Beetle Juice

A couple of recently deceased ghosts contract the services of a “bio-exorcist” in order to remove the obnoxious new owners of their house.

• Director:Tim Burton
• Genre:Comedy | Fantasy
• Runtime:92 minutes

Cast

Alec Baldwin : Adam Maitland
Geena Davis : Barbara Maitland
Annie McEnroe : Jane Butterfield
Maurice Page : Ernie
Hugo Stanger : Old Bill

Barbara (Geena Davis) and Adam (Alec Baldwin) Maitland decide to spend their vacation decorating their idyllic New England country home. While the young couple is driving back from town, Barbara swerves to avoid a dog wandering the roadway, and crashes through a covered bridge, plunging into the river below. They return home but realize they cannot exactly recall how they got there. When Adam attempts to leave the house to retrace his steps, he finds himself in a strange otherworldly dimension (referred to as Saturn by Betelgeuse), which happens to be covered in sand and populated by enormous sand worms, which he abruptly encounters. Based on the fact they have no visible reflection in the mirror and are unable to leave their house, the Maitlands realize that they might not have survived the crash. A book entitled Handbook for the Recently Deceased confirms the couple’s suspicion that they are, in fact, dead.

The Maitlands’ peace is later disrupted when their house is sold and the obnoxious new residents, the Deetzes, arrive from New York City. The new family consists of Charles (Jeffrey Jones), aspiring sculptor and Charles’ second wife Delia (Catherine O’Hara), and Charles’s goth daughter Lydia (Winona Ryder). Under the guidance of interior designer Otho (Glenn Shadix), the Deetzes transform the house into a gaudy piece of pastel-toned modern art. Although the Maitlands remain invisible to Charles and Delia, their daughter Lydia can see the ghost couple (according to the book people don’t see the strange and unusual; Lydia explains that since she herself is strange and unusual, this must be why she can see them.) and befriends them.

The Maitlands seek help from their afterlife case worker, Juno (Sylvia Sidney), who informs them that they must remain in the house for 125 years, and that if they want the Deetzes out of the house, it is up to them to scare them away. The Maitlands’ attempts at scaring the family away prove utterly ineffective. Against Juno’s advice, the Maitlands contact the miscreant Betelgeuse (pronounced “Beetlejuice”) (Michael Keaton), a freelance “bio-exorcist” ghost, to scare away the Deetzes. They chant his name three times to teleport to his grave, but upon actually meeting him they realize they’ve made a mistake and leave, forgetting to un-summon him and leaving him loose. When another attempt by the Maitlands to scare the Deetzes away (by making them dance and sing The Banana Boat Song by Harry Belafonte) fails, Betelgeuse takes it upon himself to scare them by turning into a huge snake, nearly killing Charles and Delia. Barbara returns in time to save Lydia, but after seeing her Betelgeuse becomes interested in marrying Lydia so that he can re-enter the land of the living. Meanwhile, Otho steals the Maitlands’ book Handbook for the Recently Deceased when he was in the attic without them noticing. Read more

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