Beetlejuice (1988)
Directed by Tim Burton

Film Review

Director Tim Burton may have scored a box office hit with his feature debut Pee-wee's Big Adventure (1985) but it wasn't until he made his next film, Beetlejuice, that he showed his true creative flair and established himself as one of America's most promising young filmmakers.  Beetlejuice is a film  where anything seems to be possible (budget and censorship permitting) - a mad comicbook fantasy that is as insane as it is funny.  Distinguished by some imaginative special effects work and a story so off-the-wall that its writers must either be certifiable or creative geniuses, it is a film that revels in its own eccentricity and appears to have cult classic stamped on every frame.  For any devotee of the bizarre and unexpected, this film is a ghoulish mind-bending romp with an irresistible appeal. Even for those familiar with Burton's next few features, Batman (1989) and Edward Scissorhands (1990), this one is mind-bogglingly weird.

Beetlejuice is a pretty blatant tribute to all those low budget B-movie horror films that its director no doubt ingested in his childhood and adolescence.  This isn't so much evident in the storyline (which is better constructed and better realised than that of most B-movies) as in its shamelessly tacky special effects, particularly the animated sequences which mostly look like something that has escaped from a cheap 1970s children's TV show.  The unconvincing, comicbook nature of the effects can only add to the film's artisan charm, accentuating its deliciously surreal edge and rendering it even more outlandishly funny.

Although he is barely on screen for ten minutes, Michael Keaton has not the slightest difficulty stealing the film as the title character Betelgeuse (also spelled Beetlejuice), the grossest ghost you can imagine.  You cannot conceive what the film would be like without Keaton's hilarious and electrifying presence - it is entertaining enough without him but it only really comes alive when Betelgeuse leaps into action and starts wreaking mayhem and misery around him whilst lecherously lurching at anything that takes his fancy.  Sylvia Sidney adds to the fun as the chain-smoking case worker Juno, whilst Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis make an engaging lead couple failing to come to grips with the traumas of being dead, ably assisted by a young and winsome (in a Goth sort of way) Winona Ryder.  Beetlejuice is a surreal comic delight, far wackier and less self-conscious than Tim Burton's subsequent, slicker fantasy offerings.  It is one of the most enjoyable comedy horror films you will ever see, in this life and the next...

Film Synopsis

Barbara and Adam Maitland are the owners of a large country house in New England, which they plan to decorate during their summer holidays.  On their way home one day they drive their car off a bridge into a river.  The next thing they know is that they are back in their home, where they soon realise that they must be dead.  When they try to leave the house, they find themselves in a weird cartoon-like desert landscape inhabited by gigantic worms.  Having returned to the safety of their house, Barbara and Adam discover that it has been sold and its new owners, the Deetze family, are in the process of moving in.  Alarmed at the Deetzes' plans to completely renovate their beloved homestead, the ghost couple set about trying to scare them away, but their attempts prove futile.  Only the Deetzes' lonely daughter Lydia can see them, and she becomes their friend.  Following the advice of a book entitled Handbook for the Recently Deceased, Adam and Barbara draw a door on a wall and enter a strange inter-life world inhabited by the newly dead.  They meet their case worker Juno, who insists that on no account must they call upon the services of the freelance bio-exorcist Betelgeuse, a ghost with an extremely malevolent and perverted personality.  Realising they have no other option, Adam and Barbara call upon the services of the freelance bio-exorcist Betelgeuse, and soon wish they hadn't.  Lacking the Maitlands' self-restraint and good taste, Betelgeuse sets out to frighten the Deetzes to death by whatever means he can.  Luckily Juno steps in before the psychopathic ghost can do any more harm, and Adam and Barbara agree they can get along without him.  Far from being scared by these supernatural going on, the Deetzes see an opportunity to get rich and decide to convert their house into a ghost theme park...