In this blog I will be reviewing the Ghostbusters franchise. This will include both of the classic movies and the Real Ghostbusters cartoon series of the late 80s early 90s. I also plan to review the new movie when it comes out this summer. I might review other parts of the franchise as well. This blog does and will contain SPOILERS, SPOILERS, SPOILERS, SPOILERS, and SPOILERS. So if you don't want something spoiled for you don't read about it.
Ever since I first saw Ghostbusters II, I have had a
personal theory that I want to share.
That is, as the title says, Peter Venkman is the biological father of
Baby Oscar. Most will find this absurd
as the parentage of Oscar is never even questioned, and I get a lot of pushback
from my fellow fans whenever I bring it up.
The Accepted Story
Dana and
Peter broke up sometime after the original Ghostbusters movie. Much of this is blamed on Peter being a
commitment-phobe, never asking Dana to marry him, and referring to her as the
“old ball and chain.” I also suspect
that the nature of Peter’s job that makes him engage and battle supernatural
forces among those are ones that once turned her into a giant dog, added some
pressure to the relationship. They broke up and she fell for a violinist. We all remember him from the first movie as
“The Stiff.” After Oscar was born, they had some relationship troubles, and
they broke up and he took a job in London.
Peter and Dana
The Weak Evidence
When
Peter is first left alone with Oscar, he looks at the baby and says, “You want to
play with the big kid? You know I should have been your father, I mean, I could
have been.” Why would Peter say this? It
doesn’t make any sense. If you are a man
and you run into an ex-girlfriend who happens to have a kid, that kid isn’t
someone who could have been yours. If
you had married that woman and started a family there would exist an entirely
different group of people, they would not be the children that she presently
has. As a scientist Peter should know
this. I realize that he is not a geneticist
by training, but he should understand basic biology and be aware. To me it sounds like Peter is talking to the
child that he failed. It’s almost as if
he is trying to apologize to him.
With the baby
Now the
reason this is weak evidence is obvious: Peter may have been speaking
figuratively not literally. He could be
just taking a moment to reevaluate the choices he made in life and is taking a
second to reflect on what might have been for him. Peter may see in Oscar lost opportunity.
The Stronger
Evidence
There is
a famous quote that is attributed to Alfred Hitchock that I have always been
found of. “You can get your audience to
believe that impossible, but you will never get them to accept the improbable
or unlikely.” I can fully accept that an
ancient Sumerian god could drop down on New York City and prior to its arrival
increase all supernatural activity city-wide by the size of a twinkie thirty-five
feet long weighing approximately six hundred pounds. I am onboard with the idea
of the ghost of an ancient tyrant living in a painting spreading negatively
charged slime through a discontinued subway line to cause another giant
twinkie-size ghost incident in New York City. I can not and will not accept that a man can
abandon his wife and baby to go career chasing and the abandoned wife not only
is not upset but defends the decision.
“So,
what ever happened to Mr. Right anyway?
I heard he ditched you and ran off to Europe,” said Peter.
Dana
responds, “He didn’t ditch me. He got a very
good job offer from an orchestra in London and he took it.”
Peter,
“So, he ditched you.”
Does Dana
seriously sound like a woman whose husband after their “troubles” decides to
abandon his wife and infant child so he could go across the pond to play the
fiddle in front of the Queen?” Why isn’t she referring to him as a spinless
jerk and absentee father. (I realize
there were other words she could use but with the popularity of The Real
Ghostbusters driving this movie to be made, they wanted to keep it family
friendly even when they were making it scary.)
WHAT I THINK
HAPPENED
So, this
is what I think happened. After the
original movie Peter and Dana dated and really close for a while. However, Peter being a bit of a
commitment-phobe and Dana subconscious fears of dating a man who in his day job
deals with the supernatural world that once turned her into a giant terror dog,
they have a bad breakup. Peter had to
focus on his life with the demise of the Ghostbusters. Dana moves on and finds the violinist. Dana and “Mr. Right” get married but after
the honeymoon things start to go south.
Dana is denial that she is settling and “Mr. Right” only truly loves his
violin.
The Stiff AKA Mr. Right
At one
point Peter and Dana have a chance encounter.
They decided to have coffee and catch up. One thing led to another, and they ended up
in bed together. Dana gets up suddenly
feeling guilty for what she has done.
She quickly apologizes to Peter and takes off. Later, she misses her period and fearing the
worst she gets a pregnancy test done and sure enough its positive.
Dana,
feeling her biological clock tick, doesn’t want to end her pregnancy. Also, Dana isn’t the sort of person who is
going to commit paternity fraud on a man. She comes clean
and tells him the truth. He is
understandably upset and this ends their marriage and to escape the pain he
takes a job as far away as possible.
So why
doesn’t she tell Peter? A couple of
reasons, the first is she sees Peter as unserious and completely
irresponsible. The second is the type of
work Peter engages in still terrifies her.
She never quite got over her experience with Gozer and Zuul. For these reasons she decides to stay away
and raise Oscar on her own.
Peter trying to probe himself
Then we
have the start of Ghostbusters II and with the incident of Oscar with his
carriage she realizes there is only one group she can call. She tries to get in touch with Egon but
doesn’t want to involve Peter. Egon
tells Ray and thus Peter finds out through him.
He learns that Dana has an eight-month-old baby and Peter knows how to
do math.
Now
Peter could have been angry at Dana for hiding their child from him, I know I
would be. However, despite his faults
Peter Venkman is a good guy and can be—when he needs to be—an understanding
person. He understands why a reasonable
mother might see him as an unfit father.
So instead of anger Peter decides to spend the whole movie trying to
prove to Dana that he has great potential as a father and she should trust him
with their son. And also, he must fight
Vigo the Carpathian and rescue the world from eternal evil.
Summary: (Spoilers! After all it’s a summary. Stop
reading if you don’t want a spoiler.) The movie begins with Lydia Deetz as
the host of her popular television “Ghost House.” Using her abilities to see the dead she
visits haunted houses to help the people living there, and to get their
reactions recorded for TV. During one
program however she sees the image of Beetlejuice sitting in the crowd. It forces her to retreat to the restroom,
where she tells this other ghost to scram, as right now she doesn’t have time
for that spirit’s problems. Rory,
Lydia’s boyfriend plus producer, comes into see what is happening. He tries to calm her down only to discover
there are pills in her hand that she is trying to take. Rory wants her to overcome this addiction,
but she convinces him to allow her to have one this night to get her
through.
Lydia with her newfound fame!
Lydia doesn’t go back to her show
as she gets a text from her stepmother about her dad. When she gets there Delia explains that
Charles was out bird watching when his plane crashed. He survived that only to get eaten by a shark
in the ocean. Delia is trying to find an
artistic way to express her grief while Lydia realizes she has to contact her
daughter who she isn’t on speaking terms.
Someone who isn't happy about the family legacy!
While the Deetz Ladies are talking,
the artist who was partnered in a project with Delia, walks off in frustration
and fatally falls down a manhole. His
ghost now in the Netherworld is looking for directions. The afterlife janitor, who killed himself
drinking cleaning agents, so now he must janitor for eternity, is the one who
gives them. While cleaning an electric surge
causes him to accidently knock over some boxes. Out of the boxes fall pieces of a woman. The pieces reconstruct themselves allowing
the woman to assume her traditional form once again. This woman is Deloros, she is a sole sucker
and the first thing she does is eat the janitor ending his sentence and his
existence.
Beetlejuice's bride from Hell!
Lydia and Delia go to pick up
Astrid. There is very funny scene where
Delia calls out Astrid for her treatment of Lydia. Mother and Daughter don’t get along and
haven’t since Astrid’s dad died. While
trying not have a conversation with her daughter she thinks she sees
Beetlejuice again. The three women leave
for Winter River, Connecticut.
It turns out Beetlejuice has his
bio-exorcist business running successfully.
He has so much business he has an army of small heads working around the
clock, with some other ugly ghosts as well. Beetlejuice’s only problem is
keeping up with so much clientele. That
is until Wolf Jackson arrives. The famous actor who played a cop on TV who died
doing a stunt and now services as a Netherworld law enforcement officer. He
informs “Mr. Juice” about this threat that seems to be after him and
eliminating any ghosts who get in her way.
The Ghost with the Most plays like he has no idea what is going on. Jackson warns him that he better watch out
for if a soul sucker gets you then “you’re just dead-dead. And there is no coming back from that.”
Business is good!
Beetlejuice gets back to his
headquarters and tells his small-headed staff his entire origin story, in Italian.
Turns out Beetlejuice was a grave robber during the Black Plague, which is a
highly dangerous occupation if there ever was one. He fell in love with a woman named Delores and
got married, but after their weird wedding ritual where they bit heads off
chickens and sacrificed a goat, Beetlejuice discovered he was poisoned by her
so she could eat his soul. In rage
Beetlejuice took an ax and chopped his bride to pieces.
He's here to keep it real!
With the house wrapped in a funereal shroud, the morning of Charles
continues. Rory commandeers the
proceeding to propose to Lydia in what is the most surreal marriage proposal in
history. Lydia accepts and Astrid quickly leaves. She rides her bike throughout the town, but
she almost gets hit by a truck and dodging it she crashes through a fence. There she meets Jeremy, a teenager hanging
out in his tree house. In Jeremy, she
finds someone that she can bond with. They
talk about books particularly Crime and Punishment, problems with their parents,
and the fact that Astrid thinks her mom is crazy because she sees ghosts. Jeremy invites Astrid back anytime.
Three generations and a parasite!
Charles is given his funeral and as
his body is being placed into the ground a children’s choir is singing “day-O”
in tribute to one of Charles and his family’s more memorable moments. In the afterlife however his headless ghost
who has not yet realized that he is dead, is looking for directions. After he is given them a ghost laundry room
attendant, that poor attendant is soul sucked by Delores. While this is going on Beetlejuice is
securing his work establishment from Delores and has his top small head, Bob,
dress in his traditional striped outfit.
Astrid and her new friend Jeremy!
Back in the old homestead, we learn
that the Maitlands have “found a technically and moved on.” So, they won’t be
in this movie, too bad. To Astrid, it is
just more evidence of her mother being a fraud.
The biggest evidence that fact her mother can’t see her dad. In the attic of the old house Astrid finds an
old family photo album. Lydia sees it
until she finds a Beetlejuice ad in the attic.
Lydia freaks out causing Astid to take off and she goes to hang out with
Jeremy. They walk past his parents with
his mother stress baking and his father endlessly watching TV. She checks out his room and sees his posters
of 90s bands. In his room he has a copy
of Handbook for the Recently Deceased that he says he found at a yard
sale. With her mother getting married on
Halloween, Jeremy invites her to come hang out with him and give candy to
tricker treaters.
Inviting a living girl to a dead world!
Upstairs Lydia confides to Rory
about Beetlejuice, he doesn’t believe her and thinks she needs to confront her
delusions so his says the name three times.
Lydia and Rory now find themselves in the model, in front a therapist’s
office. They are forced to “drop” in and
their therapist is Beetlejuice himself.
In the meeting he spills his guts literally, and has Lydia give birth to
a demon baby. Rory doesn’t accept what is happening is real and Lydia gets them
out by yelling “home” three times. Rory
thinks the whole thing was a dream.
Lydia tells Delia what has happened,
and they decide to leave but Astrid won’t go because she has her hot date. The idea that her socially awkward daughter
can possibly have a date outranks the concerns of the demon Beetlejuice back in
their lives. So, they decided just to
bolt the attic door instead and Astrid can go on her date and Lydia can dream
of grandchildren. She drives her daughter to the location and wants to get out
to meet the parents but relents when she sees her daughter would be embarrassed
by such an action.
Beetlejuice in the waiting room.
Astrid learns Jeremy wants to kiss
more than hand out candy, and she is cool with that but while they kiss, they
begin to float, and Astrid learns that Jeremy is a ghost. Astrid has the same abilities as her mother. Jeremy tells her he died falling out of his
tree house, breaking his neck, over twenty years ago. He didn’t get the
Handbook in a yard sale. In the book he learned there is a special way he could
live again if Astrid was to help him.
Bonus she will be able to see her father.
Well, this is not what she had planned!
Delia is doing her own private
tribute to her late husband and when she brings out de-fanged asps for her
ceremony, she finds out the hard way that they were not defanged properly.
Poisoned by the bites she quickly dies and wakes up in the Netherworld waiting
room. She tries to Karen her way out of
it but none of that is works on this side.
Lydia goes over the details of
selling the house with Jane, when she mentions Lydia’s date and the street, she
left her on. Jane says it can’t be the
address that Lydia thinks it is. That is
the murder house where a teenage Jeremy Fraser murdered both of his parents and
when the police caught him, they pulled him down from his tree house he fell
and broke his neck. Lydia then rushes
over to the house blows past his ugly ghost parents and goes right to his
room. Only when she gets there, he is
already taken Astrid to the afterlife.
Lydia heads back to the house runs past Rory
who is “fun sucking Halloween.” In her
desperation she goes up to her attic and summons Beetlejuice. The Ghost with the Most explains to Lydia
what Jeremy is intending. He is tricking
Astrid to give up her life for him. Lydia
makes same deal with Beetlejuice that she did in the first film: help for
marriage and release from the Netherworld.
This time Beetlejuice gets it in writing.
Not playing around anymore!
He gets the two of them into his
office with a wall bomb and not a wall door as normal. He and Lydia enter the
Netherworld and all his small-heads, save Bob, run into the real world to scare
the heck out of the people of Winter River. The alarm goes off at Police
Headquarters and Wolf Jackson summons his squad of dead cops to chase them
down.
At the immigration station in the
Netherworld Jeremy and Astrid take a photo and she feels funny. This is when Jeremy revels that he has
betrayed her by tricking her to give up her life for his. Guards drag her away
to the “soul train to the great beyond.”
While this happens Richard, her dead father, sees her being dragged away
and runs into help. Beetlejuice sends
Lydia to pull Astrid of the soul train while he wonders off to find Delia who
is still trying to Karen her way out and has been forced to use the B card.
Once again summoned to save the day!
While running away from the soul
stealing guards, Lydia and Astrid, they hit the emergency exit and end up on
Titan. They almost get eaten by
sandworms before they are rescued by Richard’s ghost. They have a family bonding moment before
going to stop Jeremy from completing the theft of Astrid’s life. It looks like they are going to fail but the
civil servant turns out to be Beetlejuice who sends him to literal Hell.
This time he wants it to work!
Deloras heads to police
headquarters to find Bob who was being interrogated and that is the end of
Bob’s afterlife. Richard shows Astrid
and Lydia the way out of the Netherworld, Astrid apologizes to her mother for
everything she has put her through. The two head to the church for the wedding
and they see Rory has brought all sorts of social media influencers to the event. Beetlejuice crashes the party; he exposes
Rory for the fraud that he is and gives Lydia a bit of revenge. Then insists on his payment of marriage so he
sucks all the guests into their phones and begins the proceedings. Beetlejuice
uses his powers to force everyone to cooperate in the most choreographed scene
in the franchise since Day-Oh. Jackson
and his squad of dead cops crash the party but Beetlejuice deals with them
easily. Then Deloras shows up and is
about to have a showdown with Beetlejuice, but Astrid figures out a way to open
a poral to Titan allowing a sandworm to come through. Beetlejuice has learned something from his
last encounter with the sandworms and transforms himself into a Spanish bull
fighter and gets the sandworm to eat Deloras and Rory. With their romantic rivals with a free trip
to the Netherworld. He wants to resume
what they were doing before. However
Astrid finds a legal technicality to let her mother out of the deal, they say
his name three times, and he blows up like a ballon.
Lydia closes down her show and goes
on a world tour, at Dracula’s castle they Astrid meets a young man dressed as
Dracula. They are shown to be married,
and later Astrid is about to give birth. She gives birth to the Beetlejuice
child that we saw earlier. Lydia wakes
up next to Beetlejuice, and then wakes up again alone. Either way, Beetlejuice doesn’t seem to be
done yet.
My Take: (Lots of
Spoilers in this section too! Yup
spoilers.) This was a day that I
never thought would come. As a kid I
loved Beetlejuice. Like Ghostbusters, I
began by watching the cartoon. Unlike The
Real Ghostbusters, the animated Beetlejuice didn’t age as well. Re-watching it as an adult I was surprised by
how much of the 25-minute program was made of fake commercials of Netherworld
afterlife products. However, I loved it
as a child, and it sparked my imagination enough to see the movie. And what its movie it was. I ended up liking it more than the show and
continued to watch it usually around Halloween once a year. It’s funny that the main difference between
the movie and cartoon that I focused on when I first saw the movie wasn’t that
it was staring the Maitlands, who weren’t even characters on the cartoon nor
the fact that Beetlejuice’s nature was much nastier in the film, it was that
Beetlejuice on wore his “Beetlejuice suit” (the prison striped one) only for
one scene.
After
the success of the first movie most expected there to be a second. Micheal
Keaton said for years that it was the only role that he was interested in
returning to and exploring. There was a
rumor of one in the 1990s but that never came to pass. However, after
thirty-six years we finally have it and it was worth the wait. This movie hit it out of the park.
In the final act!
The new movie takes some ques from the animated series: Adam and Barabra
are nowhere to be found, Beetlejuice is dressed in his official outfit, and the
Juice travels with Lydia to the Netherworld and they have an adventure
together.
The first movie was a little clearer.
Local ghosts want annoying living people who they don’t like to get out
of their house, but since they suck at being ghosts, they call in the expert,
who is more than anyone can handle. Here we have Lydia trying to reconnect with
her daughter, Rory and Beetlejuice trying to reconnect with Lydia, Jeremy
trying to reconnect with his life, and Delorus looking to eat Beetlejuice’s
soul and anyone else’s for that matter.
So, Jane Butterfield-Lee, the daughter of the original Jane
Butterfield. I thought Jane’s daughter
who we saw in the original was named Sara.
That’s what it said in the credits.
Now granted maybe the older Jane had more than one daughter, and the one
we saw was the younger one. (Namesakes
are usually the older children but not always so I am just going with
probabilities on that.) We are just
seeing this character for the first time where last time was her younger
sister. It is interesting that Little Jane followed in her mother’s footsteps,
I wonder if Littler Jane will do the same.
The origin of Beetlejuice. That
was interesting to learn. I did kill a
long-standing internet theory that Beetlejuice was a suicide over a spurned
lover, who when he tried to kill himself by hanging screwed up and strangled
himself slowly as opposed to a fast neck break. A grave robber during the bubonic plague, who
must have had a hell of an immune system, meets the beautiful Deloras. They fall in love and get married but in
order for her to maintain her immortality she must suck the souls of
others. She poisoned Beetlejuice in
order to kill him and reap his soul.
However, before he succumbs to the poison, he grabbed and ax and took
her apart. (So that is why she had to rebuild herself at the beginning.) There are still some unanswered questions,
like how was he recruited to be Juno’s assistant? Why is he able to continue beyond the
125-year mark for a ghost before they are supposed to move on? Well, maybe we might learn that in another
movie.
Delia thinks she sees Maxie Dean at the funeral. Can she see ghosts too because the Deans were
dead. Didn’t Beetlejuice kill them in
the first one? He did send them flying
headfirst into the celling I thought that would have broken their necks. Maybe he teleported them out of there and had
some plans for them later that never came to pass because he was sent back to
the Netherworld.
I knew that the Maitlands weren’t going to be in the movie, but I was
disappointed by the whole “we found a technicality and they moved on.” I suppose it makes some sense, maybe helping
raise Lydia and seeing her into young adulthood took care of their needs to be
parents that they didn’t get to experience in life. I can see where they might
have interfered with the story. If they
had been around, they could have gotten Lydia to the other side thus
eliminating the need to get Beetlejuice, although I don’t think they would have
been as effective and might have failed to save Astrid.
It’s too bad they couldn’t have found a part for them through. Genna David felt it was because ghosts don’t
age and they—the actors—have gotten older.
Although I thought I found a way for them to get around that. In my review for the first film, I wrote:
“In the film we see that most dead people’s ghost forms seem to be based
on how they died. As a kid I always
wondered why the Maitlands weren’t always wet considering that they drowned. I thought maybe drowning was the best way to
go because you didn’t have to look weird in the afterlife. The real-world
explanation was they were supposed to, but the actors found it impossible to
work while in soaking wet clothes all the time. However, I think I have a
better explanation. We know that ghosts
can alter their forms if they so desire.
The ghost’s appearance is a result of their self-image and mental
state. Every ghost the Maitlands meet,
save Beetlejuice, is still haunted by their deaths. They haven’t gotten over it yet, so their
ghost forms project the tragedy. The
Maitlands died together and have had each other to help themselves through it. So, in the end of the day they don’t care how
they died, what is important is that they did die and are now ghosts. They aren’t focused on the crash, so their
ghost forms don’t show it. Beetlejuice
sees himself as a poltergeist, so his form is that of a rotting corpse.”
Now granted we now know that Beetlejuice is wearing his death as
well. However, as the Maitland’s watched
Lydia grow to adulthood that may have allowed their self-image to change and
assume and older form, even though they never reached that age in real
life. They could also slip back and
forth in looking younger and older based on how they feel. When they have date night, they look their
younger selves and just take an older form around Lydia. CGI can be used for scenes where they are
their younger selves.
I think I would have preferred Lydia say that they found a loophole to
“expand their haunt parameters” allowing them to visit places they may have
wanted to go in life but were unable.
This could have opened the door for them to return some other time even
though they might not be in this movie.
“She’s still alive.” That line
from Lydia about her biological mother, is the best throwaway line ever. It is
a bit odd considering the way that Charles always called Delia “your mother”
when discussing her with Lydia. So, what
is Lydia’s Mom’s deal anyway? If she is
not dead, why is she not in her life at all?
I suppose it explains why Lydia was so dreary at the start of the first
one. It would also add guilty to Lydia over her lack of relationship with her
own daughter.
So, the Jeremy twist was a good one.
Despite that I am tired of creeps having my name, I did enjoy this. A great twist is one where you don’t see it
coming but when you go back to view it again you feel stupid for not noticing
it. With Jeremy everything is there: the
look on his face every time Astrid says she doesn’t believe in ghosts, the fact
that his room is full of posters all from the 1990s, how he shops at “record
stores,” and most importantly The Handbook for the Recently Deceased. That last one should have been the main
giveaway, but to be fair we have seen Otho and Lydia read and use the
handbook. Now did Jeremy die with his
copy of Crime and Punishment on him? Or do the
people of Winter River often tell the tale of how the floating tome goes from
the house the tree house just randomly? The
poor fool should have saw his ghost state as his chance at redemption but
instead continues his evil ways allowing Beetlejuice to send him to Hell.
Some random thoughts:
·I wonder
if Beetlejuice’s own time as a small-head at the end of the first movie is what
allowed him to connect with and recruit all the other small heads to work in
his bio-exorcist call center. He sure
had a number of them.
·So,
there is no coming back from being dead-dead that Deloras brings. I wonder if this relates at all to the ghosts
of the lost soul’s room. In both cases
the ghost’s soul shivers too almost nothing.
Maybe Deloras should pay a visit there and put those poor ghosts out of
their misery with a good death-death.
·So, in
the first film they state the civil servants are all former suicides? So, did Richard crash his plane on
purpose? Now in one of Beetlejuice’s
newspapers there is a story about some deaths being mislabeled suicides. So that could be the answer. I suppose it’s also possible for non-suicide
ghosts to just volunteer for jobs. That
seems to be what Wolf Jackson has done.
·Was that
Deloras’s finger in the ring the first movie?
“Don’t worry honey she meant nothing to me.”
·So did
Astrid really get married or was that just part of Lydia’s nightmare. Considering she just had her first date—who
turned out to be a ghost who wanted to steal her life—it strikes me as unlikely
for her to have gotten married so soon.
If there is a third one, I expect Astrid to be unhitched.
On a larger note, let’s talk about Beetlejuice’s power levels. In the first one I wondered if he had special
abilities or if he just learned to use his ghost abilities to peek
effectiveness. Could ghosts such as Adam
and Barbara (or now Delia and Charles) learn to do such things as well? No, he is the ghost with the most. We see this in how Beetlejuice even
overpowers other ghosts, even those who have been dead for awhile. Jackson and his dead cop squad were taking
care of rather quickly with just a single word, and even Deloras was stopped
when he was able to redirect a sandworm.
His reality warping powers seem to beyond anything other ghosts can be
able to do. He is seemingly on par with
Mr. Mxyzptlk from Superman comics or Q from Star Trek. More of the former though like Beetlejuice,
Mxyzptlk has a silly name weakness where Q has none.
Lastly but not least we must talk about Beetlejuice as the victim. And I don’t mean of Deloras. The first movie
focuses on concept of a ghost story from the point of view the ghosts. How would you feel if you died a weird people
moved into your house that your ghost manifestation can’t leave? Well, how about things from the poltergeist’s
point of view? Here you have a demon who
didn’t ask to be this way his crazy wife poisoned him. Saying his name can
summon or banish him against his will.
He wants out for good. Now he can
either trick some stupid human to give up their life for his or he has to get
married.
He meets Lydia who needs his help.
Her friends, the Maitlands are being exorcised. He agrees to help her if she marries him, and
he can be free. She agrees. He does his end of the bargain and saves the
ghost couple from “death for the dead.” Does she hold up her end? No, she spends the rest of the movie trying
to weasel out of it. Even the Maitlands,
instead of saying “Thank you, Beetlejuice, for saving us from the lost souls
room.” They go on the attack and start
trying to say his name. Ultimately, they
prevent the match, and Beetlejuice ends up back in the Netherworld getting his
head shortened.
This time Lydia’s daughter falls for a pretty face and ends up trading
her soul. In order to save the life of
her daughter, in fact in order to understand what even happened to her daughter
she summons Beetlejuice. Once again
Lydia promises to marry him, and this time signs a contract. He gets her to the Netherworld allowing her
to find her daughter. Then Beetlejuice
goes beyond what he promised. Not
only does he save Astrid’s soul from Jeremy, but he sends the creep to Hell. He
exposes Rory for the abusive creep that he is and allows Lydia to get revenge
on him. Then Lydia weasels out of
marrying him again. Primarily with the
help of Astrid, who Beetlejuice saved from oblivion.
And Beetlejuice still wants to wake up next to her? He must be the most understanding ghost in
the whole universe. I think Lydia should have just bit the bullet and married
him. Think how useful it would be to
have someone with his reality warping abilities around. Even if you think he
was ugly, he has shape shifting abilities just ask him to take a form more
conventionally attractive like a Bruce Wayne-Micheal Keaton.
Summary: (Spoilers! After all it’s a summary. Stop
reading if you don’t want a spoiler.) Adam and Barbara Maitland are a young
couple living in Winter River, Connecticut.They own a successful hardware store, and Adam is also a bit of an
artist who built a model replica of their hometown that is in the attic.
Everything is going well for them, but one thing.They have been dealing with fertility
struggles as they are trying to start a family. Their real-estate agent cousin
Jane has already given up on their family dreams and has—by herself—decided
that their house big for a couple and has started shopping their house to
others and trying to entice her cousins with offers. This annoys the couple to
no end.
Unknowingly on the last trip of their lives!
Adam
decides he needs to stop at their store and pick up and order that he had
placed to add to his town model.Barabra
accompanies him and they make it to the store without incident.On the way back, however, a small dog walks
in front of their vehicle forcing them to swerve and crash through the side of
the bridge.As their lives literally
hanging in the balance with their car tilting toward the water, the same dog
jumps upsetting the careful balance and sending the Maitlands into the
water.The Maitlands drown and the moral
of the story so far is not to swerve for small dumb animals that wouldn’t stop
and care for you.
The end, sort of!
That night the Maitlands return
home as spirits unaware that they are dead.After a strange incident with the fire, Adam realizes that he doesn’t
remember how they got back to the house. He decides to go back to the bridge
but the moment he steps out of the house he finds himself on an alien world and
almost gets eaten by a giant sandworm.His wife reaches out for him and pulls him back through the door.What was a mere second for Adam was hours for
Barbara.During his absence she
discovered that they cast no reflection and there is a new book in their house
called: Handbook for the Recently Deceased.Barbara then utters the famous line, “I don’t
think we survived the crash.”
Handbook for the Recently Deceased
Reading the handbook is an ever
source of frustration as it reads “like stereo instructions.”As the Maitlands adjust to their new
existence as spirits, they realize that they are stuck in a limbo-like state.
Their initial shock leads to a gradual acceptance of their fate, but they
quickly discover that their beloved home has been sold to a new family. The
Deetz family, arrive from New York City. Charles Deetz is a former real estate
developer; his second wife, Delia, is a sculptor and conceptual artist; and his
teenage goth daughter from his first marriage, Lydia, is an aspiring
photographer. Charles is here to relax and get out of the stress that led to a
recent mental breakdown.Lydia is here
because as a kid she has to be here.Delia is trying to support her husband, but she needs to “express
herself.”She brings her friend and
mentor Otho Fenlock.Otho is an interior
designer who will help Delia transform the house into a new-wave work of
postmodern art.
The living who are "haunting the house"
The Maitlands try to scare the
Deitzes away by using their ghost abilities to alter their forms into something
terrifying.However, since the Deitzes
and Otho can’t see them all their attempts are useless.Consulting the Handbook, the Maitlands create
a doorway to the netherworld and arrive at an otherworldly waiting room
populated by other distressed (even more distressed than them) souls. It turns
out that the afterlife is structured according to a complex bureaucracy
involving vouchers and caseworkers. The civil servants are all those who
committed suicide.Each soul they
encounter seems to be wearing death: their ghost forms broadcast how they
died.One was attacked by a shark, a
sleepy smoker, a lady who was literally cut in half, a safari explorer who had
his head shrunk.The Maitlands who don’t
seem to care how they died don’t seem to manifest this.
The waiting room!
They are told they can meet Juno
now and, on their way, run into “the lost souls” room.The janitor explains that these are the souls
of the exorcised ghosts.Inside these
ghosts are moaning and they look rotted with disease.When they finally reached the door, they were
assigned to, the Maitlands entered a weird room.Although they quickly realized that they were
in their own house.They have been time
distorted again. They have been gone for three months.They meet their caseworker Juno, who is next
to useless, she explains some things but not very well.When they mention these ghost ads they have
been seeing for Beetlejuice, she tells them his story that he was once her
assistant who went on his own as a bio-exorcist who claims he can get rid of
the living.She says he is dangerous,
and they want nothing to do with him, and he can only be brought back by
chanting his name three times.
Frustrated they go back to trying
to scare the Deetzes.This time they cut
holes in bed sheets and wear them so they will be seen.This doesn’t work Charles thinks its Lydia and
Delia is “sleeping with Prince Valium tonight.”Lydia takes pictures of them and when she sees no feet in the picture,
she realizes they’re ghosts.It turns
out Lydia can see them even though no one else can.When they ask why she says their handbook
says that the “strange and unusual can see them.”Adam is impressed that she is able to
understand the manual.
Although they like Lydia they still
want the Deetzes gone and in their desperation, they decide to summon
Beetlejuice by saying his name three times. They encounter Beetlejuice in his
miniature graveyard.At first, they
don’t see him, but they find his grave and they are required to dig him up.
When they do, he flies out and strongly and weirdly embraces them.Beetlejuice tries to convince them he can
help get rid of the Deetzes. He displays
some of his shapeshifting powers, which unlike the Maitlands, he can do at will
without having to physically perform the act.He also shows his procession abilities that are so strong he can affect
other ghosts.However, his lewd and
aggressive behavior puts them off.Barabra screams home three times leaving Beetlejuice behind and making
him angry.
Seeking the help of someone they don't understand!
Beetlejuice’s use of possession
powers gives Adam an idea.Delia hosts a
dinner party with friends to show off her home and sculptures. During the meal,
the Maitlands possess the guests, forcing them to perform an impromptu dance to
"Day-O (The Banana Boat Song)."As the Maitlands wait for the living people to all flee in terror they
find themselves disappointed.The New
Yorkers all thought the possession dance was fun.They go over Lydia’s pictures and ask her to
go bring them down.When she tells the
party that they refuse, Delia’s friends leave enraging her.She and the rest go up to the attic and
demand entry.As they enter, they find
no one there but they are impressed with Adam’s model.Otho finds the handbook and takes it.
As they leave Beetlejuice enters
taking the form of a giant snake.He
nearly kills Charles and terrifies the rest of the family.Barabra says his name three times to make him
disappear.Lydia runs off angry, and the
Maitlands confront Beetlejuice, who is once again trapped in the model.Their argument ends when Beetlejuice is
distracted by a whore house, that Juno created to distract him.She summons the Maitlands back and tells them
about the missing handbook.She has the
Maitlands transform themselves into monsters to finally scare the Deetzes
away.They leave and Juno is left
dealing with the dead football players.
Showing the Maitlands how to expose true fear!
On their way back the Maitlands
have a change of heart.They really like
Lydia and don’t want to drive her family away.They return just in time to stop Beetlejuice from tricking Lydia into
saying his name three times and letting him loose.
Beetlejuice summons an afterlife
minister and transforms his and Lydia’s outfits to wedding clothes from
Hell.Beetlejuice traps Lydia’s parents with Delia’s
sculptures that he has animated.He forcefully
silences the Mailtands by pulling Adams teeth and gums out of his head and
chasing them off, and sealing Barabra’s mouth with a zipper then steel. He makes a mistake of sending Adam to the
model and Barabra to Titian.Adam uses a
toy truck to delay Beetlejuice, and Barabra rides a sandworm into the house,
which devours Beetlejuice just before the wedding can be completed.
The Deetzes and the Maitlands come
to an understanding, coexisting peacefully in the house. Lydia is happier and
has found a new sense of family with the Maitlands. The house has been
transformed back into its old state.Lydia now has two sets of parents who will help guide her in life.
The film closes with Lydia
performing well in school, cheered on by the Maitlands as they celebrate their
unconventional new family dynamic.In
the afterlife’s waiting room, Beetlejuice attempts to skip the line by tricking
the witch doctor that Elvis was there but is punished by the very witch doctor
who shrinks his head.The Maitlands
continue to enjoy their afterlife, while Beetlejuice, still stuck in the
waiting room, humorously accepts his fate.
My Take: (Lots of
Spoilers in this section too!Yup
spoilers.) One of my favorite
movies of all time.I loved as a kid, so
much that I watched the cartoon as well.As an adult I still rank it high as one of the best movies I have seen.It is so original that no other movie is
quite like it.When describing it to
someone else you can’t say, “well it’s sort of like X.”It is probably the most unique thing to come
out of Hollywood in the last fifty years.
The afterlife as it is presented in Beetlejuice is part of that
original take.There is nothing amazing
or grand about it.The afterlife is just
like life with rules, regulations, and procedures.There doesn’t be any money needed or taxes
required to pay, which is a plus. I imagine it must be a shock to many of the
ghosts when upon dying they learn their religion was wrong.And from what we see they were all wrong. I don’t know of a single faith that describes
what we see here.Of course, this state
is said to last only 125 years.What
happens after that is anyone’s guess.Is
there an after-afterlife?I smell a new
religion being formed in the Netherworld.
There are only two elements that are in the Beetlejuice afterlife that I find
familiar.Handbook
for the Recently Deceasedcould be compared to ancient Egypt’s Book
of the Dead.The second element is
the prohibition of suicide.It is clear
why many religions that to have something like this.When you describe Heaven as the perfect place
of paradise that is even greater than anything life can offer, you are
naturally creating a situation where people will actually want to die.So, you set it up so that that death by
suicide is a cheat that won’t get you to the awesome place and may get you
somewhere else. Of course, the difference in the film’s afterlife is instead of
internal damnation you are just forced to become the civil servants.
When I was a kid, I thought the
movie made being a ghost really cool.I
mean they get some pretty cool powers.I
thought when I was a kid these powers would be cool to have. The powers the
ghosts are shown to possess are:
·Invisibility
to most living things.Only people who
are “strange and unusual can see them.” And I have always suspected dogs can
see them too.Although there is nothing
in movie to confirm this as the only dog we see is the one that causes the
death of the Maitlands.
·Shape changing.
Ghosts in this film have the ability to
alter their appearance, by reforming their ghost forms.They can even remove parts from their main
form and still function.They also don’t
need their eyes to see as Adam’s headless ghost body was able to run up the
stairs and lock the door without his head.
·Telekinesis:
they can control and move things just with their mind.From small objects to adult humans.
·Possession:
Ghosts in this movie can
take control of human bodies against their will, making them say and do things
that they don’t want to do.They are
also able to do this to multiple people at the same time.
Now the viewer never sees either of the Maitlands learn how to use their
powers or even how they discovered them.I have always just assumed the handbook contained instructions and they
just followed it.I find it interesting
that one ability they don’t seem to have is the ability to pass through solid
objects like most ghosts in fiction.It
is clear despite learning how to use their powers they are still bad at being
ghosts.What I don’t understand is why
didn’t Adam and Barabra just start throwing things around the room and at the
Deetzes.That would convince them they
are haunted.These aren’t Patrick Swayze-type
ghosts, they have no problem picking things up just like they did when they
were alive.Better than when they were
alive actually, as they can now movie things with the power their mind.
Then there is Beetlejuice himself.The Ghost with the Most whose powers seems to be far greater than is
fellow ghosts.What is not clear is
why.Is it because Beetlejuice is just
special and that makes him more powerful.Did he discover some unknown source of power?Is he just really skilled with his ghost
abilities because he uses them so often?Could Adam and Barabra become like him one day if they practice more?
The only one or more like him?
Among Beetlejuice’s enhanced abilities are:
·Can make
himself visible to living people when he desires to be seen.
·Enhanced
shape changing: Beetlejuice can alter his form at will.Unlike Adam and Barabra who have to
physically move to alter their ghost forms, Beetlejuice has no real limit. He
can also change his outfit to be whatever he wants.That might not be a big deal with his
shapeshifting powers, but he can also do it with other people’s clothes as
well.
·He can alter physical reality by remaking
structures as he likes them to be. He can teleport himself and others as he
desires.He can alter other ghosts’
forms against their will as he did with both Maitlands in the final battle. He
can alter his voice to mimic anyone else’s.
·Possession:
He can possess both the dead and the living.
The Ghost with the most
Beetlejuice’s only limit seems to be that at one point some power
banished him and severely limited his ability to interact with both the living
world and the netherworld.Imposing the
weakness of being summoned or banished with the trice calling of his name.
See no hands! Beetlejuice changing at will.
In the film we see that most dead people’s ghost forms seem to be based
on how they died.As a kid I always
wondered why the Maitlands weren’t always wet considering that they
drowned.I thought maybe drowning was
the best way to go because you didn’t have to look weird in the afterlife. The
real-world explanation was they were supposed to, but the actors found it
impossible to work while in soaking wet clothes all the time. However, I think
I have a better explanation.We know
that ghosts can alter their forms if they so desire.The ghost’s appearance is a result of their
self-image and mental state.Every ghost
the Maitlands meet, save Beetlejuice, is still haunted by their deaths.They haven’t gotten over it yet, so their
ghost forms project the tragedy.The
Maitlands died together and have had each other to help themselves through it.So, in the end of the day they don’t care how
they died, what is important is that they did die and are now ghosts.They aren’t focused on the crash, so their
ghost forms don’t show it.Beetlejuice
sees himself as a poltergeist, so his form is that of a rotting corpse.
Go to bed with a cigarette and you never forget that mistake the ended your life.
Why is Handbook for the Recently Deceased such a boring and
terrible read?With all the writers who
have died over the years they couldn’t find someone to write a better one?I am sure there are certainly a number of
creative types who have committed suicide over the years. Why can’t that be
their civil servant task?
Cousin Jane is extremely annoying. Nothing else to add to that.
Why did the Maitlands hang outside their window when the Deetezs came up
to the attic?If you’re invisible what
is the point of hiding?On that note why
did Juno have them take monster forms to scare the Deetezs? The only one who
can see them is Lydia.Was she hoping
that Lydia was going to explain to her father and stepmother how horrible and
scary they looked?
Exactly how did Barabra tame the sandworm and ride it through the
house?Is that in the handbook?If so, I wonder how easy it is?Can anyone do it or does it take talent?Was she practicing in the non-screen
time?
Beetlejuice returning to the Netherworld reminded me of Saddam Hussien
returning to Hell in South Park.The
head shrinking scene was funny but why would this stop or harm Beetlejuice?We have already established that he can
change his form at will.If he doesn’t
want his head to be small, he can just enlarge it again.
Either way it was a great movie, and I am excited to see the long-awaited
sequel in just a few days.
