a funhouse ride.
Beetlejuice was the perfect showcase
for director Tim Burton, whose previous feature, Pee-wee's Big Adventure, announced him as a
filmmaker capable of making the outré mainstream. A lot of the credit for Pee-wee's inventive eccentricity went
to its star, Paul Reubens, but there was no mistaking Burton's touch in Beetlejuice's bizarre, brilliant
visualizations of afterlife bureaucracy, or in the movie's cast of rickety,
handmade ghosts and demons. Working from a script by horror novelist Michael
McDowell (among others), Burton emphasized throwaway moments, often involving
new homeowner Jeffrey Jones. When Jones picks up his binoculars to do a little
bird-watching, he sees a predator gnawing the guts out of its recent kill; when
he flips the pages of a magazine, he gets softly showered with subscription
cards. It's like he's stranded in a New Yorker cartoon.
Tonally, Beetlejuice resembles some of the
other witty horror films of the era, like the Evil Dead and Nightmare On Elm
Street
series, but the fascination with model-building and heroic outsiders is pure Burton.
There's something unexpected and new popping up in almost every minute of Beetlejuice, which helps the movie
overcome Burton's chilly disinterest in—or disdain for—ordinary
people. Beetlejuice's reverse-exorcism premise is an apt one for Burton, who spent
much of the next decade making films in which he sought to drive out
"infestations by the living."
Key features: Three episodes of the what-the-hell? Beetlejuice Saturday-morning cartoon
series.