As a fan of Tim Burton’s movies, I have seen most of his best movies at least once. Movies like Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, Edward Scissorhands, and Big Fish rank among my favorite films of all time. Then there are other Burton movies that I have never quite enjoyed or appreciated enough for repeated viewings. Beetlejuice is one of those.
I can’t remember the last time I saw Beetlejuice, but I am confident that it’s been at least a decade or two. With the upcoming release of Beetlejuice 2, it seemed like the perfect time to rewatch it, and I noticed and appreciated a lot more of the technical achievements of this movie, definitely more so than I did as a child.
Beetlejuice has some really impressive makeup and visual effects, so let's talk about them.
There Is Such An Interesting Collection Of Otherworldly Creatures
The dead, ghosts, and other creatures in Beetlejuice are where the makeup department really thrived. We see many of them during the waiting room scenes. We witness everything from a man that’s basically just decaying ash from smoking too much, to various women with different bright color skin and mutilated limbs. Some of these creatures are comical, others are terrifying, and a few are a combination of both. The receptionist’s explanation that all of these creatures’ appearances relate to their personality and death makes them more interesting. Besides some of the obvious deaths, such as (likely) lung cancer, death by suicide, and accidental slicing/murder, you have to wonder about the causes of many of their deaths, especially based on their new appearances.
It adds more intricacy and mystery to them. You can’t help but try to see how many different creatures you can spot in the waiting room. We also see more throughout the movie in various forms and locations, like the sandworm, the zombie football team, and the priest. All of these show the depth of time, effort, and thought put into creating these dead figures.
Michael Keaton Is Barely Recognizable As Beetlejuice
If you didn’t know that Michael Keaton plays Beetlejuice, you may not even recognize him. He does such a great job of embodying this weird, annoying, perverted deviant character. It’s a fun performance and definitely one of his best. According to some behind-the-scene facts about Beetlejuice, Keaton deserves a lot of credit for the look and personification of the character. He helped transform it from the initial idea to what we see.
The makeup department also deserves a lot of credit for bringing the vision for the character to life in a way that’s interesting and very different from our expectations of a Keaton role and look. It’s so unlike his norm that it makes the character even more fascinating and an achievement in makeup and an actor's transformation.
The Monsters Are Cartoonish Scary — In A Good Way
Even a child may not find Beetlejuice that scary. At least not from the look of the monsters. However, Beetlejuice’s creepy sexualization of Lydia (Winona Ryder) and Barbara (Geena Davis) is definitely scary, but in terms of the monsters, the lead character and others are only mildly frightening. Some very small children may find these monsters scary, but overall, they’re the type you’d see in a cartoon.
I wouldn’t necessarily argue that Beetlejuice is a great family film, but I would argue that it’s tame enough that families can enjoy it together. It’ll also appeal to children who are into supernatural and paranormal shows and movies, but are not old enough to experience some of the great horror movie franchises. These family-friendly monsters are also a credit to the visual effects and makeup department.
They make them more scary in a fun way, rather than scary in a “my child will have nightmares for weeks” way. These choices take a lot of restraint, because it’s easy to go overboard with scenes like headless people and attacking food, but the makeup and visual effects department made sure to make it gruesome enough that it seems believable, but not too realistic where it can’t be marketed to anyone under 16 years old.
It's Fascinating To Watch The Different Variations Of The Maitlands' Ghost Looks
When you compare Barbara and Adam (Alec Baldwin) Maitland to all the other creatures in Beetlejuice, they look the most human. They are not scary at all. However, they change their bodies and faces several times throughout the film. Most of the time, it’s to attempt to scare, and then they fail miserably at it. We see them with distorted faces, headless, and even decaying corpses.
Every one of their transformations showcases different makeup accomplishments or visual effects marvels. For example, Adam being headless is a clear use of visual effects that work so well. Then a lot of the other looks are mostly makeup and prosthetics. My personal favorite scene and look is their exorcism and becoming lost souls. It’s visually stunning and uses some visual effects to show their physical changes and little things like the hands falling apart.
The Use Of Stop Motion Feels Necessary For The Nightmare Before Christmas To Exist
It’s been extensively discussed how The Nightmare Before Christmas isn’t technically a Tim Burton film because Henry Selick is the true director, and Burton was only a producer on the movie. However, it’s based on Burton’s ideas and some of the people involved in the creation of Beetlejuice were also involved in The Nightmare Before Christmas.
Therefore, you can see ways in which the earlier film may have had some influence on at least the look of the latter movie. In the December 1994 Sight & Sound issue, Henry Selick (via archive.org) said:
It was my job in a way to make it look like a Tim Burton film, which is not so different from my own films. We can collaborate because we often think of the same solution to a problem.
I interpret this to mean that he took the Burton aesthetic into consideration when creating Nightmare, but they also have a similar style. The stop-motion in each looks somewhat similar to the stop-motion. Even some of the creatures you see in Burton’s film look like ones that could appear in Selick’s movie, such as the sandworm and all the creatures on Beetlejuice’s spinning hat.
Additionally, on Beetlejuice’s spinning hat, the skeleton at the top of it looks very similar to Jack Skellington. Beetlejuice doesn’t directly lead to The Nightmare Before Christmas but I can see some of the ways the animation and stop motion could have helped to inspire the look of the film, even if in just a tiny way.
Taking into account the time period in which Beetlejuice was created and what it was able to accomplish with a limited budget, it’s definitely an amazing example of makeup and visual effects. This adds to the film’s humor and makes it such a classic horror comedy. The makeup department deserved its Oscar win.
