Pronounced "Betelgeuse"

Beetlejuice (1988) is another movie missing from our watching history. Since it's Boo-tober, we figured it's time.

It starts with loving couple Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis enjoying a stay-cation in their old rambling house in a small New England village. Baldwin is spending his time in the attic, working on a model of the village and listening to Harry Belafonte sing calypso. His wife Davis is redecorating and just loving her perfect life. They run an errand in the villag, and when a dog runs across the road, they run off the picturesque covered bridge and die.

They get home, and slowly realize they are ghosts. The lack of reflections and the mysterious "Hnadbook for the Recently Deceased" clue them in. They can't leave the house because it is surrounded by a hellish desert. And the handbook is not that helpful, just a bunch of happy bureaucratic jargon.

Being dead isn't so bad, but then their house is sold and they meet the new owners. Jeffery Jones is a rich business man moving to the country for his nerves. His wife, Catherine O'Hara, is a wannabe intellectual, and a bad sculptor. Their daughter, Winona Ryder, is a goth teenager. And chubby Glen Shadix is their too-too decorator and designer. Soon the ghosts' lovely home is converted to a post-modern nightmare.

They manage to get to the waiting room for dead social services, and meet Sylvia Sidney (beloved classic film star), their cranky old case worker. She explains that they have to stay in the house for a long time and that if they want to get rid of the tenants, they'll have to haunt them out themselves. And don't try using Beetlejuice to help.

Oh yes, the titular character. He is an old ghost who makes a  living (?) haunting houses to get rid of the pesky livng. He isn't in this movie much.

Baldwin and Davis try to scare the unwelcome living away, but nobody can see them - except Ryder, who kind of likes them. So they contact Beetlejuice, who is living in the graveyard of the model town in the attic. He's a disgusting pervert, and they decide they had batter not use him. But they do learn the trick of psychic ventriloquism from him.

So when Jones and O'Hara have a dinner party for their scenester friends (including Dick Cavett!), they use the ventriloquism to make them all sing and dance calypso! This is clearly supernatural, but instead of being scared, they see a business opportunity. They can turn the twon into Ghostland! Looks like Baldwin and Davis may have to use Beetlejuice after all.

My main take-away from this late first viewing is that Michael Keaton as Beetlejuice is barely in this. That's probably for the best - he's pretty disgusting. Baldwin and Davis are adorable, which is funny considering how tart and snappish they tend to be in most roles. Jones and O'Hara are pretty funny, and not as terrible as they could be. Even the snooty decorator seems like fun. So this isn't one of those stories where you hate all the characters. But I think Ryder is the best part, with the bond she finds with her ghost friends. She's a proto-Wednesday and goth icon.