Beetlejuice (1988)
The success of Beetlejuice is that it knows to not take the macabre so seriously. Ghosts, dead bodies, grotesque physical transformations, possession, the occult, graveyards, and bizarre alternate realities all populate the film, and yet they’re regarded with a cheap goofiness that’s actually quite delightful. For something that could easily have been a vehicle for the latest in special effects, director Tim Burton relies mostly on gimmicks made to look as phony as possible, none more appealing than the process of claymation. The plot is inventive yet equally goofy – conceived, it seems, as a cross between a sitcom and a carnival funhouse, where weird things pop out of the darkness for no reason other than to make you laugh and scream.
Our heroes are Barbara and Adam Maitland (Geena Davis and Alec Baldwin), a wholesome couple from a small, picturesque Connecticut town. They both die in a car accident, leaving their spirits trapped within the confines of their home. They then watch helplessly as a yuppie family from New York, the Deetzes, moves in. The father (Jeffrey Jones) is a burnt-out contractor who now only wants to relax. Teenage daughter Lydia (Winona Ryder) is a photographer whose all-black wardrobe matches her brooding personality (“My whole life is a dark room,” she observes as she eats dinner with a veil over her face. “One. Big. Dark. Room.”). The stepmother (Catherine O’Hara) is a pretentious artist whose sculptures and design motifs would make H.P. Lovecraft feel right at home.
Hoping to get rid of the new tenants, the Maitlands appeal to a self-proclaimed “bio-exorcist” named Betelgeuse (Michael Keaton), a crude, obnoxious, disgusting, mischievous ghost whose perverted tendencies are second only to his ghoulish appearance. Like Pee-wee Herman before him – in a film, incidentally, also directed by Burton – there’s no easy way to peg Betelgeuse, except to say that there’s no one quite like him. He’s loud, manic, funny, and frightening – a zombie, magician, and offensive standup comedian all rolled into one. He regularly abandons all notions of decency and does everything he can to bring attention to himself. He’s a thoroughly original creation, one of the most entertaining to come along in quite some time.
Meanwhile, Barbara and Adam find themselves mired in an underworld bureaucracy, the afterlife not a paradise so much as a twisted version of a government office. First, they must sit in a waiting room as other dead clients are called in one number at a time. When they finally meet their caseworker, a tough-talking chain smoker with a hole in her neck (Sylvia Sidney), she informs them that they must remain in their house for 125 years. She also says that, if they really want to get the Deetzes out, they’re going to have to scare them off on their own. This is a bit of a Catch 22, seeing as the living are unable to see the dead. The only exception to this is Lydia, simply because she’s an oddity in her own right. I don’t pretend to know the rules. In all likelihood, the filmmakers didn’t either.
Anyway, it isn’t long before the Deetzes catch on to the fact that their home is haunted. But rather than flee in terror, they formulate plans to turn the house into a tourist attraction. Why and how they would hope to achieve this is left a little obscure, although we do know that O’Hara’s haughty and pretentious personal interior decorator (Glenn Shadix) seems to have dabbled in the occult and may know a thing or two about how to handle the situation. I don’t presume to ask how he ventured into this area or why, which is probably just as well; this movie is a lot more enjoyable when the focus is on the Maitlands.
Beetlejuice will never be considered one of the all-time great supernatural comedies. All the same, there’s something to be said for its offbeat, borderline juvenile approach to horror. Scary things happen, yet we’re not made to be scared by them; instead, we’re asked to marvel and maybe even laugh at the delightful cheapness with which they were made. Consider a brief but telling scene in which Barbara and Adam walk through a bustling underworld office; the typists, many of whom are nothing more than skeletons, glow in much the same way as tacky spookhouse animatronics sitting under UV lights. It’s these kinds of touches that can turn inane garbage into indulgent guilty pleasures. Beetlejuice is silly, broad, and about as lasting as a puff of smoke in the air, but I had fun watching it just the same.
