For this year’s 31 Nights of Horror Challenge, the Day 16 prompt was In a Graveyard. Only a few movies fit this prompt that I know of and I had to go with one of our all time favorites, Beetlejuice (1988).
Storyline
Adam and Barbara are a normal couple…who happen to be dead. They have given their precious time to decorate their house and make it their own, but unfortunately a family is moving in, and not quietly. Adam and Barbara try to scare them out, but end up becoming the main attraction to the money making family. They call upon Beetlejuice to help, but Beetlejuice has more in mind than just helping.
What we Thought of Beetlejuice
I have seen this movie at least a dozen times and it had been years since I saw it last so it was fun to go down memory lane. It is funny that a lot of the movies that I watch during the horror challenge each year harken back to a younger, much simpler time in my life.
But this movie…
Beetlejuice. Terribly funny. An excellent comedy from the genius Tim Burton. The costumes and decorations also deserve special praise. Also, a rather interesting and strange plot of the whole film. The title of the movie is Beetlejuice, but Juice itself is very small, and it practically does not affect the plot in any way, and this all makes the film even more interesting.
9 out of 10
Trivia
Did you know that the dead football team in the movie is based off of a real event? Back in the the early 1970s a plane crash killed over 70 members of the Marshall University football team. This college is based in my home town of Huntington, WV.
Michael Keaton ad-libbed 90% of his lines.
The film was the first DVD sent out by Netflix in 1998.
The title character is named for a bright red star in the constellation of Orion, Betelgeuse.
The skeleton head on top of Betelgeuse’s Merry-Go-Round looks remarkably like Jack Skellington, a skeleton figure which Tim Burton had been drawing since 1982, and would ultimately be used as the main character of The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993), which Burton co-wrote and produced.
