15/46
Adam: What are your qualifications?
Tale
The ghosts of a dead couple are haunted by an insufferable family that moved into their house, and they hire a malevolent spirit to drive them out. This is Michael Keaton’s favorite movie. Otho’s shoes, when he’s spray-painting the walls of his house, change from firetruck red elf shoes to white sneakers when he walks through the bathroom, then change back to red elf shoes when he enters the next room. Beetlejuice: Oh. Well… I went to Juilliard… I’m a graduate of Harvard Business School. I travel quite a bit. I lived through the Black Death and had a pretty good time.
NOW WHAT DO YOU THINK?
I’ve seen THE EXORCIST ABOUT 167 TIMES AND IT’S FUNNIER EACH TIME… LET’S NOT MENTION THE THING YOU’RE TALKING TO A DEAD GUY… Do You Think I Qualify? The Geffen Company logo is adorned with a macabre version of the song Banana Boat (sung by the film’s composer, Danny Elfman). A working cut of the film has been released with several additional/alternate scenes. This version of the film is about 2 minutes shorter than the theatrical version, has several additional scenes and is missing several others, is in black and white, and has a timecode at the bottom. This version has 4 major differences: Alternate Scene: The scene where Adam tries to leave the house after his and his wife’s deaths is different.
Edited into Terror Toons (2002)
Instead of a desert, he sees an empty darkness filled with spinning gears. Additional Scenes: There is an additional scene where Lydia develops photos she took of Adam and Barbra. Then, after her mother yells at her and blames her for cutting holes in the sheets, Lydia runs upstairs and tries to convince her father that the photos are real. The scene where the adults search the attic for ghosts is longer, and we see the desert monster trying to eat Adam and Barbra, who are hanging from the attic window. There is an additional 2-minute scene at the end where we see Lydia riding her bike home from school and her parents are on the phone to Jane, telling her they don’t want to sell the house. Lydia’s dancing scene is shorter in this version, and there is no scene with Beetlejuice in the waiting room. The film ends with a final shot of the house from the outside.
Day-OTrditional, lyrics by William A
Attaway and Irving Burgie [Incorrectly credited as written by William A. Attaway and Irving Burgess (as Lord Burgess)]Performed by Harry BelafonteCourtesy of RCA Records. It may take two or three viewings to warm up to “Beetlejuice.” It has a wacky, dizzying sensibility and a rhythm that is by turns easy, lazy, and frenetic. A charming New England couple dies and returns to their beloved home as ghosts, determined to rid the place of its awful new tenants. Perhaps Alec Baldwin’s most gentle and engaging performance; Geena Davis, Winona Ryder, and Sylvia Sidney are also very appealing. The new New York couple who take over the house (Jeffrey Jones and Catherine O’Hara) are not as well-written or thoughtful as the other characters, and some of their bewildered, dry-ice comic lines get to you in a matter of seconds. Of course, there’s Michael Keaton, wildly hilarious as Betelgeuse.
I remember hearing comments in 1988 that Keaton wasn’t there enough to make the film worth watching, but that’s only if you’re watching the film for the quick quips and sight gags
Keaton is genuinely wonderful, but he’s also bombastic, and I felt there was just enough of him to satisfy – it’s not really his story, it belongs to Baldwin and Davis; Betelgeuse is used as a horny, vulgar punchline. Director Tim Burton is very careful not to overload the film with raunch; he’s surprisingly careful in crafting the story, and he works wonders with a dubious scenario: a comic fantasy about the dead that ultimately celebrates life. ***1/2 out of ****
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