Friday, BBC1, 10:40pm
Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice (1988) is an anarchic, gothic-horror comedy that revels in the absurdity of both the living and the dead. It tells the tale of Barbara and Adam Maitland (Geena Davis and Alec Baldwin), a wholesome couple who die in a tragic (but oddly quaint) accident and find themselves haunting their own home. Their afterlife becomes infinitely more chaotic when the unbearable Deetz family moves in and, in a moment of desperation, the Maitlands turn to the so-called "bio-exorcist" Betelgeuse (Michael Keaton, in a career-defining role). What follows is a macabre fever dream of stop-motion horrors, bureaucratic ghosts, and Keaton’s unhinged, perverse energy, all wrapped in Burton’s signature kooky-goth aesthetic. It’s a haunted house story where the ghosts are more endearing than the humans, and the horror comes with a manic grin.
Danny Elfman’s score is as much a character in the film as the mischievous Betelgeuse himself. This was one of Elfman’s early collaborations with Burton, setting the stage for a legendary director-composer partnership that would continue for decades. His bombastic, carnival-from-hell orchestration mixes eerie theremin wails with demented waltzes, making it sound like a circus for the dearly departed. But the real musical highlights are the two Harry Belafonte calypso numbers—“Day-O (The Banana Boat Song)” and “Jump in the Line”—which, in a stroke of twisted genius, turn spectral possession into a joyous, hip-shaking spectacle. Few horror-comedies have ever weaponized music quite so effectively.
Beetlejuice is a film that shouldn’t work on paper—its tonal shifts are wild, its protagonist is technically a villain, and its practical effects are gleefully surreal. But it thrives on its own chaos, with Burton's penchant for the weird and Elfman’s manic score elevating it to cult status. It’s a film about the afterlife, but paradoxically, it’s bursting with more energy than most living things. And with a long-rumored sequel finally crawling out of the grave, it seems like the ghost with the most might just have another trick up his sleeve.