Beetlejuice (1988)
Directed by Tim Burton
A newly dead New England couple seeks help from a deranged demon exorcist to scare an affluent New York family out of their home.
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6 films that influenced Beetlejuice
What critics say influenced Beetlejuice
Now, before you can say "Topper," these ghosts are not fun-loving or mischievous by nature.
Like Cary Grant and Constance Bennett in Topper, their life together on earth is cut short by an accident.
In a parallel universe, the awesome Tim Burton managed to create a Dark Shadows that combined the weird family fun of Beetlejuice with the purposely-bad acting and wobbly sets of Ed Wood, and turned this soap into his gothiest weird-fest yet.
And it´s all about ghosts, which have been a subject of mirth since the days of Bob Hope ("The Ghostbreakers") and Abbott and Costello ("Hold That Ghost") to "Ghost" and "Ghostbusters."
He chomps rats and flies, talks like the devil in "The Exorcist" and gropes lasciviously at anything female.
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As played with saturnine relish by Michael Keaton, who has the most fun with a male role since Jack Nicholson's devil in "The Witches of Eastwick," he's one of many wonderfully disgusting inhabitants you'll meet in "Beetlejuice," Tim Burton's hilarious, sardonic comedy about the afterlife of two honeymooners.
Outside of this, there is nothing of the way that his earlier shorts, Vincent and Frankenweenie , speak to the aesthetic he'd so assiduously cultivate, or that even his sophomore feature, Beetlejuice , looks for all the world like the movies he'd still be making 15 and 20 years down the road.
Growing up, I enjoyed Edward Scissorhands a lot, Beetlejuice, some, and have seen both Batman and Batman Returns many times.
Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure may have a more believable devotion to infantile overtures and Ed Wood may be a more respectable ode to the spirit of the eternal outcast, but Beetlejuice is a universe unto itself.
Tim Burton, the Disney animator who directed "Pee-wee's Big Adventure," is the mind behind this stylish screwball blend of Capraesque fantasy, Marx Brothers anarchy and horror parody.
There were glimpses of that sensibility in his grandly peculiar first feature, Pee-Wee's Big Adventure , but that was only a teaser.
Hair disheveled, pallid features, the director of Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure surprised Hollywood with a goth-geek style that could only be described as quirky before everything became quirky.