It’s Show­time! – Why Beetle­juice remains the ghost with the most

Thir­ty years after its release, Beetle­juice remains an imag­i­na­tive excep­tion in the dull land­scape of main­stream cin­e­ma. Based on a macabre sto­ry con­cept by screen­writer Michael McDow­ell, the orig­i­nal script envi­sioned a hap­pi­ly mar­ried cou­ple suf­fer­ing a hor­rif­ic car acci­dent only to be ter­rorised by a winged demon crea­ture. Tim Burton’s inter­est was piqued and after a rewrite by War­ren Skaaren, the film became a lot fun­nier, focus­ing more on the bizarre bureau­crat­ic world of the after­life. With the direc­tor bring­ing his own B‑movie aes­thet­ic to the project, Beetle­juice became an instant fan favourite.

Rely­ing on old-school moviemak­ing craft, Bur­ton took full advan­tage of Beetlejuice’s lim­it­ed VFX bud­get (just $1 mil­lion) to cre­ate a lo-fi, ani­mat­ed pro­duc­tion design. Like a cross between Ray Har­ry­hausen and Chuck Jones, this world has colour, tex­ture and weight. Draw­ing on the open­ing sequence fea­tur­ing a mod­el-scale of the town, the entire film evokes a kind of Toy­land where the char­ac­ters are at the mer­cy of a hier­ar­chy of super­nat­ur­al forces, like dolls in a child’s playhouse.

With­out delv­ing too deeply into the tragedy of death, the film trans­lates the sheer help­less­ness of grief with aplomb. Cap­tur­ing an almost Hel­lenic inter­pre­ta­tion of the after­life, death might unlock untold poten­tial and does mean a cer­tain immor­tal­i­ty, but com­pared to the rich­ness and plea­sure of liv­ing it is severe­ly lack­ing. Trans­form­ing the under­world into a green and pur­ple wait­ing office, Bur­ton bal­ances his idio­syn­crat­ic, vibrant visu­al style with an almost over­whelm­ing sense of dread. While cer­tain­ly not the first film­mak­er to express the hor­rif­ic empti­ness of an end­less void as an inef­fi­cient bureau­cra­cy, it is remark­ably effec­tive as a comedic anchor.

Fur­ther play­ing into the idea of the film as a large play­house, Winona Ryder steps in as a kind of Goth Bar­bie. While no means a flat char­ac­ter, her Lydia serves as a kind of fan­ta­sy fig­ure for young peo­ple who want­ed to be Elvi­ra and not San­dra Dee. With jet-black hair and pale skin, she has a wide array of pet­ti­coats, jew­el­ry and vam­pire-inspired cloth­ing that nev­er fails to make the teenage girl in me swoon. More than just a grumpy ado­les­cent, Lydia is pre­sent­ed as a cre­ative spir­it sti­fled by self­ish par­ents who give her no atten­tion and pres­sure her to be ​“nor­mal.” Mov­ing into the film’s third act, unlike her prof­i­teer­ing par­ents, she is will­ing to sac­ri­fice her immor­tal soul for her new ghost friends.

Along with Labyrinth, Beetle­juice fits into a small sub-sec­tion of 1980s cin­e­ma where a teen girl is betrothed to an overt­ly sex­u­alised fan­ta­sy crea­ture. Par­tial­ly a kind of dizzy­ing com­ing of age fan­ta­sy, the sex­u­alised aspect lends a sense of real dan­ger. Play­ing off a roman­ti­cised vision of death, one that Lydia har­bours, the film also serves as a deep­er alle­go­ry on our obses­sive and per­haps unhealthy need to shel­ter our chil­dren from nat­ur­al aspects of life, name­ly, sex and death. Lydia, left to her own devices, has to seek parental guid­ance from a recent­ly deceased cou­ple because her sense of iso­la­tion has led her to con­sid­er refuge in death.

Beetle­juice him­self, played by a deliri­ous­ly horny and charm­ing Michael Keaton, is a per­fect trick­ster incar­na­tion. Build­ing on one of storytelling’s old­est trope, Bur­ton and his writ­ing team craft a sleazy and untrust­wor­thy char­ac­ter who still con­vinc­ing­ly pro­vides a solu­tion under des­per­ate cir­cum­stances. Keaton gives a tour-de-force per­for­mance as the grav­el­ly-voiced demon who wants to be unleashed on the world to indulge in a self-grat­i­fy­ing pur­suit of plea­sure. Not quite mali­cious but def­i­nite­ly lack­ing in empa­thy, Beetle­juice is the ulti­mate par­ty ani­mal, will­ing to throw all com­mon sense out the win­dow in pur­suit of a good time.

At the time Beetle­juice was made, Bur­ton seemed like the heir appar­ent to Frank Tash­lin, the inno­v­a­tive Warn­er Broth­ers car­toon­ist who trans­lat­ed his pop-ani­mat­ed style to some of the best films of the 1950s, includ­ing Artists & Mod­els, The Girl Can’t Help It and Will Suc­cess Spoil Rock Hunter?. The film’s vibrant aes­thet­ic, matched with Dan­ny Elfman’s roller­coast­er score and Har­ry Belafonte’s orig­i­nal island music, blends the extremes of plea­sure, play and death, in a comed­ical­ly tense after­life adventure.

Bur­ton has long since worn out his wel­come as an alter­na­tive voice in the world of main­stream cin­e­ma. Just as he found wider com­mer­cial suc­cess and began to be tak­en seri­ous­ly, his films became increas­ing­ly bogged down by glossy spe­cial effects. Watch­ing Beetle­juice today is a reminder both of Burton’s once bound­less poten­tial, and of the increas­ing void left by the absence of hand-craft­ed prac­ti­cal effects.