Evening, y’all. Many fine greetings to you on this night of the super blood moon. I’ve been getting in the Halloween spirit big time recently and I decided to kick the season off a little prematurely and talk about one of the raddest ghost stories ever told, Beetlejuice. There are so many great things about this movie that it’s hard to even begin. I’m feeling pretty under the weather at the moment so I’m just gonna roll them all into one here. Alec and Geena are totally believable and their journey through the afterlife is so great. I love the various dead folk that help them figure out what to do like the guy who burned to death or the shrunken head dude. Definitely a tattoo in the making for me at some point in the future. I love Lydia and here family and their pompous ass friends. Catherine O’Hara and Jeffrey Jones are great as her parents and I’d be super bummed too if fools like that moved into my house after I died. And then, obviously, the greatness that is Michael Keaton as Beetlegeuse. It’s definitely the role of his career, which is an incredible achievement as I think he’s the only person that could’ve played Beetlegeuse like that. Tim Burton just did a fantastic job on the whole thing and it’s absolutely one of his best films and always will be.
Anyway, Beetlejuice is the story of recently dead couple Adam and Barbara, played by Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis respectively, as they navigate their way from life to death. Seeing as how they don’t know that they died, they have quite the dilemma figuring out what their next move is, constantly toting their Handbook for the Recently Deceased. They meet crazy characters and people who help them along their path, all the while, back in the land of the living, the Deetz family has moved into their home. Charles and Delia, played by Catherine O’Hara and Jeffrey Jones, are two yuppies from the city who move out to the country to seek fresh air and a new change and blah blah blah but their daughter, Lydia, played by Winona Ryder, is the complete opposite of her parents. Super morbid, super goth, and super into the paranormal, Lydia quickly realizes there’s something ghostly about her new home and eventually befriends Adam and Barbara. As the two desperately want the Deetzs out of their house, they hire the loose cannon of the afterlife, Beetlegeuse. Beetlegeuse is a crazy con-man “bio-exorcist” who vows to get rid of the Deetzs but he secretly has a little something else up his sleeve. When it becomes clear that Beetlegeuse is playing them, Adam and Barbara hatch a plan that’ll rid them of Beetlegeuse, who is now the bigger evil, and they succeed, leaving them and the Deetzs to co-exist peacefully in the house, thus cheering up the perpetually bummed Lydia and bringing peace the Adam and Babs in the afterlife.
I watch this movie once every few months or so. It’s definitely a mainstay in my rotation and it’s just too good to watch only at Halloween or something. The sets are really beautiful, the acting is great, and the story is genius. In my opinion, it’s Tim Burton’s best film and I’m actually kinda pumped for the recently announced sequel. I’m sure it’ll be dumb but it would just be rad to see the character again. For those interested, it’s actually streaming on HBO Go/ HBO Now as well which is pretty cool. So don’t hesitate if you’ve never seen Beetlejuice. It’s definitely one of the good ones of the film world. Come back tomorrow for my thoughts on Braveheart, thanks!
P.S. I saw The Green Inferno today. It was real dumb. Bummer.
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