"The strange and unusual"

Rating: 9/10 (4 April 2011)

It's difficult to make a truly scary horror these days, simply because the staples of the genre have become so familiar culturally. A Dracula in a dinner jacket or Frankenstein's monster with a bolt through his neck nowadays appear more comical than creepy. And there's always been a fine line between what frightens us and what makes us laugh – in both cases it's the twisted and the offbeat. Perhaps this is why horror spoofs have the potential to be so rich and enjoyable.
Beetlejuice takes a cunning idea for its story, with similarities to classic afterlife fantasy pictures like Here Comes Mr Jordan, but with an Addams Family slant thrown into the mix. The development of this plot was not a straightforward one. Michael McDowell's original script was much darker and more violent, and somewhat more complex. As well as adding a good-natured comedic tone, the Warren Skaaren rewrite is incredibly succinct in its storytelling. The Maitlands are introduced with expert brevity – in just a couple of minutes and a few lines of dialogue we know all about their idyllic lifestyle, and their only regret being that they don't have children. The narrative then wastes no time in killing them off and getting the real story going. How many lesser pictures would have faffed around for ten or fifteen minutes before getting to this crucial plot point? Integral to the overall look of Beetlejuice is its having been directed by Tim Burton. Credits may go to various individuals for production design and visual effects, but it's fairly clear they are all working from Burton's own sketches. In interviews Burton often claims to have little formal knowledge of classic cinema, but his tribute to German expressionism is especially clear in this picture, although for Burton it is largely employed for his own bizarre aesthetics. Incidentally I also spy a nod towards the work of Dutch painter Vermeer in the shot where Lydia writes her would-be suicide note. And there's much more to Burton's visual scheme than simple design. He often begins a scene with close-ups or mid-shots, rather than a wide, establishing shot, so that we don't really get a proper impression of the space in which the action is taking place. Another ace director Milos Forman (One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, Amadeus) uses a similar tactic, but whereas Forman does it to focus us more on the performances, Burton's aim seems to be largely to disconcert and disorientate the viewer. After all, Burton does emphasise the settings, throwing in bizarrely angled outdoor shots and props overhanging the foreground. Again it's all calculated to make the movie's world as weird as possible. But none of this is ever exaggerated enough to distract us from story and character.
Not that we are likely to lose sight of characters when the acting performances are so attention-grabbing. At the heart of it all is Michael Keaton's wild portrayal of the titular antagonist. There's so much going on in his performance – look at the range of facial twitches he goes through in the few seconds after Adam says he has a few questions. Keaton is also a great improviser, and thought up with a lot of his own material here. You can tell when he's improvising, because he comes out with stuff you just couldn't script – example: "Now that is why I never do two shows in a night. I just won't do it, I won't." It wouldn't work on paper but it's hilarious coming out of Keaton's mouth. The other stand out is Sylvia Sidney who gets a small cameo. Not many modern viewers know Sidney, but she was a lead actress back in the 1930s, usually a warm-hearted romantic figure and quite the opposite of this grouchy old lady. Still, she brings the necessary memorable impact to her small but important role. Honourable mentions also go to jolly character actor Jeffrey Jones and the appropriately oddball Glenn Shadix, who sadly died last year.
The icing on the cake is that Beetlejuice is filled with inspired touches that make it stand out from the crowd, little ideas that are not strictly required by the story but elevate it from some wacky spoof into a horror-comedy classic. There's the use of stop-motion animation, which Burton has long championed. Stop-motion doesn't look especially realistic, but compared to CGI it has a kind of life to it (if you'll excuse the metaphor). Then there's the complete non-sequitur use of Harry Belafonte songs. There's nothing remotely horror-themed about Day-O or Jump in the Line (apart from the tenuous link between Afro-Caribbean culture and zombies) but it doesn't really matter. Beetlejuice is a horror-comedy let loose, in which anything can happen, and frequently does. And that's what makes it so fine.