Beetlejuice (character)

''Beetlejuice'' is a 1988 American gothic dark fantasy comedy horror film directed by Tim Burton from a screenplay by Michael McDowell and Warren Skaaren based on a story by McDowell and Larry Wilson. The film stars Michael Keaton as the title character, along with Alec Baldwin, Geena Davis, Jeffrey Jones, Catherine O'Hara, and Winona Ryder.

The plot revolves around a recently deceased couple. As ghosts, they are not allowed to leave their house. They contact Betelgeuse, a sleazy " bio-exorcist", to scare the house's new inhabitants away. The film prominently features music from Harry Belafonte's albums '' Calypso'' and '' Jump Up Calypso''.

''Beetlejuice'' was released in the United States on March 30, 1988, by Warner Bros. The film was a critical and commercial success, grossing $84 million on a $15 million budget. It won the Academy Award for Best Makeup and three Saturn Awards: Best Horror Film, Best Makeup, and Best Supporting Actress for Sylvia Sidney. The film's success spawned a media franchise, consisting of an animated television series, video games, a 2018 stage musical, and a sequel entitled ''Beetlejuice Beetlejuice'', which was released on September 6, 2024, with a third film currently in development.

Plot

In Winter River, Connecticut, Adam and Barbara Maitland are spending their vacation decorating their large country home that local real estate agent Jane Butterfield constantly pesters them to sell. As a hobby, Adam is building a scale model of the town in the attic. While driving home from town, the Maitlands’ car plunges off a bridge and into the river. Barbara and Adam arrive home but are unable to recall how they got there. When attempting to leave the house, Adam enters an otherworldly desert-like landscape populated by enormous sandworms. The encounter lasts mere seconds for him, but after Barbara rescues him, she claims he was gone for two hours. After discovering a ''Handbook for the Recently Deceased'' and noticing they have no reflections in a mirror, the couple realizes that they drowned in the river and are ghosts.

The house is sold to New York real estate developer Charles Deetz and his second wife Delia, a talentless sculptor. Charles' teenage goth daughter, Lydia lives with them. Under the guidance of interior designer Otho, Delia begins renovating the house with a new-wave aesthetic of postmodern art.

While consulting the ''Handbook'' on how to eject the Deetzes, the Maitlands see an advertisement for 'Betelgeuse'. Following the handbook's guidelines, they travel to an otherworldly waiting room filled with other distressed souls. After navigating the afterlife's complex bureaucracy, the Maitlands return home only to realize three months have passed and the house has been completely redesigned. Their caseworker Juno arrives and discloses the Maitlands must remain in their house for 125 years before "moving on". Juno discourages them from contacting Betelgeuse, her former assistant and now a freelance 'bio-exorcist', to drive out the Deetzes. Betelgeuse can only be summoned by uttering his name three times. Juno recommends that the Maitlands haunt the Deetzes themselves.

Adam and Barbara are invisible to Charles and Delia, which thwarts their fright attempts. Lydia, however, can see them, which she attributes to her peculiar nature. The Maitlands invoke Betelgeuse and are transported into the model. Betelgeuse's crude and morbid demeanor is offensive and they exit the model. The Maitlands possess Charles, Delia, and their wealthy friends during a dinner party. Unexpectedly, their antics only amuse the group, inspiring Charles to pitch a supernatural theme park to investor Maxie Dean. The Deetzes uncover the town model in the attic, where Otho finds the Maitlands' ''Handbook''. Betelgeuse transforms into a giant snake and terrorizes the Deetzes before Barbara banishes him back to the town model.

Juno calls Barbara and Adam back to the afterlife office and berates them for releasing Betelgeuse. Meanwhile, Lydia, depressed and blaming the Maitlands for Betelgeuse's attack, writes a suicide note. Lydia discovers Betelgeuse inside the model. She almost summons him in exchange for passage to the afterlife, but the Maitlands return and stop her.

Maxie Dean arrives and demands evidence of paranormal occurrences, but the Maitlands refuse to manifest again. Otho uses the ''Handbook'' and conducts what he believes is a séance. He summons Adam and Barbara by using their wedding clothes, but they begin aging and decaying rapidly as Otho has mistakenly performed an exorcism.

A horrified Lydia invokes Betelgeuse, who will help if she marries him so he can remain in the mortal world. He saves the Maitlands, drives away Otho and the Deans, then prepares to wed Lydia. The Maitlands attempt to banish Betelgeuse, who teleports Adam to the town model and Barbara to the desert-land. Barbara rides back into the house on a sandworm, which devours Betelgeuse.

The Deetzes and the Maitlands agree to harmoniously live together, and the Maitlands are close to Lydia. Betelgeuse is seen sitting in the afterlife waiting room, waiting his turn to see a caseworker. When he attempts to steal a witch doctor ghost's numbered ticket, his head gets shrunk.

Cast

Production

Writing

After the financial success of ''Pee-wee's Big Adventure'' (1985), Burton became a " bankable" director and began working on a script for ''Batman'' with Sam Hamm. While Warner Bros. was willing to pay for the script's development, it was less willing to green-light ''Batman''. Burton had become disheartened by the lack of imagination and originality in the scripts he had been sent, particularly '' Hot to Trot''.

Michael McDowell and Larry Wilson formed a partnership (Pecos Productions) with entertainment attorney Michael Bender, and ''Beetlejuice'' was their first original project. After developing the story, McDowell and Wilson decided they would write the first draft of the screenplay together, while Wilson would only take 'Story By' credit, as well as his 'Producer' credit.

Burton had gotten to know and worked with McDowell and Wilson (who co-wrote the script for "The Jar", an episode of ''Alfred Hitchcock Presents'' that Burton directed). Burton read their first draft of ''Beetlejuice'', liked it but had other projects that kept him from becoming involved at that time.

The original script is far less comedic and much darker; the Maitlands' car crash is depicted graphically, with Barbara's arm crushed and the couple screaming for help as they slowly drown. A reference to this remains: Barbara remarks that her arm feels frozen upon returning home as a ghost. Instead of possessing the Deetzes and forcing them to dance during dinner, the Maitlands cause a vine-patterned carpet to come to life and attack them by tangling them to their chairs.

The character of Betelgeuse—envisioned in the first draft as a winged demon who takes on the form of a short man—is also intent on killing the Deetzes rather than scaring them and wants sex from Lydia instead of marriage. In this version of the script, Betelgeuse need only be exhumed from his grave to be summoned, after which he is free to wreak havoc; he can be summoned, but not controlled, by saying his name three times and wanders the world freely, tormenting different characters in different manifestations.

In another version of the script, the film concludes with the Maitlands, Deetzes, and Otho conducting an exorcism ritual that destroys Betelgeuse, and the Maitlands transforming into miniature versions of themselves and moving into Adam's model of their home, which they refurbish to look like their house before the Deetzes moved in.

Co-author and producer Larry Wilson has talked about the reaction to the first draft by a prominent executive at Universal, where Wilson was employed at the time:

Skaaren's rewrite shifted the film's tone, eliminating the graphic nature of the Maitlands' deaths and further developing the concept created by McDowell and Wilson that the Afterlife is a complex bureaucracy. Skaaren's rewrite also added to McDowell and Wilson's depiction of the limbo that keeps Barbara and Adam trapped inside their home; in the original script, it takes the form of a massive void filled with giant clock gears that shred the fabric of time and space as they move. Skaaren had Barbara and Adam encounter different limbos every time they leave their home, including the "clock world" and the sandworm world, identified as Saturn's moon Titan. Skaaren also introduced the ''leitmotif'' of music accompanying Barbara and Adam's ghostly hijinks, although his script specified R&B tunes instead of Harry Belafonte and was to have concluded with Lydia dancing to " When a Man Loves a Woman".

Skaaren's first draft retained some of McDowell's Betelgeuse's more sinister characteristics but toned the character down to make him a troublesome pervert rather than blatantly murderous. Betelgeuse's true form was that of the Middle Eastern man, and much of his dialogue was written in African-American Vernacular English. This version concluded with the Deetzes returning to New York and leaving Lydia in the care of the Maitlands, who, with Lydia's help, transform their home's exterior into a stereotypical haunted house while returning the interior to its previous state. It also featured deleted scenes such as the real estate agent, Jane, trying to convince the Deetzes to allow her to sell the house for them (having sold it to them in the first place—Charles and Delia decline) and a revelation of how Betelgeuse had died centuries earlier (he attempted to hang himself while drunk—having been rejected by a woman—only to mess it up and die slowly by choking to death rather than quickly by snapping his neck) and wound up working for Juno before striking out on his own as a "freelance bio-exorcist".

Retrospectively, McDowell was impressed with how many people made the connection between the film's title and the star Betelgeuse.

Casting

Burton's original choice for Betelgeuse was Sammy Davis Jr. The producers also considered Dudley Moore and Sam Kinison for the role, but Geffen suggested Michael Keaton. Burton was unfamiliar with Keaton's work, but was quickly convinced. Several actresses auditioned for the role of Lydia Deetz, including Sarah Jessica Parker, Brooke Shields, Lori Loughlin, Diane Lane, Justine Bateman, Molly Ringwald, Juliette Lewis, and Jennifer Connelly. Alyssa Milano was the runner-up for the role. Burton cast Winona Ryder upon seeing her in ''Lucas''. Anjelica Huston was originally cast as Delia Deetz but dropped out because of illness. Catherine O'Hara quickly signed on, while Burton claimed it took a lot of time to convince other cast members to sign, as "they didn't know what to think of the weird script". Burton also felt that O'Hara and Jeffrey Jones would make a "cute couple". Lydia Deetz was notably cast with the look and persona of the Goth subculture.

Filming

''Beetlejuice''s budget was $15 million, with just $1 million given over to visual effects work. Considering the scale and scope of the effects, which included stop motion, replacement animation, prosthetic makeup, puppetry and blue screen, it was always Burton's intention to make the style similar to that of the B movies he grew up with as a child. He said that he wanted to make the effects look cheap and purposely fake-looking. Burton wanted to hire Anton Furst'' (1984) and ''Full Metal Jacket'' (1987), but Furst was committed to '' High Spirits'', a choice he later regretted. He hired Bo Welch, his future collaborator on ''Edward Scissorhands'' and ''Batman Returns''. The test screenings were met with positive feedback and prompted Burton to film an epilogue featuring Betelgeuse foolishly angering a witch doctor. Warner Bros. disliked the title ''Beetlejuice'' and wanted to call the film ''House Ghosts''. As a joke, Burton suggested the name ''Scared Sheetless'' and was horrified when the studio actually considered using it. While the setting is the fictional village of Winter River, Connecticut, all outdoor scenes were filmed in East Corinth, a village in the town of Corinth, Vermont. Interiors were filmed at The Culver Studios in Culver City, California. Principal photography took place from March 11 to June 11, 1987.

Music

The ''Beetlejuice'' soundtrack, first released in 1988 on LP, CD, and cassette tape, features most of the film's score, written and arranged by Danny Elfman. Geffen reissued the original 1988 soundtrack on vinyl in 2015, which was remastered and pressed to vinyl by Waxwork Records in 2019 for the film's 30th anniversary. The soundtrack features two original recordings performed by Harry Belafonte used in the film: "Day-O (The Banana Boat Song)" and "Jump in the Line (Shake, Senora)". Two other vintage Belafonte recordings that appear in the film are absent from the soundtrack: "Man Smart, Woman Smarter" and "Sweetheart from Venezuela". The soundtrack entered the ''Billboard'' 200 albums chart the week ending June 25, 1988, at No. 145, peaking two weeks later at No. 118 and spending a total of six weeks on the chart. This was after the film had already fallen out of the top 10 and before the video release in October. "Day-O" received a fair amount of airplay at the time in support of the soundtrack.

The complete score (with the Belafonte tracks included) was released in both the DVD and the Blu-ray as an isolated music track in the audio settings menu; this version of the audio track consists entirely of "clean" musical cues, uninterrupted by dialogue or sound effects.

Reception

Box office

''Beetlejuice'' opened theatrically in the United States on March 30, 1988, earning $8,030,897 its opening weekend, which at the time, was an Easter weekend record. The film eventually grossed $75.1 million worldwide. ''Beetlejuice'' was a financial success, recouping its $15 million budget and becoming the 10th-highest-grossing film of 1988.

Critical response

''Beetlejuice'' was met with a mostly positive response. Based on reviews collected by Rotten Tomatoes, ''Beetlejuice'' holds an overall approval rating with an average rating of . The website's critical consensus reads, "Brilliantly bizarre and overflowing with ideas, ''Beetlejuice'' offers some of Michael Keaton's most deliciously manic work—and creepy, funny fun for the whole family." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 71 out of 100, based on 19 reviews. Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film a B on a grade scale of A to F.

Pauline Kael called the film a "comedy classic". Jonathan Rosenbaum called it a "creative mess" in a positive review in the ''Chicago Reader''. Desson Howe of ''The Washington Post'' felt ''Beetlejuice'' had the "perfect" balance of bizarreness, comedy and horror.

Janet Maslin of ''The New York Times'' gave the film a negative review, writing that the film "tries anything and everything for effect, and only occasionally manages something marginally funny" and "is about as funny as a shrunken head". Roger Ebert gave the film two out of four stars, writing that he "would have been more interested if the screenplay had preserved their lec Baldwin and Geena Davissweet romanticism and cut back on the slapstick". Ebert called Keaton "unrecognizable behind pounds of makeup" and said "his scenes don't seem to fit with the other action".

In his book ''Comedy-Horror Films: A Chronological History, 1914–2008'', Bruce G. Hallenbeck praised the film's lively script, assured direction, offbeat casting, and "delightfully off-kilter, Edward Gorey-like look", citing the explorer with the shrunken head and the animated sandworm as particularly memorable visuals.

Accolades

At the 61st Academy Awards, ''Beetlejuice'' won the Academy Award for Best Makeup ( Steve La Porte, Ve Neill, and Robert Short), while the British Academy of Film and Television Arts nominated the film for Best Visual Effects and Makeup at the 42nd British Academy Film Awards.

''Beetlejuice'' won Best Horror Film and Best Make-up at the 1988 Saturn Awards. Sidney also won the Saturn for Best Supporting Actress, and the film received five other nominations: Direction for Burton, Writing for McDowell and Skaaren, Best Supporting Actor for Keaton, Music for Elfman, and Special Effects. ''Beetlejuice'' was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation. ''Beetlejuice'' was 88th in the American Film Institute's list of Best Comedies.

In other media

Beetlejuice has been adapted into various forms of media, including television, theater, video games, comics, theme park attractions, and merchandise.

Television

A spin-off animated television series, ''Beetlejuice'', aired from 1989 to 1991. Developed by Tim Burton, the series reimagined the relationship between Beetlejuice and Lydia Deetz, portraying them as friends who travel between the real world and the Neitherworld. The show introduced new characters and settings distinct from the film. The series ended on October 26, 1991 on ABC and on December 6, 1991 on Fox.

Stage adaptation

'' Beetlejuice the Musical'' is a stage adaptation featuring music and lyrics by Eddie Perfect. The production premiered at the National Theatre in Washington, D.C., in 2018 before transferring to Broadway in 2019. Following an initial closure due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the musical reopened in 2022 at the Marquis Theatre before concluding its Broadway run in 2023. A U.S. national tour began in December 2022.

Sequel

A sequel, ''Beetlejuice Beetlejuice'', produced by Brad Pitt's studio Plan B Entertainment alongside Warner Bros., with Michael Keaton, Winona Ryder, and Catherine O'Hara reprising their roles, was released in theaters on September 6, 2024.

In April 2025, a third film was confirmed to be in development.

Video games

Several video games based on ''Beetlejuice'' have been released. In 1991, LJN published a platformer for the Nintendo Entertainment System, developed by Rare, in which players control Beetlejuice and use scare-based abilities. A separate Game Boy title, ''Beetlejuice: Horrific Hijinx from the Neitherworld!'' (1992), also developed by Rare, was based on the animated series and featured side-scrolling gameplay. In September 2017, Lego Dimensions released :"Lego Dimensions: Beetlejuice Fun Pack" The release consisted of maps based on locations in the film, playable characters, and missions. It is not a standalone video game, but rather an expansion pack for the existing game ''Lego Dimensions''. During the second season of MultiVersus, Beetlejuice is seen as a player.

Comics and publications

DC Comics published a limited comic book series from 1991 to 1992, based on ''Beetlejuice: The Animated Series''. In 2024, DC released a series of ''Beetlejuice''-themed variant covers across several of its publications.

A series of juvenile novels based on the animated television series were published by Aladdin Paperbacks in 1992. The novels were ''Beetlejuice for President'', ''Lydia's Scream Date'', ''Rock 'n' Roll Nightmare'', ''Twisted Tours'', ''Camp Fright'', and ''Trial by Ghost.''

Theme park attractions

''Beetlejuice's Rock and Roll Graveyard Revue'' was a live stage show featured at Universal Studios theme parks. Debuting in 1992, the show featured Beetlejuice hosting musical performances alongside Universal Monsters. It closed permanently in 2016.

Video rental

On March 10, 1998, ''Beetlejuice'' became the first of more than 5.2 billion DVDs shipped by Netflix, which launched as a mail-based rental business.

See also

* List of ghost films

Notes

References

External links

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Official site for Beetlejuice's Rock and Roll Graveyard Revue

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Beetlejuice
1988 films
1988 black comedy films
1988 comedy horror films
1988 fantasy films
1980s American films
1980s English-language films
1980s fantasy comedy films
1980s ghost films
American black comedy films
American comedy horror films
American dark fantasy films
American fantasy comedy films
American haunted house films
Films about families
Films about the afterlife
Films about exorcism
Films adapted into plays
Films adapted into television shows
Films directed by Tim Burton
Films scored by Danny Elfman
Films set in Connecticut
Films set in country houses
Films shot in Vermont
Films that won the Academy Award for Best Makeup
Films using stop-motion animation
Films with screenplays by Larry Wilson (screenwriter)
Films with screenplays by Warren Skaaren
The Geffen Film Company films
Titan (moon) in film
Warner Bros. films
Films about weddings
English-language comedy horror films
English-language fantasy comedy films
Saturn Award–winning films