Beetlejuice is a 1988 American dark fantasy comedy horror[3][4] 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 Alec Baldwin, Geena Davis, Jeffrey Jones, Catherine O'Hara, Winona Ryder, and Michael Keaton as the title character.
The first installment of the Beetlejuice franchise, the plot revolves around a recently deceased couple. As ghosts, they are not allowed to leave their house. They contact Betelgeuse, a charismatic "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 $75 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 an animated television series, video games and a 2018 stage musical.
A sequel, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, had its theatrical release on September 6, 2024.[5]
Plot[]
In Winter River, Connecticut, married couple Barbara and Adam Maitland decide to spend their vacation decorating their idyllic country home. As they are driving home from a trip to town, Barbara swerves to avoid a dog, and the car crashes through the side of a covered bridge and plunges into the river. After returning home, she and Adam notice they now lack reflections.
When Adam attempts to leave the house, he ends up in a strange and otherworldly desert-like landscape populated by enormous "sandworms". The encounter lasts only a few seconds for him, but after Barbara rescues him, she says he was gone for two hours. They then find a Handbook for the Recently Deceased, which leads them to realize they drowned in the river and have become ghosts.
The house is sold, and the new owners, the Deetz family, arrive from New York City. Charles Deetz is a former real estate developer; his second wife, Delia, is a sculptor and conceptual artist; and his teenage goth daughter, Lydia, from his first marriage, is an aspiring photographer. Under the guidance of interior designer Otho, the family transforms the house into a new-wave work of postmodern art.
Consulting the Handbook, the Maitlands travel to an otherworldly waiting room populated by other distressed souls, where they discover the afterlife is structured according to a complex bureaucracy involving vouchers and caseworkers. The Maitlands' caseworker, Juno, tells them they must remain in the house for the next 125 years and scare the Deetzes out themselves.
Adam and Barbara are invisible to Charles and Delia, but Lydia is able to see them; she attributes her paranormal intuition to her "strange and unusual" nature. Against Juno's advice, the Maitlands contact the miscreant Betelgeuse, her former assistant and a now-freelance "bio-exorcist", to scare the Deetzes away.
Betelgeuse quickly offends the Maitlands with his crude and morbid demeanor. They reconsider hiring him, but they are too late to stop him from wreaking havoc on the Deetzes. The small town's charm and the supernatural events inspire Charles to pitch his boss, Maxie Dean, on transforming the town into a tourist hot spot, but Maxie wants evidence of the ghosts and brings his wife Sarah for a visit. Using the Handbook for the Recently Deceased, Otho conducts what he thinks is a séance and summons Adam and Barbara, using their wedding clothes, but they begin to age and decay, as Otho has mistakenly performed an exorcism instead.
Horrified, Lydia summons Betelgeuse for help, but he will only help her if she marries him; marrying a human would enable Betelgeuse to freely cause chaos in the mortal world. Betelgeuse saves the Maitlands, disposes of Maxie and Sarah in a high striker game, and of Otho by changing his clothes to a leisure suit, then prepares a wedding before a ghastly minister. The Maitlands intervene before the ceremony is completed, and Barbara rides a sandworm through the house, which devours Betelgeuse.
The Deetzes and Maitlands agree to live in harmony within the house. Barbara and Adam form a stronger bond with Lydia, and she persuades them to occasionally unleash their ghostly powers, including spirit possession. Now stuck in the afterlife waiting room, Betelgeuse steals a number ticket from a witch doctor, who shrinks his head in return.
Cast[]
- Michael Keaton as Betelgeuse
- Alec Baldwin as Adam Maitland
- Geena Davis as Barbara Maitland
- Jeffrey Jones as Charles Deetz
- Catherine O'Hara as Delia Deetz
- Winona Ryder as Lydia Deetz
- Sylvia Sidney as Juno
- Robert Goulet as Maxie Dean
- Dick Cavett as Bernard
- Glenn Shadix as Otho Fenlock
- Annie McEnroe as Jane Butterfield
- Simmy Bow as Janitor
- Maree Cheatham as Sarah Dean
- Carmen Filpi as a run-over man employed as a messenger in the waiting room
- Tony Cox as the preacher that Betelgeuse summons for his wedding with Lydia
- Jack Angel additionally provides the character's voice
- Susan Kellermann as Grace
- Adelle Lutz as Beryl
- Patrice Martinez as Miss Argentina
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.[6] 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).[6] 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.[7] A reference to this remains: Barbara remarks that her arm feels frozen upon returning home as a ghost.[8] 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 Middle Eastern 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:
Template:Blockquote
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.[9] 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[9] 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.[10]
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 Keaton. Burton was unfamiliar with Keaton's work, but was quickly convinced.[11]Stub 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.[12] Alyssa Milano was the runner-up for the role.[13] Burton cast Ryder upon seeing her in Lucas. Anjelica Huston was originally cast as Delia Deetz but dropped out because of illness.[12] 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".Stub Burton also felt that O'Hara and Jones would make a "cute couple".[14] Lydia Deetz was notably cast with the look and persona of the Goth subculture.[15][16][17][18]
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.Stub Burton wanted to hire Anton Furst as production designer after being impressed with his work on The Company of Wolves (1984) and Full Metal Jacket (1987), but Furst was committed to High Spirits, a choice he later regretted.[19] 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.Stub 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.Stub 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.[20] Interiors were filmed at The Culver Studios in Culver City, California. Principal photography took place from March 11 to June 11, 1987.
Music[]
- Main article: Beetlejuice (soundtrack)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.[21] 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,[22] recouping its $15 million budget and becoming the 10th-highest grossing film of 1988.[23][24]
Critical response[]
Beetlejuice was met with a mostly positive response. Based on 115 reviews collected by Rotten Tomatoes, Beetlejuice holds an 83% overall approval rating with an average rating of 7/10. 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.[25]
Pauline Kael called the film a "comedy classic",Stub while Jonathan Rosenbaum of Chicago Reader gave a highly positive review. Rosenbaum felt Beetlejuice had originality and creativity absent from other films.[26] Vincent Canby of The New York Times called it "a farce for our time" and wished Keaton had more screen time.[27] Desson Howe of The Washington Post felt Beetlejuice had the "perfect" balance of bizarreness, comedy and horror.[28]
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".[29] Roger Ebert gave the film two out of four stars, writing that he "would have been more interested if the screenplay had preserved their [Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis] sweet 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".[30]
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.[31]
Sequel[]
A sequel, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, produced by Brad Pitt's studio Plan B Entertainment alongside Warner Bros.,[32] with Michael Keaton, Winona Ryder, and Catherine O'Hara reprising their roles, was released on September 6, 2024.[33]
In other media[]
The film's success spawned an animated television series, video games and a 2018 stage musical.
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.[34][35]
Trailers[]
External links[]
- [http:// Official website]
Beetlejuice at IMDb- Beetlejuice at Box Office Mojo
- Beetlejuice at Rotten Tomatoes
- Official site for Beetlejuice's Rock and Roll Graveyard Revue
References[]
- ↑ Beetlejuice. Nash Information Services, LLC.
- ↑ https://www.worldwideboxoffice.com/movie.cgi?title=Beetlejuice&year=1988
- ↑ Erickson, Hal. Beetlejuice (1988).
- ↑ Nero, Dom (October 11, 2018). Beetlejuice Is a Horror-Fantasy-Comedy Hybrid Above All Categorization.
- ↑ Rubin, Rebecca. "'Beetlejuice 2', Starring Michael Keaton and Jenna Ortega, to Hit Theaters in 2024", Variety, May 9, 2023.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 (2006) Burton on Burton. Faber and Faber. ISBN 0-571-22926-3.
- ↑ McDowell, Michael. Beetle Juice (2nd Draft).
- ↑ Burton, Tim (1988). Beetlejuice. Warner Bros. Studios.
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 Skaaren, Warren. Beetle Juice.
- ↑ Schaaf, Fred (2008). "Betelgeuse", The Brightest Stars. Hoboken, New Jersey: Wiley, 175–76. ISBN 978-0-471-70410-2.
- ↑ 'Beetlejuice' Could Have Starred Sam Kinison and 'Day-O' Was Almost Cut (August 25, 2015).
- ↑ 12.0 12.1 Puchko, Kristy (March 29, 2018). 15 Things You Might Not Know About Beetlejuice. Mental Floss.
- ↑ "Alyssa Milano regrets losing a certain role to Winona Ryder". Entertainment Weekly. Archived from the original on August 29, 2021. Retrieved August 29, 2021.
- ↑ Catherine O'Hara on reuniting with Tim Burton (February 22, 2013).
- ↑ Tan, Azrin. "Lydia Deetz has always been the OG goth girl. Here's how to emulate her eclectic style", Vogue Singapore, August 31, 2024. Retrieved on September 9, 2024.
- ↑ Bender, Abby. "In Praise Of 'Beetlejuice,' A Goth Fashion Classic", Nylon, December 23, 2017. Retrieved on September 9, 2024.
- ↑ Vasquez, Jennifer (September 5, 2024). How Lydia Deetz Of 'Beetlejuice' Influenced The Goth Subculture. Vamp Jenn's Corner. Retrieved on September 9, 2024.
- ↑ Ryan, Danielle. "Why Lydia Deetz from 'Beetlejuice' is Forever My Goth Girl Hero", bloody-disgusting.com, April 19, 2019. Retrieved on September 9, 2024.
- ↑ Hughes, David (2003). Comic Book Movies. Virgin Books. ISBN 0-7535-0767-6.
- ↑ 15 famous fictional New England locales – A&E (February 20, 2013).
- ↑ Spacek, Nick (January 1, 2019). Beetlejuice OST (30th anniversary).
- ↑ Beetlejuice.
- ↑ Easton, Nina J.. "Roger Rabbit' Hops to Box-Office Top; 'Coming to America' Hits 2nd", Los Angeles Times, January 5, 1989.
- ↑ 1988 Yearly Box Office Results.
- ↑ ELEKTRA (2005) B. CinemaScore.
- ↑ Rosenbaum, Jonathan. "Beetlejuice", Chicago Reader, April 1, 1988.
- ↑ Canby, Vincent. "'Beetlejuice' is Pap For The Eyes", The New York Times, May 8, 1988, p. H19. Template:ProQuest.
- ↑ Howe, Desson. "Beetle Juice", April 1, 1988.
- ↑ Maslin, Janet. "Ghosts and Extra Eyeballs", The New York Times, March 30, 1988, p. C18. Template:ProQuest.
- ↑ Ebert, Roger. "Beetlejuice", Chicago Sun-Times, March 30, 1988.
- ↑ Hallenbeck, Bruce G. (2009). [[[:Template:Google books]] Comedy-Horror Films: A Chronological History, 1914–2008]. McFarland & Company, 155–158. ISBN 9780786453788.
- ↑ Grobar, Matt (February 28, 2022). 'Beetlejuice 2': Brad Pitt's Plan B Boards Sequel In Early Development At Warner Bros. Deadline Hollywood.
- ↑ McArdle, Tommy (February 1, 2024). Tim Burton's 'Beetlejuice' Sequel Unveils Official Title and New Poster: 'The Wait Is Almost Over' (in en).
- ↑ Netflix to close the curtains on its once-mighty DVD business that helped put Blockbuster in the grave. Fortune (April 18, 2023).
- ↑ Netflix will ship its final DVDs this fall. digitaltrends (April 18, 2023).