Like with Ghostbusters, I've long since learned that this movie is what most think of when they hear the title (maybe the star, too, if anyone is aware there is a star called Betelgeuse, which is an alternate spelling for the character's name), while the cartoon was significant when I was a kid but has now kind of fallen into obscurity. Also, I myself have, naturally, come to really appreciate what a truly good and well-done movie it is. It's fun, it's creative, it's kooky and out there, the characters are all very memorable and well-acted, there are a number of great setpieces and special effects, and, above anything else, it offers an interesting, unique take on ghosts, haunted houses, and the afterlife. And while it was before he truly established himself, I think it's definitely one of Burton's better movies, made long before he fell into that creative rut in his later years (it's also debatable whether or not he ever got out of it).
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| Michael McDowell |
Initially, Wes Craven was considered to direct Beetlejuice but, of course, the job eventually went to Tim Burton, who'd just made his first feature film, Pee-Wee's Big Adventure, which was surprisingly successful. After that, he began working with writer Sam Hamm on the screenplay for Batman, when he was given Michael McDowell's original script for Beetlejuice. Having become disillusioned with the many drab, unimaginative scripts that were being sent to him in the wake of Pee-Wee's success, Burton found this to be original and nutty enough to make him want to do it. It would prove to be another major success for him, making $84 million on a budget of just $15 million, and it would ensure that Batman would be made, which would only launch Burton's career in earnest when it became the mega blockbuster it did.
thing they know, they've returned to their house, with no memory of driving back, and when they try to leave, they find themselves in an otherworldy desert full of giant sandworms. Moreover, they find they cast no reflections in mirrors and also find a book called Handbook for the Recently Deceased, confirming that they died in the crash and are now ghosts. Unable to make heads or tails of the book, and finding they're literally trapped in the house, they then learn that, in the months since their deaths, their house has been sold to the Deetz family, who plan on doing a number of renovations they're not fond of, especially Barbara. Even worse, they try to do what any good ghost would do and scare the family out, but they can't see them. Taking refuge in the attic to keep the family from messing with a model of the town Adam built up there, and desperate for any sort of help, they find a flier hidden in the handbook advertising a "bio-exorcist" called Betelgeuse, and then see a TV advertisement by the guy himself. Still unsure of what to do, and realizing that Lydia Deetz can actually see them, Adam and Barbara manage to find their way to the Netherworld, which they discover is very bureaucratic. After waiting for a while, they get an appointment with their caseworker, Juno, who tells them that they have to get rid of the family themselves and warns them against contacting Betelgeuse.
When you first meet Lydia Deetz, Winona Ryder plays her as a typical Goth girl: always dressed in black, going on about how miserable and dark her life is, and interested in weird and creepy things, as seen when she sees a spiderweb with a large occupant in the house when they first move in and says, "I could live here." While the Maitlands are frustrated when they can't scare the family out, they find it all the more problematic when Lydia first sees them and tries to get up in the attic. They run into her and formally meet her when they, again, try to scare the family by putting sheets over themselves. Not only is Lydia not scared of them but she's really fascinated and elated to be meeting a couple of real ghosts. She does try to help them by convincing her mom and dad that they are real but they don't believe her, and when the Maitlands try to get rid of them with the Day-O sequence, Lydia has to break it to them that everyone found that amusing rather than scary. When Beetlejuice first shows up as a snake monster, nearly killing her dad and menacing her, Lydia becomes upset with the Maitlands and goes to her room. After this, it becomes clear that Lydia is not merely going through a phase but, rather, is very depressed and feels isolated and alone because of how unaccepting her parents are of her. Though it's played off as melodramatic, with her even paying special attention to her wording, Lydia writes a suicide note and then walks up to the attic with it. Instead of the Maitlands, she meets Beetlejuice, who tries to convince her to summon him, saying he might be able to help her go to the other side like she wants. She almost does, but the Maitlands show up in time to stop her, as well as talk her out of killing herself, offering her friendship and saying they've decided to allow her family to stay. However, things go awry that night when the family attempts to contact the Maitlands in a seance but end up conducting an exorcism instead. Desperate to help her friends, Lydia asks Beetlejuice for help, even agreeing to marry him so he can enter the living world freely in exchange. Of course, she soon comes to regret this Faustian bargain, and fortunately for her, the Maitlands come to her aid and manage to banish Beetlejuice before he can go through with the ceremony.
Beetlejuice holds them hostage with Delia's own sculptures. But, by the end of the movie, everything has worked out and the Maitlands are able to coexist in the house with the Deetzes, who've grown to accept them and put the house back the way it was (although Delia still annoys and terrifies Charles with her sculpting).
Otho (Glen Shadix), Delia's interior designer, is a typical, haughty sort of man who shares Delia's disdain for the look of the Maitland house when they first buy it and is more than willing to help her completely renovate it. He also happens to have been a paranormal investigator in the 70's and is intrigued by Lydia's claims that the house is haunted. Like everyone else, he's delighted rather than scared following the Day-O scene, assuring Charles that it'll get his boss, Maxie Dean, up there pronto, and when they go up to the attic after they Maitlands refuse to come down, he finds and takes the Handbook for the Recently Deceased. Despite being confronted by Beetlejuice as a snake and getting knocked down the stairs by him, Otho still decides to help the Deetzes in convincing Maxie Dean that the ghosts are real. He uses the handbook to summon them in a seance, but when they appear and start to decay, it becomes clear that what he performed was actually an exorcism and he can't do anything to stop it. Beetlejuice is conjured and saves the Maitlands, after which Otho tries to sneak out of the house. But Beetlejuice doesn't let him go without totally embarrassing him, putting a spotlight on him and ripping off his suit to replace it a fay, light-blue one underneath, which sends him wailing out of the house.
Juno (Sylvia Sidney), the Maitlands' otherworldly caseworker, is a harried, impatient, chain-smoking older woman who, annoyed that they kept her waiting for three months, breaks it to them that, if they want the Deetzes to leave, they'll have to scare them away themselves and admonishes them for not reading the handbook. If you look closely, you'll notice that her throat is slit, and since Otho's claim about suicides becoming civil servants in the afterlife appears to be true, it highly suggests she may have done it herself. Significantly, when they ask her about Beetlejuice, she insists they don't want to get mixed up with him, telling them he was once her assistant but was very unruly and hard to handle, and has only gotten worse since he struck out on his own as a "bio-exorcist." Juno appears a second time later on, summoning the Maitlands' to her office, where she's being annoyed by some deceased football players who can't get it through their thick skulls that they're dead and keep calling her "coach." She chastises the Maitlands for summoning Beetlejuice and letting Otho get his hands on the Handbook for the Recently Deceased. Now ordering them to get rid of the Deetzes, she presses them to come up with the freaky faces they create, as well as to get back the handbook and dispose of the photographs Lydia took of them. After they leave, it finally hits the footballers that they're dead, to which Juno snarks, "How did you guess?"
that's another Burton trademark. He's able to take just about any form he wants, including shrinking himself, becoming a snake monster with his head at the end of it, and, in his most random and yet memorable form, one where he has a small, ghoulish carousel on top of his head, which is itself topped with a small skull (a possible precursor to Jack Skellington), bat wings on the sides of his head (I like to think of them as unintentional foreshadowing of what Burton and Keaton would go on to do), and folded up arms that unravel to become enormous mallets he uses to send Maxie and Sarah Dean up through the ceiling.
Adam does everything he can to keep them out of, though they ultimately do enter and take Adam's model down to the den during the climax. As you can see, there's a lot of surreal, blue lighting here during the nighttime scenes, and it's only at the end of the movie, when the Maitlands and Deetzes decide to stay there together and the house is redecorated back the way it was, that the bright, lovely lighting from before returns.
the front door in dusk-like lighting, the camera zooms in on his feet and he appears to be spotlighted as he walks down the stairs, and then it transitions to an overhead shot of him standing in the Saturn desert landscape. Another nice use of lighting is when Juno first warns them of Beetlejuice and the lighting turns sinister, with their faces now lit from below, creating a lot of contrasts in their faces, a transition that doesn't
is kept, as seen when, after the Maitlands are photographed and Otho takes the handbook, Juno is now ordering them to get rid of the Deetzes. You have to wonder what Juno's reaction was to the Maitlands' decision to co-exist with the Deetzes in the house, the latter now fully knowing that spirits of the dead and the afterlife do exist.
manner similar to the lost souls seen earlier, with their faces becoming horribly shriveled and, at one point, Adam's bottom jaw falling off. When Beetlejuice tries to get married to Lydia, as per their agreement, he summons up a short, ghoulish minister with an oversized, skull-like head, and when the Maitlands attempt to stop him by saying his name three times again, he causes Adam's teeth and gums to fall out and become a set of chatterbox teeth, while he literally zips Barbara's lips, which she promptly unzips, and then puts a metal clamp over her mouth.
Even though it's a movie full of special effects, only $1 million of Beetlejuice's $15 million budget was spent on them. To compensate for this, Tim Burton said he decided to go for a crude, archaic, B-movie feel with the effects, but I think that's doing a disservice to the work here, as a lot of it is genuinely good. The blue screen work and compositing in some scenes, such as when the normal-sized characters are standing over Beetlejuice in the miniature town and the Maitlands find themselves in the desert on Saturn, 
can come off as a bit shaky, but other such effects, like Adam's severed head being held up by Barbara or the exterior house door floating in space above the desert, with the Maitlands walking through it, look quite good. An exceptionally fine shot is when the Maitlands are asleep and you see Barbara is floating in mid-air, as well as when they look in the mirror and see they have no reflection, which is hammered further by Barbara picking up a toy horse, which appears to be floating by itself in the 
reflection (they're actually just looking into the set itself through a window with no glass). There are plenty of noteworthy physical effects in the movie as well, like how, when they're wearing the sheets over themselves, the Maitlands move by floating rather than walking, Beetlejuice floating up into the air when they first meet him and then gliding across at them, Lydia doing the same at the end, the shrimp platters in the Day-O sequence turning into hands and grabbing the dinner guests by their faces, and various objects moving by themselves.
Having already used stop-motion a couple of times in Pee-Wee's Big Adventure, Burton decided to use it all the more in Beetlejuice, specifically in five notable instances. First are the sequences on the miniature Saturn desert, specifically when the giant sandworms slither through the sand like sharks before rising up to attack their victims. The sandworms themselves are very memorably-designed creatures, with long, black-and-white striped bodies that appear to be some kind of shell for the actual creature, which sticks its white,
snarling, toothy head out of the mouth, which could be meant as a tribute to the Aliens, and has interesting details like green-lined lips around both mouths, sheer red insides to its actual mouth, and a long tongue that's black-and-white like its body. The scene where Beetlejuice attacks the Deetzes in the form of a giant snake with his head on the end is a combination of stuff that was shot with a practical animatronic and a stop-motion creation. The animatronic was initially done before Michael Keaton had been cast as Beetlejuice, so all of the
stop-motion work and the close-ups of an animatronic head designed to look like Keaton were done much later. While the switch between the two techniques is noticeable, it is a very well put-together sequence, regardless. The Maitlands' actual transformations into the bizarre visages they take on in order to scare the family are done through stop-motion, making them look all the more uncanny, and during the climax, Beetlejuice brings Delia's sculptures to life and has them hold 
her and Charles hostage in order to force them to be witnesses to the wedding. When they move towards them, one drags itself across the ground, while this other that's shaped like a Christmas tree uses the tips of its branches to scuttle across the floor. He also morphs the fireplace into an arch. Finally, like the snake scene, the moment where Barbara crashes through the roof while riding a sandworm that attacks Beetlejuice was done through a combination of live-action, animatronics, and stop-motion. They also used traditional animation for glimpses of magic power, like when Beetlejuice sends the Maitlands away to keep them from interfering with the wedding, and you also see that effect when the witch doctor at the end shrinks Beetlejuice's head, which itself is simple but effective.
Like I said, the movie pulls a trick on you at the very start, as you think you're seeing a panning overhead shot of the town of Winter River behind the credits, but as it gets closer and closer, ultimately focusing in on the "Maitland house," you realize you're looking at a detailed miniature when a spider crawls up across the roof and Adam picks it up and tosses it out the window. This opening scene also has a nice juxtaposition between being very light-hearted and almost 
whimsical, as you see how happily married the Maitlands are and how idyllic their life in Winter Haven is, and suddenly taking a sharp left turn into dark humor when they meet their untimely deaths. While on their way back from Adam's hardware store in town, they approach a red, covered bridge and swerve to avoid hitting a dog. The car's front smashes through the wall and sways back and forth in the hole, balanced only by a single plank underneath it... which the dog happens to be
standing on the end of. When they turn and look, the dog jumps off the plank, dislodging the car and sending it falling over backwards into the river below. Again, they've just died tragically, but under ridiculous circumstances, and all while the sun is just shining away. After that is when they return to their house and slowly but surely begin to realize they're dead, especially when Adam tries to leave, only to find himself in the Saturn desert. Barbara pulls him back inside the house right as a sandworm heads right for him and she tells him
that, even though this took place over only a few seconds, he was gone two hours from her perspective. Upon finding the Handbook for the Recently Deceased, they try to learn what's happening exactly, but Adam is unable to make heads or tails of it, saying, "I don't see anything about heaven or hell. This book reads like stereo
instructions. Listen to this: 'Geographical and temporal perimeters.
Functional perimeters vary from manifestation to manifestation.'" Knowing this is going to take some time to wrap their heads around
it, Barbara collapses onto the bed Adam is sitting on in frustration. Some time later, after a short scene that first introduces Beetlejuice as he reads about the Maitlands' deaths in the obituaries, Barbara is shown going stir crazy because she can't clean properly and can't leave the house to get the vacuum. Moreover, her annoying, real estate agent cousin, Jane Butterfield, shows up with her daughter to pay their respects and Adam finds they can't see or hear him, which Barbara tells him is mentioned in the book.
The Deetzes then move in, much to the Maitlands' horror, rolling in something that almost damages the foot of the stairs, Delia making her displeasure about the house very clear, and Lydia being introduced when she's carried in while sitting on a black, leather couch. One of the moving men ignores Delia asking him to be careful with one of her sculptures, as he just tosses it onto the table, while Charles tries to relax in a rocking chair, only for Otho to show up by climbing in through the 
window (he doesn't use the door because he says it's bad luck). He and Delia then get to work, deciding where and how they're going to make their renovations. Adam and Barbara, realizing that they are, in fact, ghosts, try to scare them off but, since they can't hear or see them, nothing they do works, and all Adam is able to do is lock the attic door to keep them from getting in there. Barbara is so distraught at this that she tries to leave the house, only to fall into the desert like Adam did 
before. They're momentarily separated, although Adam quickly finds her, when a sandworm heads right for them, chasing them to the door and rising up and roaring at them. It lunges down at them, only for Barbara to smack it on its snout, causing it to recoil and actually whine. It just shakes it off and come at them again. This time, they run for the door behind them and manage to get back inside, but it then hits them just how hopeless their situation is, reinforced when you see the Deetzes' first dinner at the house. They dine on Cantonese 
food, which Delia doesn't like, along with just about everything else, including Lydia. The Maitlands also overhear them discussing what furniture they're going to get rid of, with Delia saying, "Everything goes, along with whatever's in the attic." Soon, they're in the midst of remodeling the house, with Otho overseeing the construction of the roofless, outside deck, and bringing in new furniture and more of Delia's sculptures. Up in the attic, the Maitlands watch helplessly at the mayhem, when they discover a flier hidden in the
fhandbook, while outside, as Lydia takes pictures of everything, Delia is horrified to see that one of her larger sculptures is being hoisted by a crane. The Maitlands look at the flier, with Adam mispronouncing Betelgeuse as "Beetlegeis," and while they're intrigued by the offer to help those troubled by the living, they're perplexed at not being able to figure out how to summon him.
Things turn disastrous when the sculpture on the crane smashes through the kitchen window while Charles is in the process of making coffee, and when the man working the crane swings it back out, it falls and traps Delia up against the side of the house, with two men having to pry it off. As she's taking pictures in the yard, Lydia appears to see the Maitlands when she looks up at the open attic window. Jane shows up and, after Lydia learns what happened to the Maitlands from her, she's given a 
skeleton key. She takes the opportunity to head upstairs to the attic, and though the Maitlands are initially unconcerned since the door is locked, they panic when she starts to use the key to get inside. They hold the door shut, when an old television set up there kicks on. It plays a used car style commercial featuring Beetlejuice, who's dressed up as a cowboy, sitting atop a fake cow, and twirling a lasso in the air, as he promotes himself as "the afterlife's leading bio-exorcist." He goes on to say, 
"I'll do anything. I'll scare 'em real bad. The point is, folks, that I'm gonna do anything to get your business. Hell, I'll possess myself if I gotta! Whoo! Yo, I got demons runnin' all through me. All through me. Come on down here and see it. And hey, if you act now, you get a free demon possession with every exorcism. Now, you can't beat that, can you? And bring the little parts down here. Hell, we got plenty of snakes and lizards for 'em to play with. There's no problem with that at all. So, say it once. Say it twice. Third times the
charm." The name BETELGEUSE appears onscreen three times for emphasis, and he finishes his commercial by hopping back and forth and singing, "I'll eat anything you want me to eat. I'll swallow anything you want me
to swallow. So, come on down and I'll... chew on a dog!", then howls. (It's only as I'm writing that I realized how wrong some of that sounds, in and out of context.) Once the commercial is over, Lydia, who was listening on the other side of the door, again tries to get in and the Maitlands continue holding the door. When she stops jiggling the key in the lock, Adam grabs something and uses it to push it out on the other side.
Realizing they need help, Adam remembers something he saw in the handbook: "In case of emergency, draw a door." He grabs a piece of chalk and draws the outline of a door on a brick wall, while Barbara suggests they contact "that beetle guy." At first, nothing happens, but then, Adam sees he forgot to draw a knob. He does... and still, nothing happens. Skimming through the book, he sees that it also says, "Knock three times," and does so. The brick wall shakes and rumbles, and an
actual door opens through the outline, spilling out an eerie, green glow that creeps under the attic door, where Lydia sees it. Putting the handbook away, the Maitlands pass through the door. While they're gone, Charles is shown doing some bird-watching, only to be repulsed when he sees a nasty, black-colored bird pecking at a bit of flesh. He finds admiring the craftsmanship of a nearby building to be more enjoyable, and he ignores Lydia when she tries to tell him about the house
being haunted, sending her out of his study. The Maitlands then find the waiting room that's on the other side of the ghostly door and are told by the receptionist that, because they don't have an appointment, they'll have to wait to talk with Juno, their caseworker. While they wait, Lydia manages to get into the attic and is amazed when she finds the model of the town. She also finds the handbook and flips through it. After the Maitlands learn that everyone who dies remains in the same condition they were at the time in the afterlife (by that logic,
the Maitlands should always be soaking wet but Tim Burton felt it would be too uncomfortable for Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis to be put through that for the entire shoot), with the receptionist adding some very dark humor by showing her slit wrists and saying, "I'll tell you something: if I knew then what I know now, I wouldn't have had my little 'accident,'" they're allowed to see Juno. They end up back in their house and are horrified to see what the Deetzes have done to it in the, as it turns out, three months they've been away. They meet Juno, who breaks it to them that they're going to have to get rid of the family themselves, saying they should study and use their talents.
When they reach the attic, Juno is about to leave upon being paged (her pager's ringtone is that traditional funeral dirge), when Barbara starts to ask her about Beetlejuice. Juno tells her not to even say his name, adding that they don't want to get mixed up with him. She then tells them, "I didn't want to bring it up, but rather than have you stumble o to it
and make another mistake, I'll tell you. He was my assistant, but he was
a troublemaker. He went out on his own as a 
freelance bio-exorcist.
Claimed he could get rid of the living. Got into more trouble." She then glances at the model and adds, "In fact, I
believe he's been sleazing around your cemetery lately. The only way he
can be brought back is by calling his name three times. But I strongly
suggest that you remove the Deetzes yourselves." Adam asks how they contact her if they need her but Juno disappears in a puff of smoke without answering. He figures they may want to heed her warning and leave the attic. When they do, a fly buzzes around the model and
lands in the cemetery. Beetlejuice's hands pop up out of the foam and he says, "Hey! Hey, you! Hey, come here!" He holds up a Zagnut bar, saying, "I got somethin' good for ya," and the fly approaches. When he gets close enough, Beetlejuice tosses away the candy bar, grabs the fly, and pulls him down, as he pathetically yells, "Help me! Help me!" (not only is that a cute little reference but it's also ironic, considering that Geena Davis was in David Cronenberg's The Fly two years before). The sound of a loud burp is then heard.
Now, the Maitlands try to scare the Deetzes by putting designer sheets over themselves and moaning melodramatically. They first try to scare Charles while he's on the phone with Maxie Dean and, at first, it is played off as a bit spooky, with Charles hearing Adam moaning on the other side of his study's door. But, when he opens the door and is confronted by this figure in a sheet with eyeholes, he thinks it's Lydia fooling around and tells "her" to get lost, as well as notes that Delia is 
going to freak out when she sees the holes cut into her $300 sheets. Barbara realizes how stupid this whole thing is but puts on another sheet, regardless, and joins Adam in floating into Delia's bedroom, moaning loudly. Delia, however, is asleep on the bed, and as the Maitlands moan, Lydia, in her own bedroom nearby, believes she's listening to Charles and Delia going at it (it doesn't help that Adam moans by going, "Ah, ah, ah!"). Groaning, "God, how he can stand that woman?", 
she knocks on the wall and yells for them to stop. Meanwhile, their moaning does nothing but make Delia stir slightly in her sleep. They moan even louder, but all this succeeds in doing is getting the half-asleep Delia to rise up and turn off the TV, which has been playing this whole time. Frustrated, they leave the room, only for Lydia to ambush them by taking a series of photographs, calling them out by saying, "Sick. Sexual perversion." She then picks up one of the pictures that came from her instamatic camera but, looking at it, she sees no
feet sticking out from under the sheets. Realizing they're the ghosts in the attic, Lydia, rather than becoming frightened as they hoped she would be, is curious and tries to get a look at them under the sheets. She's eager to see if they look really nasty but, when they remove the sheets, she's a bit disappointed to see that they look like normal people. They, however, are confused at how she can see them even without the sheets, and she says that the handbook reads, "Live people ignore the strange and unusual," adding, "I myself am strange
and unusual." She also breaks it to them that Delia took a Valium earlier. Up in the attic, Lydia is impressed with knowing that Adam made the model of the town, then learns they can't leave the house. When she starts to head back down, Adam asks her to tell her parents about them, hoping it'll help scare them away. Lydia, in turn, says they'd best find another way to scare people.
Naturally, Delia will have none of Lydia's talk about ghosts, despite the pictures she shows her, and is more concerned with preparing for the dinner party she's giving that night. Seeing this, the Maitlands, again, consider contacting Beetlejuice. That night, up in the attic, Barbara sees a light flashing in the model's cemetery and realizes Beetlejuice himself is trying to contact them. Having said his name once already, she says it a second time, and with Adam's urging, says it the pivotal 
third time. When she does, they find themselves in the miniature graveyard and turn around to see a sign saying "BETELGEUSE" pointing at a tombstone, which has the epitaph, "Here lies BETELGEUSE" above an arrow pointing straight down. The Maitlands walk up to the grave but find no sign of Beetlejuice. A pair of shovels falls to the ground when Barbara asks what they're supposed to do now, prompting them to start digging. They dig through the foam grass, ripping up the
cardboard below it, and continue for a while until they reach a coffin that has "BETELGEUSE" on a nameplate. Adam suggests opening it, while Barbara says they may want to knock first, when the coffin starts shaking and rattling violently. Adam and Barbara quickly climb out of the grave, when Beetlejuice floats up out of it, suspends himself in the air, and yells, "Yeah!" The Maitlands run for it but Beetlejuice flies over and lands in front of them. He introduces himself by dipping Barbara, kissing her right on the lips, and dropping
her, before asking Adam if their relationship is solid enough to where he won't have a chance. After getting mushy and saying he's touched that they picked him, he searches for his business card, pulling out a rat and putting it in Barbara's hand, which promptly freaks her out. Beetlejuice asks who he has to kill, and when Adam says no one, he says, "Ah, possession! Good." His voice proceeds to come out of Barbara's mouth, saying, "Learn to throw your voice! Fool your friends! Fun at parties!" Barbara tells him they just need him to get
some people out of their house and he says that, in order for him to do that, he needs to get to know them better, before hocking up and spitting in his pocket, saying, "Save that guy for later." Adam asks him what his qualifications are and he goes on this well-known rant where he says, "Well, I attended Julliard. I'm a graduate of the Harvard business
school. I travel quite extensively. I lived through the Black Plague and I
had a pretty good time during that. I've seen The Exorcist about 167 times, and it keeps getting funnier every single time I see it! Not to mention the fact that you're talkin' to a dead guy! Now, what do you think?!... You think I'm qualified?"
More to the point, Adam asks Beetlejuice if he can be scary and, in response, Beetlejuice asks, "What do you think of this?", and creates some horrific, Cthulu-like monstrous face that only the Maitlands see. Horrified and having seen enough, Barbara, in private, tells Adam they should go, while Adam argues that they may need him. Beetlejuice shows how much of a sleazebag he is by using a stick to lift up Barbara's skirt so he can have a peek. That's the last straw for them and they attempt to leave,
only for Beetlejuice to try to stop them, having transitioned his clothes into looking more like Adam's to show how they're "simpatico." He pulls him into a hug, then tries to cop a feel on Barbara by reaching behind his back, and mentions how he's been to Saturn like them, saying, "Whoa. Sandworms. You hate 'em, right? I hate 'em myself!" His head then randomly spins around crazily while he shrieks, and when he stops it, he asks, "Don't you hate it when that happens?" 
Again, that was more than enough for the Maitlands, and though Beetlejuice tries to stop them by inviting them into his own home, Barbara gets them out of the model by yelling "home" three times. When he sees they're gone, Beetlejuice yells, "You buncha losers! You're workin' with a professional here!", and kicks the dead tree behind his tombstone, which proceeds to fall over. Glancing at it, Beetlejuice comments, "Nice fuckin' model!", and grabs his crotch, accompanied by the sound of a horn (that was actually a blooper that Tim Burton thought was funny enough to be left in). Outside the model, Adam straightens up the tree and they decide to once again try to scare the Deetzes off themselves.
Next, we have the Day-O scene, which begins with the Deetzes having dinner with Otho, Beryl Lutz, a woman who clearly doesn't like Otho, Bernard, Delia's agent, and Grace, a woman who writes for a magazine called Art in America. The conversation turns to the paranormal, with Otho revealing he used to be an investigator and becoming intrigued when Lydia claims to have seen some ghosts, but Delia puts a stop to it, saying she's fed up with hearing about it. She says, "I would rather talk about...", then makes a weird face, as if
something's come over her. That's when Harry Belafonte's voice comes out of her mouth, singing, "Day-O!", and begins the song. Delia obviously still has her wits about her, as her face is just as confused as everyone else's, while Otho snarks, "That's cute, Lydia," and Charles looks under the table, asking Otho if this is his doing. Then, both Charles and Delia are compelled to stand up, the others, save for Lydia, grab their napkins and jostle them back and forth and in the air, Delia and Charles dance in place as the former sings, and
Otho grabs the ice bucket, upends it, and bangs on its bottom as if it's a drum, all as they're clearly confused as to what's going on. Everyone else is compelled to stand up and sing and dance, then they all join hands and pull back and forth, and dance around the table, before turning around, bending down onto their seats, and shaking their rears. They all sit back down, only for the shrimp in their bowls to become the fingers of monstrous hands that come up, grab them by the faces, yank them down, and then shove them to the floor,
before sinking back down into the bowls and laughing. Up in the attic, the Maitlands are sure that still little stunt will send them running out of the house and to their cars, screaming. They look out the window to watch it happen... but it doesn't. Lydia comes up and tells them that everyone wants them to come downstairs, adding, "Delia says you can wear any sheets you want." Disappointed, they opt not to and send Lydia down to break the news to the others. This confirms for the skeptical 
Bernard that the whole thing was a put-on (I don't know how he could even begin to think that) and he, Grace, and Beryl leave. Undeterred, Otho asks Lydia where the Maitlands stay, and when she says they're in the attic, Delia storms up there with everyone else, pounding on the door and telling them, "Open this door, you dead people, or we'll bust it down and we'll drag you out by the ropes you hanged yourselves with!" When she gets no response, she smacks the door again and it swings 
open. Entering the attic, Charles is impressed with the town model, while Delia is annoyed that the Maitlands are nowhere to be found. Otho, however, finds their handbook and Delia has everyone leave the attic so as not to scare them away for good. When they leave, it's revealed that Adam and Barbara were hanging outside the window. Unbeknownst to them, Beetlejuice decides to give things a try himself.
On their way back down, Charles talks about getting Maxie Dean up there to show him the ghosts and unveil his plan to turn the place into a tourist attraction. Delia walks ahead of everyone else and runs her hand across the handrail at the top of the stairs, when the texture of it... changes. Looking down, she realizes she's touching an enormous snake's hide. That's when Beetlejuice rises up in the form of a snake, albeit with his head at the end of it. Everyone recoils and plants up against the wall at the sight of him, while he gets
off the rails and slithers between Delia's feet in order to look up her dress, sending her running for cover. Otho runs for it but Beetlejuice smacks him with his tail and sends him tumbling down the stairs. He turns his attention to Charles, who tries to take shelter in another room but Beetlejuice snags his foot with his tail, drags him out, and hoists him upside down. He tells him, "We've come for your daughter, Chuck," and then drops him off the landing and to the floor below. Finally, Beetlejuice turns to Lydia, who cowers in the
corner, and smiles in a sinister manner as he moves towards her. Before he can get her, Barbara comes downstairs and quickly says his name three times, banishing him. Terrified and hurt at the idea that what just happened was because of her and Adam, Lydia runs off to her room. Barbara runs back up to the attic, and while Adam believes that might have given the family the incentive to leave, she doesn't like how Beetlejuice could've hurt someone. Speaking of which, he returns to the model, 
crashing a car into a fire hydrant and tumbling out of it. He yells at them for interfering and when Barbara admonishes him for being so rough, he yells, "Hey, I'm just doin' my job. Besides, I thought we had a deal!" He then tells Barbara, "Hey, it's okay. You know why? I don't wanna do business with you deadbeats
anyway. Thank you. The only one I think I can deal with is Edgar Allan Poe's
daughter. I think she understands me." Barbara picks Beetlejuice up in her hand and warns 
him to stay away from Lydia, when he suddenly sprouts spikes out of his body, causing her to drop him. When she does, his spikes get stuck in the foam grass at the cemetery and he struggles to get back up, as he fell on his front. After daring Barbara to try anything, he says he's a little "anxious" and decides he needs to get some action. A tacky whorehouse, glowing red from neon, pops up, with a number of ghoulish girls motioning Beetlejuice over. Combing his hair, he struts towards the building.
Barbara asks Adam why he put that in the model and he says he didn't. That's when they suddenly find themselves back in the Netherworld's office area and are taken to see Juno. She explains that she created the whorehouse to distract Beetlejuice, before scolding them for summoning him, allowing themselves to be photographed by Lydia, and letting Otho get the handbook. Meanwhile, as Charles, Delia, and Otho discuss how to get the Maitlands to appear when Maxie Dean shows up, Lydia is in her room, writing a suicide note. But, as
said before, it's played for dark humor, with melodramatic music playing and Lydia feeling the need to correct the note's grammar, such as substituting "jumped" with "plummeted," and put in more adjectives for emphasis. While Juno presses the Maitlands into coming up with truly horrific faces to get rid of the Deetzes, ordering them to also get back the photographs and the handbook, Lydia heads up to the attic. She calls for the Maitlands, but instead, finds Beetlejuice, who's sunning himself on a balcony at the whorehouse.
He tells her that they've gone to the afterlife and, after introducing himself as the ghost with the most, as well as grabbing and munching on a cockroach, asks her to help him get out. Though he's stunned when she says she wants to commit suicide, he says they could possibly talk if she summons him. He tells her she has to say his name three times but explains he can't just tell her what it is, opting to do so through charades. She guesses that it's two words and that the first word has two
syllables, but he makes a motion that she doesn't understand and he finally has to yell, "Turn around and look behind ya!" When she does, she sees a big beetle sitting on a chair that says, "Hi. How are ya?" Though startled, she correctly guesses "beetle," and then, he conjures up a carton of orange juice that pours into a glass. This is a little harder for her to get, as she says, "Breakfast? Orange? Orange beetle? Beetle... fruit? Beetle breakfast? Beetle drink?" Though it seems hopeless 
and he does get frustrated, trying to help her by miming drinking, she does blurt out Beetlejuice. He tells her she's right, and when she incredulously asks, "Your name's Beetlejuice?", he excitedly tells her to say it once more. That's when she recognizes him as the snake monster and says she wants to talk to Barbara, while he insists for her to just say it once more.
The Maitlands prepare to reenter their house with their monstrous faces, when Barbara tells Adam she can't scare Lydia, as she's grown quite fond of her. They enter the attic just as Lydia is about to say Beetlejuice's name for the third time and stop her. Naturally, she's frightened when she sees what they look like, while Beetlejuice falls over the balcony from his anxiousness to get her to say it. Barbara manages to change back and gets Lydia to tell her what was going on, while Adam struggles to get his own face back to normal. She talks her
out of wanting to commit suicide, saying it doesn't make things any easier, and also tells her that they're going to invite her family to stay with. They hear people coming upstairs and hide. Charles, Otho, and a couple of other men come in and take the model downstairs for some kind of presentation. Lydia decides to follow and see what's going on. Down in the den, Charles tries to sell Maxie Dean on his idea for exploiting their haunted house, as well as other plans for the town, 
but Maxie is more interested in seeing the Maitlands than anything else. Lydia comes down and says the Maitlands aren't there, but tells them of their offer to allow them to live there as long as they don't try to exploit them. Delia is unfazed by this, as Otho says the ghosts are still there and reveals he has the handbook, planning to use it to summon them. Initially, Lydia is aghast at this, but then says, "Wait. What am I worried about? Otho, you can't even change a tire." Scoffing, Otho says he'll need something personal of the Maitlands' and Delia, getting an idea, walks out of the room.
That night, as they prepare to begin the seance, it's revealed that the Maitlands' wedding clothes, which Delia and Otho found when they first walked through the house, are the personal items they're using. Otho has everyone join hands around the table, and as Lydia watches from nearby, he begins reciting the words to invoke the spirits. Lightning flashes outside while, upstairs in the attic, Adam goes to hold Barbara's hand, only to find she's fading away. She disappears completely within seconds and, downstairs, the wedding dress
fills up and rises up on the table. Barbara's head and hands appear through the neck and sleeves, and everyone is amazed as she floats slightly above the table, while Lydia is horrified that Otho managed made it work. Barbara begins to decay, while Otho reads more from the book, this time causing Adam to disappear from the attic and reappear in his tuxedo. By this point, Barbara has practically mummified, the sight of which shocks Adam. Her hand even starts to crumble when he grabs it and her shoes fall off her feet. Otho flips
through the book, trying to find an answer as to what's going on, while Lydia exclaims they're dying. As Adam starts to decay too, Charles, realizing they've made a bad mistake, asks Otho to stop but he tells him it's now out of his hands. Lydia rushes to where the model of the town is being kept and, finding Beetlejuice still there, asks him to help the Maitlands. That's when he agrees to do so as long as she marries him so he can enter the world of the living for good. With no other choice, she says yes and recites his name twice, after
which he dusts off his sleeves and shakes his collars. When she says it once more, he smiles and says his popular catchphrase, "It's showtime," as a lightning flash illuminates him. He then slowly emerges from the model in that form with the carousel atop his head, exclaiming, "Attention, K-Mart shoppers," and getting everyone's attention. They walk in to see what's going on and he starts the carousel spinning and unfurls his folded up arms, which morph into enormous mallets. A
couple of "test your strength" boards rise up behind Maxie and Sarah and Beetlejuice brings the mallets down, sending them flying up through the ceiling. Reverting back to normal and smoking a cigarette, Beetlejuice tells them, "That is why I won't do two shows a night anymore, babe. I won't. I won't do 'em." He then keeps his word and frees the Maitlands from the exorcism, and when Otho tries to sneak out, he jumps on his back, tells him, "Not so fast, round boy. We're gonna have some laughs," 
and kisses his cheek. Cackling when he jumps off his back, he then puts a spotlight on him and, miming shooting with his thumb and index finger, rips off his black suit and reveals a light-blue one underneath. This sends hum running out following a whiny yell. Lydia runs into her parents' embrace and Beetlejuice unexpectedly joins them, telling Charles and Delia, "I just want you two to know, you're welcome at our house
anytime you want to come over. In the meantime, the dowry's on me, dad." He puts a couple of snakes in Charles' hand, much to his and the others' disgust.
Turning around and offering Lydia his arm, Beetlejuice, now wearing his burgundy-colored suit, asks, "Shall we?" Lydia then sees she's now wearing a scarlet-red wedding dress and is pulled over to him. Adam tries to banish him by saying his name but his bottom jaw falls off, while Beetlejuice, deciding they need witnesses, brings two of Delia's sculptures to life and they make their way over to her and Charles, grabbing and holding them in place. Beetlejuice then turns the fireplace into an arch and a ghoulish minister emerges. He's
eager to get on with the ceremony, though he stops the minister from saying his name, saying, "Nobody says the B-word." When the minister asks if he takes Lydia as his wife, he goes over to the side by himself, murmurs, "Oh geez, I don't know. I mean, it's kind of a big decision, isn't it? I
mean, I always said if I ever did it, I was gonna do it once and that
was it. Oh, well," then returns to Lydia's side and answers, "Sure, yeah. Go ahead." Now, the minister asks Lydia if she takes Beetlejuice to be her husband, and though she tries to protest, he
covers her mouth, tells the minister, "She's a little bit nervous. Uh, maybe I should answer for her, okay?", and says in Lydia's voice, "I'm Lydia Deetz and I'm of sound mind. The man next to me is the one I
want. You asked me, I'm answering. Yes, I love that man of mine." He motions for the minister to hurry up, but the Maitlands, who've now recovered from the exorcism, attempt to intervene. Beetlejuice causes Adam to lose his teeth when he tries to say his name, only for the
teeth themselves to attempt to speak and then bite at Beetlejuice's feet while he stomps around them. He gets rid of them, and when Adam lunges at him, he freezes him and makes him disappear, banishing him to the model. Just as the minister is going to pronounce them man and wife, Barbara says Beetlejuice's name once. He quickly turns her mouth into a zipper, but she just unzips it and says it a second time. This time, he puts a big, metal clamp on her mouth, which she struggles to
remove. Again, he yells for the minister to hurry it up, when he asks for the ring. Beetlejuice searches around his pockets for the ring, pulling out snakes, mice, and other disgusting things, and sends Barbara to Saturn while he's at it, while Adam commandeers a model car and drives it across the miniature street. Beetlejuice finds the ring, which is attached to a severed finger, the sight of which repulses Lydia. Beetlejuice says, "I'm tellin' ya, honey, she meant nothin' to me. Nothin' at all!", removes the ring from the finger, and tries to put it on her.
Adam drives the car off the model, lands on the floor, and heads right for Beetlejuice's foot, just as the minister is about to make the marriage official and Beetlejuice is attempting to slip the ring onto Lydia's finger. Adam dives out of the car before it hits Beetlejuice's foot with a spark, causing him to jump up and yell. On top of that, a sandworm being ridden by Barbara comes through the roof, grabs him in its jaws, and smashes through the floor, taking him with it. With that, Charles and Delia are freed, Adam reunites with Barbara, and both families are formally introduced for the first time, as the minister vanishes in a poof of fire.
The film transitions to some time later, where Lydia, now much peppier and happier than she was before, is attending Miss Shannon's School for Girls in town. She rides home one afternoon and is greeted by the Maitlands, who are remodeling the house back to the way it was before. She tells them that she got a C on her science test because she refused to dissect a frog but, after pretending like she failed, reveals she got an A on her math test. She asks, "So, can I?", and Adam, after teasing her a bit over the grade she got on the science test,
decides to let her. We then see what she's talking about, as Adam gets everything in the room dancing to the song, Jump in the Line. In his study, Charles is reading a book called The Living and the Dead, which he finds as hard to understand as the Maitlands did the Handbook for the Recently Deceased, when he hears what's going on upstairs. Delia then puts her newest sculpture, a bust of the Beetlejuice snake, in his face, which causes him to crash to the floor in a panic. She smiles and says, "He likes it." Upstairs, the Maitlands dance to the
music, while Lydia floats up into the air, as Harry Belafonte's voice comes out of her mouth, singing the song. We then see what happened to Beetlejuice. Even though he's already dead, he's now in the afterlife waiting room. He rubs the legs of the magician's assistant, when her torso smacks him, causing him to fall off the couch and move over to another one. He sits between a witch doctor and the man with a shrunken head and attempts to strike up a conversation with the latter, but that
goes nowhere. Looking down at his number, which is 9,998,383,750,000, he looks up to see they're currently assisting 3! Aghast, he then sees that the witch doctor has 4 as his number. He talks to him, acting like he's interested in his head-shrinking work, then pretends to see Elvis Presley in order to distract him, which is when he switches numbers. Acting all nonchalant, he says he's next and that he has to go model for GQ soon (he says he has to model underwear, which, yeah; enjoy that visual),
when the witch doctor realizes what he did. He retaliates by sprinkling some magic dust on Beetlejuice's head, causing it to shrink. As his voice gets higher the smaller his head gets, he yells, "Whoa, hey! What are you doin'? Hey, stop it! Hey, you're messing up my hair! C'mon! Whoa! Whoa! Stop it! Whoa!" Once his head is really shrunken, he sits there and figures, "Hey, this might be a good look for me." The movie ends on a shot of Lydia floating in the air, continuing to channel Belafonte, as the football players who were in Juno's office appear on the stairway behind her, dancing with the music as well.
Like with Tim Burton himself, Beetlejuice was still very early in Danny Elfman's career as a film composer, have scored Pee-Wee's Big Adventure, his first studio movie, three years before and having scored movies like Back to School and Summer School in the interim (he also scored an episode of the revived Alfred Hitchcock Presents called The Jar, which was directed by Burton). However, in doing it, he managed to come up with a score that is quintessential to both of their styles. It starts with an unusual, twinkling tune accompanied by a voice (Elfman himself) singing the Banana Boat song, transitions into an eerie bit accompanied by vocalizing voices as the title comes up. During the credits, the main theme plays and it has that traditional bouncy, nutty, mischievous sound to it that Elfman often does for Burton, and it's a perfect motif for the character of Beetlejuice (so much so that they did incorporate into the cartoon series), often heard in softer, sneakier versions whenever his presence is hinted at and only reaching its full zenith again during the climax. Elfman keeps that same feel for most of the score, playing the opening scene where the Maitlands drive into town with an overly happy-sounding, picturesque bit of music, and their crashing and dying is played in a melodramatic fashion. It continues to sound strange and over-the-top when they make it back to their house and slowly but surely realize that they're dead, soft and oddball when the Deetzes are introduced as they move in, and none of it is scored to be scary, with even scenes like the snake monster and the crazy climax being done in a nutty, mischievous manner. As I said before, Lydia writing her suicide note is scored very melodramatically, although the moment where the Maitlands talk her out of it is scored in a heartfelt manner, and while it's done in a traditional, funeral dirge style, the music does emphasize the horror and agony the Maitlands go through when the seance turns out to be an exorcism. Finally, you have the calypso songs by Harry Belafonte, which are established from the beginning, as Adam is seen listening to Man Smart, Woman Smarter and Sweetheart from Venezuela, though the more popular ones are Day-O and Jump in the Line.
Beetlejuice is one of those movies that accomplishes everything it sets out to do pretty much perfectly. It has a slew of memorable characters and great actors playing them, Michael Keaton manages to make a real impression as the title character despite not having much screentime, Tim Burton's influence is apparent even at this early stage of his career, the art direction and cinematography are brilliant, the movie's take on haunted houses, ghosts, and the beyond is unique and a treat to watch unfold, the makeup and visual effects are very fun and inventive, the music score and use of songs are very memorable, and it manages to have a dark, morbid sense of humor to it without leaning too much into the grisly to where families can't enjoy it. Other than some of the visual effects having not aged that well, in spite of the time and the low budget, I have no problems with the movie whatsoever and it's one that, if you've never seen it before, you need to rectify that immediately.
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