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Director: Tim Burton
Screenplay: Michael McDowell and
Warren Skaaren
Cast: Michael Keaton (as Betelgeuse);
Alec Baldwin (as Adam Maitland); Geena Davis (as Barbara Maitland); Catherine
O'Hara (as Delia Deetz); Jeffrey Jones (as Charles Deetz); Winona Ryder (as Lydia
Deetz); Glenn Shadix (as Otho)
A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #52
My interest in obscurer films
means I ignore most mainstream cinema out of priority and disinterest. Of course
there are directors like the Coen
Brothers that I love but many that I don't put forward in concern next to
films unfairly neglected and more interesting in premise to me. This can be to
a detriment sometimes and there are a few cases now where, when I take interest
in certain directors and films, I find myself surprised by how good the films
are. There are other cases, as with Tim
Burton, where I grew up with his films and am only now returning to them
with greater admiration. I won't comment on Tim
Burton the current filmmaker of the 2010s, a debate that has exasperated
many as they ask what films are good or not, because baring his throwbacks to
his old style in Corpse Bride (2005)
and Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of
Fleet Street (2007) I've only seen films within adulthood from before the
Millennium. Naturally his gothic aesthetic style wins me over but what has made
films like Beetlejuice or Batman Returns (1992) far more
rewarding to now as an adult is that, even when making blockbusters, his obsession
with a macabre or heightened aesthetic isn't mere window dressing, as is a huge
problem with "stylish" Hollywood films, but filtered entirely through
to the performances and themes he has obsessed over in his career as well
adding a greater texture to them and adding more to love within the films. (And
it's not merely in horror and fantasy either, as with Ed Wood (1994) Burton
managed to take one of the least effective and rewarding genres in cinema, the
biopic, and make a movie that was actually good from it).
With this in mind, Beetlejuice is a film that feels from a
completely different time in Hollywood alien to the present day from how
gleefully morbid and anarchic it is as a mainstream horror comedy. The premise
is simple - a couple Adam and Barbara Maitland (Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis)
die and attempt to haunt the Deetz family that move into their home, Jeffrey Jones as the father Charles, Catherine O'Hara as the mother Delia who
sculpts modern art, Winona Ryder as
their daughter and Burton stand-in
Lydia who can see the ghosts - a prop to lead to utter chaos and an incredibly
twisted sense of humour when Adam and Barbara consider hiring Betelgeuse (Michael Keaton) to help them get rid of
the family, a vindictive and perverted entity who can escape the prison imposed
upon him from the offices of the afterlife if someone says his name three
times. The result is an excuse for countless moments stop motions, jokes and
various ghoulish incidents, the cinematic equivalent to a carnival ghost ride,
but why it succeeds is how idiosyncratic Burton's
style is and how much character as a result the film has.
He is an openly fantastical
director in his early work who gladly has exaggerated, aesthetically distinct
worlds onscreen. This is something already said many times before by others,
yet it's worth mentioning again as he's able to contrast various tonal
references into his films through this style of his which greatly influences
the type of stories he made and their tone. He was able to get away with the
out-right German Expressionist influences in Batman Returns through his ability to take material which would
allow him already to do so but also bring a carefully considered production and
tonal aesthetic as well, something visible here in Beetlejuice as well with its juggling of its overtly macabre
content with various tones such as Americana, slapstick and modern art
parodies. An entire film, for example, could be made of the Afterlife as
depicting in the film, an administration office with extremely long queues
where, as Adam and Barbara were lucky just to drown, others remain as they
died, including an explorer caught by a head shrinker and, amongst the more
bleak moments of humour, office staff including a female suicide victim and a
man flattened like a pancake from a vehicle who travels along rooms on a pulley
system. That this style is as much part of the personality of the film, neither
able to be separated as it influences how the plot goes along and the sense of
humour, there's a greater sense of imagination onscreen because its more than
gloss. Considering as well how dark and adult the film is in humour, when very
adult jokes could be snuck into what is not really a film that would qualify
for an American R rating, does allow for the story to be more playful in its
content, bordering between the disturbing and the fun in moments such as the Betelgeuse
snake attack the Deetz family.
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The use of practical effects, as
much for their visible seems as with the accomplishment behind them, adds to
the gleeful tone, a distorted reality to when the actors are involved with them
or transformed themselves by the effects onscreen, such as seeing Geena Davis hung on a noose in closet rip her own face off, or the Skullmonkeys -like desert landscape
where the iconic sandworms live, processors for the stripy sock snakes of The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)
only significantly bigger. Whilst the film in all these scenes is meant to have
a humorous streak to it, it's still significantly macabre and it's the kind of
cinema which would gladly feed the imagination of any teenager for the better,
amazing me as an adult viewer now with what Burton
could both get away with and how inspired it feels at the same time.
Musically as well its inspiring
what was done for the film. Danny
Elfman's exquisite music, including his obsession with the horn section, does
evokes as a more knowledgeable person his days as part of Oingo Boingo but the decision to use two calypso songs by Harry
Belafonte also evokes the importance of using classic tunes in the Oingo Boingo film Forbidden Zone (1980). Even when I hadn't seen Beetlejuice for decades since I was a child Belafonte's take on the Jamaican folk song Day-O (The Banana Boat Song) had been in my thoughts permanently
since then, and revisiting this film, the use of this type of music as a
contrast to the gothic influences is one of the best aspects to it, suiting the
humour to have actors mime to the songs and also showing the little
brushstrokes that make Beetlejuice
more entertaining.
Another great aspect of the film,
and something which is a key virtue to Burton
as director and why he's able to balance his exaggerated aesthetic style with
depth, is how the cast are clearly taking the material seriously whilst clearly
relishing it. Geena Davis is
charismatic and lovely in her role. Alec
Baldwin, before he got strange with his politics and calling his real life
daughter a little pig, is also charming as Davis'
nerdy husband obsessed with his giant model of the town the film is set in. O'Hara's modern art sculptress is more
than a one-note joke because of how the actress is able to make her irritated
inflections and parody of an urban middle class personality humourous. Ryder, in a very early role, is a great
stand-in for the outsider who is fascinated with the macabre that would appear
in many of Burton's films. The late Glenn
Shadix, as he does in the fun Sylvester
Stallone film Demolition Man (1993),
steals scenes as Otho, a gracefully voiced but obnoxious specialist of feng
shui and exorcism. And then there's Michael
Keaton who stands out the most in the film as Betelgeuse - you would think
he was a completely different actor from the man who would an incredibly suave
Bruce Wayne in Batman (1989) a mere
year later, here perfectly playing a hyperactive and charismatic scuzz ball who
dominates the film, both hilarious and utterly detestable as the titular figure.
Because of all these factors,
what is mean to be a fun popcorn film is
actually a great movie too, tapping into a corpse humour with elaborate
spectacle which is utterly irresistible and ultimately something I have found
in almost all the Burton films I've
revisited.
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