Beetlejuice

Now we’re really going to get creepy because today we are going to look at the 1988 classic, “Beetlejuice.” Rita Kempley of the Washington Post described the movie in her review as “an extraspectral experience, a wonderfully wacko look at the hereafter's relationship with the here and now.” It’s a cartoon look at the afterlife setting, where the living stalk the dead and death is inevitable to life’s little pains, much like waiting rooms and elevator music.

Tim Burton, who also directed “Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure,” is now directing this movie, which Kempley calls a mix of “Capraesque fantasy, Marx Brothers anarchy and horror parody.” Also, Michael Keaton is playing Beetlejuice in this movie. He’s the spirit who is a free-lance bio-exorcist that the great Alec Baldwin and beloved Geena Davis hire. Baldwin and Davis are playing the Maitlands, a couple who just recently died and are confused.

Kempley stated in her review, “Manic as a cornered squirrel and prankish as Satan's kid brother, Keaton brings a sprinkling of brimstone to the bucolic Connecticut setting where the Maitlands have been lovingly renovating their cozy farmhouse.” When the Maitlands drive to a hardware store, they notice a dog on the street and swerve to miss it, but wind up drowning in a pretty creek.

Before you can grieve for their death, the couple find themselves back home not knowing how they got there. They realize that something is wrong when Barbara, played by Davis, finds a pamphlet called “The Handbook for the Newly Deceased.” Other than that, nothing is changed, except when they open their door, it transports them to the planet Venus, where a sand worm lives. It looks like they will spend eternity fidgeting.

A couple named Charles and Delia Deetz, played by Jeffrey Jones and Catherine O’Hara, buy the house and insult it with Memphis furniture by the process of Beverly Hills. Their daughter Lydia, played by Winona Ryder, pouts around wearing black cloaks, while Charles options farmland. Delia replaces the Maitlands’ flowered coach with one that is made out of boilerplate and pony hide. The Maitlands are now trapped in “The Night of the Living Room.”

Kempley goes on in her review by saying, “The Maitlands, of the Casperian school, try to scare off the interlopers. But their hauntings only intrigue the Deetzes, who summon them in a se'ance and decide to open a paranormal theme park. It becomes a case of the materialistic versus the materialized.” Now the Maitlands are desperate and call on Beetlejuice, who shows up in a short while, with green hair and teeth that don’t look like he took care of them since the Plague. He’s eyeing Barbara Maitland when his head turns like how Linda Blair’s did in “The Exorcist.” “Don’t you just hate it when that happens?” he says while sounding growly.

I agree with Kempley when she says, “The movie is a special-effect compendium of decomposing corpses, popping eyeballs and the occasional severed head.” While waiting for their caseworker in purgatory, played by Sylvia Sidney, the Maitlands sit uncomfortably among the other dead, which include a man with a chicken bone caught in his throat, a magician’s assistant cut in half and a charcoal man who offers them a cigarette.

This doesn’t scare Geena Davis, who was also in “The Fly” remake. Kempley describes her as a “naturally blithe spirit, like a female Tom Selleck, who gives a dimpled congeniality to the proceedings.” Both she and Baldwin, who was in “Knots Landing,” bring warmth and believability to their roles.

The characters were created by writers Michael McDowell and Warren Skaaren. There does seem like a scatter, unstructured screenplay that doesn’t follow the rules of its own universe. It’s strong when it comes to lines and situations, but absolutely, happily outrageous. The moral is a fairy-tale bromide played for laughs: You can’t escape your own problems. Suicides are forced to become servants of the afterlife, and you can’t even leave your house for 125 years.

Not since “Ghostbusters” have the spirits been so uplifting.

Definitely give this film a watch if you love Michael Keaton. Also, watch the film since this is the right season for Halloween related movies. I really liked it, and it is a classic that still holds up today. Stay tuned tomorrow for the continuation of “Halloween Month.”