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Here’s your link for tonight’s movie! Click your clicks at 7:30!
It’s the story of a nice New England couple, Geena Davis and Alec Baldwin, who enjoy a quiet life in their quaint rural house. Until one day they unexpectedly meet their demise, and find themselves ghosts in their own home.
The new people who buy the house are a bit on the annoying side, though. One of them, Catherine O’Hara, has all kinds of plans for hideous fancy new renovations… and Davis/Baldwin can’t seem to scare them away by haunting
the joint. So they turn to a “freelance bio-exorcist,” Michael Keaton. Let’s just say he’s not what they expected.
Riding high off the unexpected success of his first movie, Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, director Tim Burton started working on a script for Batman with writer Sam Hamm; Warner’s was wary about the possible budget (since, at the time, superhero movies weren’t doing so hot). So Burton turned instead to this offball script by Michael McDowell and Larry Wilson, with polishes by Warren Skarren. The polishes turned a rather dark afterlife horror story into mostly a comic one. (In one version of the script, the main characters died in a gruesome car crash; this demise scene is much funnier).
Per Jay Steinberg at TCM, Burton was simply drawn to the strangeness of the story: “after Hollywood hammering me with the concept of story structure, where the third act doesn’t work, and it’s got to end with a little comedy, or a little romance, the script for Beetlejuice was completely anti all that; it had no real story, it didn’t make any sense, it was more like stream of consciousness. That script was probably the most amorphous ever.”
Always take something like Mental Floss with a grain of salt, but this post says that Burton originally wanted Sammy Davis Jr. for the Keaton part, and names considered for the role of a Goth-esque teen daughter included Justine Bateman, Jennifer Connelly, Juliette Lewis, Sarah Jessica Parker, Molly Ringwald, and Brooke Shields. Winona Ryder won the role. Angelica Huston was interested in playing the O’Hara part, but got sick and had to back out. The studio suggested Michael Keaton, who Burton didn’t know; he wasn’t hard to convince, and they’d soon work together again.
There’s an elephant in the room by the name of Jeffrey Jones; he later was convicted of Really Awful Things I won’t mention here. They’re easy enough to find on his Wiki page if you wish.
Happier story? Catherine O’Hara married the (very clever) production designer Bo Welch, who’d later work with Burton a few times; the marriage lasted until O’Hara’s sad death this January. O’Hara, of course, is mostly familiar to viewers from her wonderful role as a conceited wannabe socialite in the Canadian series Schitt’s Creek, a terrible title for a very warm and funny program. She was pretty universally loved, and this role is almost kind of a dry run for that one.
(Speaking of terrible titles, when the studio suggested the bad title “House Ghosts,” Burton countered with “Scared Sheetless,” and the studio almost went with it.)
This movie also has one of my favorite old-time Hollywood performers, the amazing Sylvia Sidney. Sidney was terrific in so many movies if never really a big star; she always brought an instant likability, intelligence, and vulnerability to her parts. Burton had to talk her into the role, and she enjoyed it so much she’d also appear in his Mars Attacks! a few years later.
Here’s Sidney convincing a bunch of hoodlums that their plan for a robbery isn’t as good as they thought it was; using Math to prove that crime does not, in fact, pay. (It’s from 1938’s You and Me, which isn’t exactly a classic but it’s watchable enough. The video doesn’t stop itself after the blackboard scene, you’ll have to stop it. Watch it later if you like!)
The musical score for Beetlejuice is by the excellent composer Danny Elfman, from the alternative band Oingo Boingo; he’d worked with Burton before, and would many times later. This was right before he also wrote the theme music to a cartoon about a yellow family of Homers and Lisas and such that you’ve never heard of.
Beetlejuice had several sequels of sorts. An animated cartoon (strictly for kids) which ran from 1989 to 1991. Multiple video games. A comic book. A theme park ride. A Burton/Keaton/O’Hara/Ryder sequel in 2024 (it wasn’t very good). An honest-to-gosh Broadway musical that actually ran for a few years. I DID listen to the complete original cast recording, and I’m not gonna listen to it again. Here’s an amusing-enough opening number if you like.
Oh, and just a few days ago, in an ALDI, I found this:
You know, that Weird ALDI aisle, the one which might have crochet kits next to felt pads for chair feet. I mean, I never buy anything from the Weird ALDI aisle, but I do like checking it out. One time I saw this discount shelf:
That’s a kitchen timer, next to… a battery-operated lighthouse, which is probably a “back massager.”
Anyways, there’s always a Weird aisle at ALDI, and there were a lotta weird Beetlejuice spin-offs and tie-ins. Odd for a movie that “had no real story, it didn’t make any sense.” Well, it’s the fun of spooky/not-spooky movies, I guess, they can be developed into anything.
Plus, Wiki tells us, in 1998, Beetlejuice was the very first DVD shipped by mail from Netflix in red envelopes. Well!
Here’s your link for the movie again — start the show at 7:30! And here’s the upcoming schedule:
October 30: Little Shop of Horrors. Before Howard Ashman / Alan Mencken wrote the songs for several popular Disney films, they did this musical version of a 1960 Roger Corman cheapie flick. There’s a Murder Plant, and it is voiced by Levi Stubbs, and he is beyond awesome. He’s SO good. (And the songs are good, too.) It’s on Archive, so feel free to download a copy in advance if you like.
November 6: Bad Day at Black Rock. Spencer Tracy faces down some bullying bigots in a teeny California town. Will goodness and justice prevail? It’s 1955, what do you think? With Ernest Borgnine, Walter Brennan, Lee Marvin, and the terrifically-nasty Robert Ryan. 81 tight minutes, folks… that movie RULES.
Remember, start the show at 7:30 at this link! See ya then!
