Transcript

Intro Clip

What are your qualifications? Ah, well, I attended Juilliard. I'm a graduate of Harvard Business School. I travel quite extensively. I lived through the Black Plague, and I had a pretty good time during that. I've seen The Exorcist about 167 times, and it keeps getting funnier every single time I see it! Not to mention the fact that you're talking to a dead guy! Now, what do you think? You think I'm qualified? What I mean is, can you be scary? Oh, oh, I know what you're asking me. Can I be scary? What do you think of this? You like it? Excuse us, please. Sure, talk amongst yourself. Adam, let's go. I know, Barbara, honey, but I think he could be of some use later. Something out of— we just have to talk. Yeah. Hey, hey, hey, excuse me! What? Excuse me, we are leaving now. Oh, wait. Oh, come on, don't go yet. Hey, guy, come on, we're simpatico here. Look at us, we even shop at the same store. Hey, Hermano. Yeah, there you go. Hey, look, come on. We're like peas in a pod, the three of us. Let's face it, you want somebody out of the house, I want to get somebody out of your house. Come on. Look, we've been to Saturn. Hey, I've been to Saturn. Whoa. Sandworms. You hate them, right? I hate them myself. Come on, kids. What do I have to do to strike a deal with you two, huh? Don't you hate it when that happens? Let's go, Barbara. Wait, wait, wait. Come on, just come on for a while. We'll talk inside. Come on, come on. I'm not staying here. Adam, we have to get out of here. I agree, but I'm fixing something to eat. Home, home, home. Barbara, how did you do that? Hope you like Italian. Where'd you go? Hey, come on! Hey, where'd you go? Aw, hey, come on! You gotta work with me here. I'm just trying to cut a D. What do you want me to do? Where are you? You bunch of losers! You're working with a professional here! Nice fucking model!

Steve

It's Two Dads, One Movie. It's the podcast where two middle-aged dads sit around and shoot the shit about the movies of the '80s and '90s. Here are your hosts, Steve Paulo and Nic Briana. Hello everybody, welcome to another episode of Two Dads, One Movie. I'm Steve.

Nic

And I'm Nic.

Steve

And today we are continuing our journey through Two Dads, Two Decades to the year 1988 and the fantasy comedy Tim Burton special Beetlejuice starring Alec Baldwin, Geena Davis, and Michael Keaton. Super, super excited about Beetlejuice. This is one I picked. This is a movie that would have been a theater watch for me. This is definitely one my parents took, took my brother and I to go see. I would have been 8, he would have been It was rated PG, even if it kind of pushed that PG a little bit. It really does. It's in the Spaceballs milieu of pushing PG, I think. And but yeah, this is definitely one that, you know, kind of mattered a lot to me as a kid. You know, I really kind of attribute liking this movie and liking Gremlins to the reason that I ended up growing up loving much, much more seriously horror movies. You know, neither of those are necessarily like fully horror, but they are in the genre. Adjacent at least. Yeah. And I think, you know, being exposed to movies like that from a young age, like, ended up really kind of sticking with me. And yeah, this is one that I've always loved. And I think Michael Keaton just was really everywhere at this point, right? I mean, this is not far from— this is what, a year before Batman? And this is like, you know, Keaton's doing his thing at this point.

Nic

Yeah, for sure.

Steve

Really firing on all cylinders. And, and just a movie I've always really enjoyed. Never like, oh, that's my favorite movie or anything like that, but just something that's always, always stuck with me. What about you, Nic? What's your history with Beetlejuice?

Nic

Yeah, so when I watched this, I realized like I haven't seen this as much as I would have probably said that I had seen it before. Uh, I think I saw it as a kid because I remember, and we'll get to it, certain parts of this movie that I just love to repeat. And hey, it was in a PG movie, you're not allowed to get mad at me, Dad, I'm just being PG right here. Um, and, uh, and it's just such a fun character, recognizable character. I do remember watching those like Saturday morning cartoons they had of it. Um, so I feel like that informs a lot of my Beetlejuice because like with Ghostbusters a couple episodes ago, they had all this like shit around it. So you'd think of like, oh, Slimer's like the third main guy in the movie Ghostbusters. And then it's like, oh, they don't even call it Slimer. And that, you know, so, uh, so my Beetlejuice memories might be a little, uh, twisted because of that.

Steve

That's fair.

Nic

But, um, yeah, I mean, Tim Burton, it's great to revisit him after we saw him with Pee-wee's Big Adventure back in the summer. And I'm really looking forward to chatting about this one.

Steve

Absolutely. Yeah, so let's go ahead and just jump straight into the facts on the movie Beetlejuice. Beetlejuice was released on March 30th, 1988 with a PG rating and a running time of 92 minutes, directed by Tim Burton from the script by Michael McDowell, Warren Skaaren, and Larry Wilson, starring, as I realize I said before, Alec Baldwin, Geena Davis, and Michael Keaton. Scores, we get a nice healthy 83% on Rotten Tomatoes and a solid 7.4 from IMDb. But Siskel and Ebert didn't like this movie. We get a pair of thumbs down from those just awful people. They're just awful people sometimes.

Nic

Man, bad days.

Steve

Anyway, awards. We do have an Oscar win for this. I didn't realize this, I looked it up, but Beetlejuice was an Oscar-winning film for best makeup at the 1989 Oscars, which makes a ton of sense.

Nic

Yeah, totally.

Steve

Absolutely fits. But yeah, it did win an Oscar for that. Also, 8 nominations at the 1989 Saturn Awards, including 3 wins for best supporting actress for Sylvia Sidney, who plays Juno, the character that's like their guide in the afterlife.

Nic

Oh, yeah, she's great.

Steve

She won Best Supporting Actress at the Saturn, and then Best Makeup, and then Best Horror Movie, which feels like a stretch. I don't know how many different best movie categories the Saturn Awards had back then. If there was no Best Fantasy as a separate category, then I could see putting, you know, it would be horror, not action or sci-fi, right? So, so, okay. But it seems a bit of a stretch to call Beetlejuice a horror movie. Yeah, for sure. On a $15 million budget, by the way, exactly the same as the cost of the movie we did last week, Wall Street. Okay, this pulled in $84.5 million, or 5.63 times what it cost, which makes it a bona fide hit. So that's the facts on Beetlejuice.

Nic

And it is interesting, so we had done Pee-wee's Big Adventure, which came out like 4 years before— '84 sounds right, or '85 maybe. Yeah, anyway, but That was Tim Burton's first like major feature film and he had a budget of $6 million.

Steve

Yes.

Nic

So it's kind of cool to see what he was able to do with you. And there were some bigger stars in this, whatever, but he had more money to play with effects in this. And it's really cool to see that.

Steve

Absolutely. And just to start off with how the movie begins and everything, there are a few things more just like joyfully whimsical than the opening of a Tim Burton Danny Elfman movie. Like Elfman's score and Burton's initial visuals, which we don't, you know, it's not super obvious right away, but we are getting an aerial view over the model. That Adam Maitland has created of their little town in Connecticut. And that's Alec Baldwin's character, Adam. But we don't realize necessarily right away that it's a model, although it becomes kind of clear as you see like little people not moving and stuff. But it's a really neat looking model. And we're sailing over it like we're sort of, you know, getting a drone shot. You can imagine this sort of thing in 1988 over this town. And it's a really neat sort of like beginning. And like I said, there's just the theme song and score for this movie. It's Danny Elfman. So it's just so fun and whimsy and weird.

Nic

How perfect of a name is that, by the way?

Steve

You know? Danny Elfman?

Nic

Like if his name was like, Craig Winchester. It wouldn't— like, his name is whimsical.

Steve

Yeah, for sure.

Nic

It's important that he does what he does.

Steve

Exactly. But yeah, very cool model. And it becomes abundantly clear that it's a model when we see what would otherwise be a horrifyingly huge spider crawling over— I think it's the church or the schoolhouse, something like that— of the town. And that's when Alec Baldwin— and he like reaches down to like— I'm like looking at— I gotta be honest with you, that's a huge damn spider to just be letting on your hand and too small to be a tarantula. So it's like, and I know it's not a black widow, but like it looks like a wolf spider, something that could really hurt you.

Nic

Yeah, that thing was, that thing was gnarly. And then, uh, he let it go outside, but he just dropped it out of like the attic window, out the third floor window.

Steve

I mean, I guess spiders can fall and their body weight's so light that the air resistance keeps them from dying.

Nic

They have those parachutes in Charlotte's Web, right? So maybe he's got one of those.

Steve

Spin a chute real quick. Yeah.

Nic

Um, yeah, so, uh, and then They're kind of— so Alec Baldwin, Adam, and Gina Davis, Barbara.

Steve

Barbara, yeah, the Maitlands.

Nic

They're, uh, shown to be like— he's obsessed with his model that he's building, and he's, you know, all he wants is like parts and supplies for that. And then she's obsessed with like remodel, redecorating the house.

Steve

Yeah, yeah.

Nic

You know, they give each other gifts, and she gives him this like, you know, special paint for a certain part of the model, and he gives her some wallpaper. And they're just, you know, couldn't be happier doing that stuff.

Steve

And it's funny too, because there must be more wallpaper, because he hands her this really small roll but then says something about there's enough to redo the entire whatever room it was. And I'm like, dude, that's like a single panel. Yeah. But what have you—.

Nic

Can get you maybe to the ceiling.

Steve

Exactly. So he must have a lot more somewhere else. And this was more of a symbolic part of the gift. But they are on a staycation and they don't use that term because nobody did until much later in years. But yeah, they're basically doing a 2-week vacation at home. Like, I don't know. I don't think we ever hear what Barbara does for a living, I don't think. But Adam owns and runs, you know, the Maitland Hardware in town. So the hardware store for this tiny town is closed for 2 weeks. Mm-hmm. Which is something that is interesting 'cause they, he goes to pick up some stuff from his own hardware store and it says closed outside and he like goes in and, you know, grabs something for the model and then, and then heads back out. But it's like, okay, I guess you can just close your store for 2 weeks and like nobody minds. It's kind of a strange thing.

Nic

Sounds amazing.

Steve

Kind of a strange thing, but there you go. Um, but before any of that happens, the, the realtor Jane shows up. She's pushy, she's loud. She makes a really kind of mean comment about how, oh, this house is too big for you guys. This should really be a couple that has kids or whatever. And it's like clear that like, from Gina Davis's reaction, from Barbara's reaction, it's like they've been trying and it's not working is what it seems like. Or I even thought for a moment that like maybe they lost one or something like that, but it doesn't seem that dark. But it is sort of like, you know, she even apologizes initially, but it's like a dick comment basically from the realtor. Um, they don't make it clear at this point that this realtor Jane is like related to one or the other of them, but apparently she is, and that at least excuses the familiarity a bit.

Nic

Okay.

Steve

Um, because I initially just thought, well, fuck this chick, like what is wrong with Jane the realtor? This is terrible.

Nic

It takes way less than that for me to send a realtor Yeah.

Steve

But yeah, so then they decide to go into town and Barb is driving so that Adam can run into the hardware store real quick, grab what he needs, and then they'll drive back. There is a bumper sticker on the back of their car that says, "I brake for animals." And as they cross a covered bridge, they notice a dog in the street. And instead of just hitting the brakes, Adam decides he needs to grab the wheel, he is not the one driving, and pull it sharply to the right, or what, at 11, or what side, but to a side. And they kind of crash through the wall of this bridge, this covered bridge. But I guess the dog is like hanging out on the back of like a piece of wood. This is like enough weight to keep them counterbalanced.

Nic

Right.

Steve

Like, oh my God.

Nic

And that's a cool thing is seeing the dog on this like plank of wood that's being like, you know, pried up by the car. So it's like, oh, okay. And then of course the dog jumps off, the car goes in the water.

Steve

Right.

Nic

I got to say, Connecticut bullshit covered bridges. New Hampshire is where it's at. You never would have been able to crash through that shit. So, uh, so yeah, they're like— then they just appear back at their house, just back at their house. So we're in the water, we're back home. They go up to the fire. The fire is kind of weird.

Steve

Well, the fire turns on by itself before they arrive, and then when they show up, they really go, well, the fireplace wasn't on when we left, right? Because this isn't like a flip-a-switch gas— this is like you gotta put wood in it and kindling and like start a fire, you know? So, um, so yeah, they were like a little surprised by that, but they're both soaking wet because they were in the water and they are drying off at the fire. And then at one point Adam is like, "I need to figure out how we got here. Like, do you even remember how we got here?" And he goes, "I'm gonna go back to the bridge and retrace our steps." Well, as soon as he steps off the porch, he ends up in this bizarro sort of colorful, weird world. It's got sand, yellow sand, and not even like normal sand, like yellow sand. And he hears this like cry of this beast. And then we see our first glimpse at one of the sandworms. As it, you know, it's kind of like off in the distance a bit, at which point, Barbara kind of grabs him and like helps him back up, but tells him, "You were gone for 2 hours." So whatever dimension he moved into, time travels weirdly, you know, kind of thing.

Nic

Yeah. And they notice in the mirror, I think she's like holding a cup or something in front of the mirror and sees that in the reflection, you can't see her hand. It's just the thing she's holding floating there. So they're starting to make these connections of like, Yeah, they're— what the hell's going on?

Steve

They're not casting reflections. They don't seem to be like, you know, taking up normal space. At one point they do look out a window and Jane and her daughter, who are both dressed in all black, yes, drive up and they kind of call down to her, but there's like no reaction whatsoever, so they can't hear or see them. This is also when they find the handbook for the recently deceased, which is a very important prop in the movie. Um, try, you know, they try to read it because the idea is that it should explain to them what's going on. They've realized like I don't think we survived that crash. We didn't survive. This is what's happened. We're dead. And, but you know, I think the comment is like, this reads like stereo instructions, which I think is funny 'cause like it was definitely a funny joke back then. And I remember trying to put together stereo, you know, stuff in the '90s and the instructions were always complicated, but like not that complicated. They must've been so much worse in the '80s, I guess. Like I was too young to do this in the '80s. So maybe it was that 'cause there's a few times where people commented on it.

Nic

Little wiring for the speakers were different. Like remember the speaker wiring? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Steve

But they had like little clips you could like get to do the thing clamp down the connector onto the— that's the stuff I remember, is like those old, uh, like Bose, like the boomboxes with the removable speakers, that kind of thing.

Speaker B

Yeah.

Nic

Um, yeah, so, so they have this book, uh, which is going to kind of be their, their guide, and they kind of realize like, all right, we can't leave the house and nobody can see us. Yeah, yeah, because they tried to shout to Jane below and, you know, nothing.

Steve

Yeah. So, um I think this is when we meet briefly, we meet Beetlejuice. Like we see it, not Adam and Barbara, but we see him. He's looking for a job. He looks through the obituaries because he's looking for the recently deceased. And sure enough, the Maitlands are listed there, you know, as recently deceased. And he goes, oh, they look nice and dumb, you know, or whatever. And so he's going to target them. But in the meantime, Jane gets to sell the house.

Nic

Yes.

Steve

And this was, I thought, really weird because I'd forgotten about a very quick line that Jane mentions later after the Deetz, the family who buys the house, actually start moving in. She mentions that they were family, the Maitlands. So apparently Jane's actually related. Because I'm thinking to myself, yeah, the Maitlands don't have kids, but like, why is a realtor selling this home? Wouldn't this like be going to like auction or something? Like, like what happens when like there's nobody who owns the home anymore? They're all dead. There are no survivors. There are no beneficiaries. Like, I don't even know what happens, but it seemed weird to me that like Jane is just allowed to sell the house. Yeah, that's a thing. But, but apparently as family, maybe she was, uh, she's probably the one who would ultimately get them.

Nic

She'd be the, yeah, yeah, the beneficiary as well. Um, yeah, so she sold the house and we've got some movers coming in kind of Happy Gilmore style. We get random shit being brought in, weird furniture that does not seem to fit the, the theme of the house, right?

Steve

You know, yeah, the house is very craftsman-y, very sort of like, you know, early 20th century style, like, uh, and this is all incredibly modern, uh, stuff moving in, um, weird sculptures and things, like all kinds of stuff, stuff that looks like objectively terrible but you need like a very fancy person to explain to you why you're wrong to not like it, you know? Exactly.

Nic

Um, and we see this family moving in and we have Charles and Delia.

Steve

Yep.

Nic

And Lydia, right? And Charles, uh, the father, uh, Jeffrey Jones, who we saw in Ferris Bueller. Uh, Delia, the great Catherine O'Hara, a wonderful Catherine. And then, uh, Lydia is a very early Winona Ryder appearance.

Steve

And I gotta say, this is— I realized in watching this movie back just this week, um, I realized almost like I'd forgotten, I think, but I I had quite a thing for this style when I was younger, this style of dress, this sort of goth look or whatever, because I realized that Lydia in Beetlejuice and Christina Ricci's portrayal of Wednesday Addams in The Addams Family were early crushes of mine. Oh, for sure. And so, and then I think I really think about it. That was basically the same style of the first girl I dated in high school too. She had that sort of, you know, black fingernails and like the whole kind of thing. We listened to Gravity Kills and KMFDM together, you know, that kind of shit. So, but yeah, so apparently that was a thing for me for a while was this, style Lydia looks like she's always going to a funeral.

Nic

Yeah.

Steve

It's kind of her physical look, but she's also quite a shutterbug. She's a photographer. She's taking pictures of all kinds of stuff. And that's when I think— With a Polaroid. Well, not, no, initially it's a real.

Nic

Yeah.

Steve

But initially she's got like a nice like Canon or something, you know, film camera with the big thing. And she's taking pictures outside the house as people are moving stuff in. I think that's where this is. And she seems to see Adam and Barbara looking down from the attic. Right. Nobody else does, but she notices. And it was in the handbook, it said, that the living won't see the dead.

Nic

Right. And they're making the distinction, is it can't or won't?

Steve

And it just says won't. So it's like, okay, so there is no can't necessarily. And we see, we get very early that no, Lydia is, whatever is going with her, she's in tune with this and she is willing to see Adam and Barbara. Yeah.

Nic

And Adam and Barbara are like, who are these people in our house? We gotta get them out of here. So they're consulting the book, like, how do we get them out of the house and trying to figure ways to scare them early on. So they're trying to appear in front of them in these scary, uh, scary ways. So one is that, uh, Delia goes and she opens the closet, right? And we see that, uh, Barbara is in there and she's like hanging from a noose and then just pulls the skin off her face to reveal— so there's a lot of these like goofy Large Marge looking special effects, uh, in this movie that works so well. And it makes it kind of like kind of scary, but right, but fun. You know, so it's spooky.

Steve

It's not scary, it's like spooky.

Nic

Yeah, I think spooky's good. And then another scene in one of the rooms, she has cut off Adam's head and she's holding it up, you know, so his ghost on there, but nobody can see them.

Steve

Nope, nobody can see them.

Nic

So they're trying to spook him and they can't spook him.

Steve

Great effect when, because it's actually, we should mention, it's Delia and her decorator friend Otho, who's played by the same guy that played Assistant Bob in Demolition Man.

Nic

Yes.

Steve

They are wandering around the house looking for things to change. So they're like writing, they're literally like writing with spray paint the name of colors on walls that they're gonna paint that wall that color. And they're doing different things. So they're the ones who like, you know, Barbara is holding a knife in Adam's head while Adam's body is laying on the ground, you know, to try to scare them. And it's a great little effect of Alec Baldwin then talking to Geena Davis as the disembodied head. Like, I don't think this is working.

Nic

They can't see.

Steve

It's very funny. But then he realizes that they start heading up to the third floor to the attic where his model is, that he didn't lock the door. So his headless body gets up and runs up the door past Delia and Otho, where they notice, they stop and go, did you feel that? Like, you know, the whole kind of, oh, you got brushed by, you know, by a thing. But sure enough, he goes up, shuts the door, locks it, you know, and there's no key or the key's inside the room or something like that. So, you know, they think they're safe up there, Barbara and Adam. I do love too, there's a line when Delia and Otho are walking through, she goes into a bathroom, she goes, oh look, an indoor outhouse. And I just have always loved that. Look, an indoor outhouse.

Nic

Uh, and all like the reason the family moved here, um, the thing that Charles wants is like, I just need somewhere to relax. I need somewhere that I can have some peace and quiet.

Steve

Yeah.

Nic

So we get a few scenes of like him about to have his peace and quiet that gets disturbed here.

Speaker B

Yeah.

Nic

Um, he's sitting there, uh, in his den reading Practical Homeowner magazine, which really cracks me up. He—.

Steve

We get the sense maybe he was in finance in New York City. They've moved from New York City. This is like, this is like Connecticut but not close to the city, suburban Connecticut. It's like rural Connecticut. Yeah, uh, a little village, you know.

Nic

And so yeah, he's talking about like condo development a lot, so I think he's one of those guys, real estate investor or something like that. So outside the door, so, uh, Adam and Barbara realize that going outside the back door, like trying to leave the limits of the house, puts you into like the sandworm desert. So yep, they're stuck. They're stuck inside there.

Steve

Um, this is something where I thought of at this point in the movie, watching at this time, my first thought would have been you should be poltergeists, not ghosts. Like, start throwing shit around. They can clearly interact with the things in rooms and pick things up, whatever. I would start terrifying them by slamming doors and cabinets and throwing dishes around. Like, break all their stuff, destroy the statues, just be destructive. They'll leave. Like, you know what I mean? Like, if you throw a knife at one of them, they'll leave. Like, this could have been very simple.

Nic

Yeah, if you're standing there in a room and a knife like flings by your head and like sticks in the wall next to you, I'm gone. No questions asked, I'm out of here.

Steve

Get Jane back in here, sell this fucking house. Goddamn. But they don't do that. No. Um, and so, uh, so we had the family kind of enjoying—.

Nic

They have like their Chinese food dinner. Yeah, I don't know if this is like their first night in the house together early on. And, uh, they're telling Lydia, you know, who's not excited about anything because she's a goth angsty teen. And they say, uh, they say, well, we'll build you a darkroom downstairs. And she's like, my whole life is a darkroom.

Steve

But to be fair, to Winona Ryder's credit, uh, Catherine O'Hara says, we'll build you a darkroom. Or maybe it was the dad, but one of the actors says, we'll build you a darkroom in the basement. And he pronounces it darkroom because that's where you, you know, make photos of, right? And she says, my whole life is a dark room. And so she does like pronounce it slightly differently to like Like, I feel like there's little subtleties like that. They're like, oh, like, even though Winona Ryder, what was she, like 15 in this movie or something? Really young. It's already a pretty good actress, like really kind of nailing these little subtleties of these line deliveries and things because it's a funny little moment. But yeah, this is, I think, when Barbara and Adam see like an ad for Beetlejuice. Right. And so, you know, and of course he can't say his own name. And the lore of this is a little funky to figure out throughout the movie, but it seems like saying his name 3 times brings him from wherever he is trapped to interact with the real world. But if you say his name 3 times again, it sends him back. Yeah. Is what it seems like. So it's basically like a, it's a 2-way door and you can open that door either way. So he can't say his name on TV or at all rather. So the little ad does not include it. And of course it's spelled the way that the, I don't know what the origin is. I just know that it's like a star, right? Is Beetlejuice is spelled B-E-T-E-L-G-E-U-S-E. I've always been happy that, that they didn't actually name the movie that because it would have been impossible to pronounce. And they make several jokes about Betelgeuse, right?

Nic

Throughout the movie, different ways, you know, because it is hard to—.

Steve

If you don't know how to pronounce— I'm not even sure what language of origin, or, or yeah, language of origin that word is, um, but it's not obvious.

Nic

We would always say Beetle Guys. Uh, I remember playing this video game on 3DO called Star Control 2, and, uh, it was cool. Like, you had, you know, real stars and stuff, but there'd be different different shit at the things. And I remember seeing that one and being like, yeah, Beetlejuice right next to Alpha Centauri over there.

Steve

Yeah.

Nic

Um, so, uh, yeah, so they see a flyer, uh, for, for Beetlejuice, who's advertising himself as a bio-exorcist.

Steve

Yeah, that's right, that's right.

Nic

Um, and, uh, let's see, Wynonna— Lydia in the meantime has gotten a hold of the skeleton key. That's right. I love a skeleton key.

Speaker B

It's—.

Nic

Is there a skeleton key at this building? I don't think there is. I don't think that's a real thing in most places, but Man, that was great in the childhood.

Steve

But especially the old kinds of locks at this place where it's not in the doorknob, it's like just a really simple sort of like thing. Like I could see how you would make the locks so that you could have a skeleton key, right? Especially when you're thinking too, you go back to like, you know, older homes, places that were larger that maybe at one time would've had like a house manager, right? Who like runs the staff. This is a big place. It could have been like that at one time, you know, would've had a thing where it's like, well yeah, the house manager has the skeleton key. You can get into any room he needs to, you know, something like that. But basically, yeah, like they read in the book that they can draw a door.

Nic

Right.

Steve

Barbara and Adam.

Nic

You need help, draw a door.

Steve

Exactly. So he's got chalk and he basically just draws a door on the thing and he knocked 3 times and their wall opens and they go off into the afterlife as Lydia is like approaching the attic and goes and is able to go into the attic now because they're not there. Right. And so we sort of switch over into, you know, being in the afterlife. And there's a few interesting things here because this comes up later, but later on, Charles will say something, or somebody, Otho or Charles, will say something about, you know, if you commit suicide and that's how you die, then you become a civil servant in the afterlife. Like you have like a crappy job. And you'll notice everybody who works in the afterlife thing, they're like, there's a guy who hanged himself, a woman who has got slit wrist scars, and the guy who clearly jumped in front of a bus because he's been flattened.

Nic

The guy who's like fully flattened, right?

Steve

They're all suicides and that's why they're working this place. But basically, Adam and Barbara have to wait to get an appointment. They don't have an appointment. They have to wait to see their case manager, Juno, played by Sylvia Sweeney— or Sylvia Sidney, sorry. And it was a very, very funny actress, actually.

Nic

Yeah, she was, she was great in this. And just pointing out the score in this, I mean, yeah, it's just so perfect. It's very Ghostbusters-y throughout a lot of this movie. Like, Yeah, it's a little goofier, but it has a lot of the same, a lot of the same energy. Um, the, uh, the waiting room that they're in is really Pee-wee's Playhouse, uh, coded.

Steve

Absolutely.

Nic

The shrunken head guy, um, all the different—.

Steve

The woman who was like clearly, uh, it was like a magician's assistant who actually got cut in half, and so her legs are sitting next to her torso. That's a great one.

Nic

Uh, and their main guy Juno, she's a smoker and she has a fully slit throat, and you see it points like smoke coming out of this slit in her throat. So kind of cool there. There's a guy who's like fully black and burnt who's like smoking a cigarette, like offering a cigarette. So really, really fun puppet work.

Steve

Trying to cut back myself. Yeah, a lot of great effects in this, both makeup, puppetry, uh, all kinds of cool stuff that we're seeing here. Um, and a lot of it comes back a few times during the movie. This waiting room shows up a few times, and it's always interesting to kind of see everything that's happening around it. Um, but yeah, so they get into— they, they actually get called and they have to head back to Juno's office. Um, before they get to Juno's office, they spot— they stop by, um, they see a room with these like ghostly figures just sort of like, you know, flying vertically kind of in this like room, like they're just stuck here. And there's a janitor there and he goes, "That's the lost souls room. When you get exorcised in the realm of the living, that's where you end up. You're not, you know, it's like death for the dead, but you're just stuck there," which sounds awful. When they actually get to what they think is Juno's office, they realize they've walked back into their home and another several months have passed. They've been waiting and it's months. They also learned, I think, either from here now or it's earlier when they were at the reception's desk, they find out that They're sentenced essentially, or like they have to spend 125 years in their home. It's almost like part of their death was being assigned to haunt the house for 125 years, at which point I don't know if they go on to like something like heaven or something or what, but we don't really get into that. It's just, that's what they have to do. So time is passing relatively quickly, but you know, at this point it's all been redecorated. So all of Otho and Delia, yeah. All of their stuff is like in, so the sculptures that she made, all the weird, You know, the fireplace has been changed. All the walls are really dark. Everything's crazy modern, but in that like weird way where you never—.

Nic

In a way you make fun of it.

Steve

Yes, exactly. In a very Tim Burton-y, like this is a play on what modern decorating looks like. And it's more a fantastically strange, you know, kind of thing.

Nic

I would love to see what Tim Burton's house looks like.

Steve

Oh, I—.

Nic

Just out of curiosity.

Steve

I bet it's one of those like, you know, super standard metal and cement or glass and cement, like monstrosities in Hollywood Hills that has no personality whatsoever. Like, wouldn't that be interesting if like one of the most interesting filmmakers ever just had a boring-ass house, right? Right. Is that— or I could imagine him in like, you know, like a, like a 5-bedroom in Encino on a quarter acre where like it's wall-to-wall all of the stuff from his movies. It's just like everywhere.

Nic

It's just full of stuff.

Steve

Just full of stuff.

Nic

Yeah, it looks like the Ripley's Believe It or Not Museum in there.

Steve

Yeah, exactly. Everything from Pee-wee's on, like it's just, you know.

Nic

Um, okay, so, uh, so the other thing that Juno was telling— so she's kind of telling him like how to haunt the house, whatever. I'm your caseworker. And she says, uh, don't— they bring up Beetlejuice and she's like, don't—.

Steve

Like, don't even—.

Nic

First of all, don't say that. Don't work with this. This is not— he's not one of us.

Steve

Yeah, yeah, he does not work well with others, as she says. Yeah. And so, so it's basically just like, like a no-go. Um, we cut then to— because they basically— they've been— they've decided, okay, well, we're just gonna try to get him out. We're gonna have to figure out how to do this. We cut to Charles on the phone. He's talking to Robert Goulet back in New York City, trying to convince him, his name is Max, trying to convince him to come out there and see the place, whatever, they've done all this work. And Robert's kind of like, "Yeah, I don't really wanna do that. Okay, bye." And it's like, but when he hangs up the phone, he literally calls him a putz. And I always think it's funny the way he hangs up as putz. He hates Charles. He clearly does not want anything to do with him. And yet, he's always talking to him.

Nic

Um, yeah, so we get, uh, we get Beetlejuice for a second, um, inside the model. He's like luring a fly with a Zagnut bar, which is funny. I like seeing like retired candy bars. I don't think you can get a Zagnut now.

Steve

I don't think I ever had a Zagnut. I think my only familiarity with Zagnut as a candy was this movie.

Nic

I think it was like a deep cut Halloween sometimes, maybe. But, uh, yeah, it's right up there with Bit-O-Honey where it's like, where would you even go to get that?

Steve

I think it just— that is actually at CVS. That's at CVS all the time. But I've never eaten it. But the other one that I always do that is in the movie Half Baked. Dave Chappelle is in— Abba Zabba. I never had an Abba Zabba bar either.

Nic

Abba Zabba, you're my only friend. Hell yeah.

Steve

But anyway, so now there's like a knock at Charles' door and he opens it and it's a sheet as tall as him that he immediately says, Lydia, what are you doing? Lydia is like 5-foot-tall. Charles is like 6-foot-1. This is clearly Alec Baldwin or Geena Davis, who are both around 6 feet, under a sheet.

Speaker B

8 feet.

Steve

Why would he think his daughter was levitating 2 feet off the ground? It's crazy.

Nic

Just a dad who doesn't pay any attention to his kids, I guess.

Steve

That's fair.

Nic

Even though it's hard to believe that actor not paying attention to kids.

Steve

Uh, frightening.

Nic

Yeah, so they have the sheets with the eye holes cut out, classic like, uh, Charlie Brown style, and they're talking about how those are $300 sheets.

Steve

That's right, designer sheets. Yeah.

Nic

Uh, but, and they're making these ghost moans and stuff, and it's doing nothing to Charles and Delia. They're just like, get out of here, right? Delia's asleep, she's not really paying attention, but Lydia snaps a couple photos with her Polaroid. This was making me anxious watching it because that was like $30 in Polaroid film in like 30 seconds.

Steve

Also, I know Polaroids developed fast, but never— I don't remember them flying out. I, I don't know that you could take pictures that fast with them, could you? Like, that was wild.

Nic

Picture comes out and it takes a little while to develop, but it did look like they were coming out developed. You didn't see any Andre 3000 shaking it, you know?

Steve

Good call. I was gonna give a shake it like a Polaroid picture. But yeah, so she takes a bunch of pictures and then realizes when she starts looking at them, 'cause she thinks that it's like, you know, Charles and Delia having sex with each other is what they, 'cause she can hear the moaning and the wailing. And she thinks it's them. And they come out of Delia's room where she's asleep, where she had like clearly heard the moaning, but thought it was the TV, got up and, you know, was still asleep basically, turned the TV off and went back to sleep.

Nic

And it was wrestling. We came so close to boxing on TV.

Steve

Um, but, uh, but yeah, so then Lydia, you know, is like, realizes there are no feet in the pictures, like under the sheets, and asks them like, you know, what are you guys doing? You know, and she's like, we're trying to scare your— you know, they admit like, we're ghosts, like whatever, we're trying to scare your mother and father away. And she corrects them, stepmother, for one thing. Um, but she says, well, you know, you're not gonna wake her up, she's sleeping with Prince Valium tonight. Yeah, I like the line because that's the actual name of the character that Prince— that, uh, Princess Vespa is supposed to marry in Spaceballs is Prince Valium. Oh, because he's always falling asleep. Yeah.

Nic

So I think they're— they've decided that we're gonna try to get Beetlejuice.

Steve

Beetlejuice time.

Nic

I mean, we got to get these fucking people out of the house.

Steve

Yeah.

Nic

So they say his name 3 times, right? And that kind of teleports them inside the model, which is interesting.

Steve

Instead of bringing him to them, it brings them into where he is, which we're led to believe he is trapped in. So why hasn't this released him, the fact that they even said his name? Yeah, should have been good enough. But anyway, we get, we get a real intro to Beetlejuice. This is a great scene of, of Michael Keaton really hamming it up. You know, a few things that I just want to point out that I learned and kind of did a little research for this. One, a lot of these lines ad-libbed. A lot of this stuff was just Keaton cooking and just, you know, hey, you know, this is the gist, but do whatever. So a lot of these little asides and things when he like hawks a loogie, spits it into his jacket and goes, I'll save that guy for later. That was a Keaton ad-lib, you know, things like that. And the makeup was almost entirely his idea. The mold on his face. The way his hair looked was all from Keaton to the makeup artist. Hey, make it look like this. Hey, make it look like this. And when Burton saw him, it was like, yeah, no notes. Let's do this. Like, I mean, it was really very much Keaton. Like, Keaton bought into this movie so heavily. When he originally read the script, apparently he was not interested. He didn't get it, which is funny because we learned that about— oh God, I can't remember now. There's another movie that Keaton would have gone in, but didn't get it. And he didn't end up doing it and then ended up regretting it. A movie we covered. I can't remember. I can't— I can't believe I can't remember it now, but I can't. But anyway, in retrospect, this is one of Keaton's favorite movies that he's done of his— of his career. Of his own, um, and he ended up just buying into the whole thing hook, line, and sinker and really giving it his all. And it's one of his best performances. It's really incredible.

Nic

He is like, uh, he has channeled like Robin Williams, Jim Carrey, like all that kind of manic energy.

Speaker B

Yep.

Nic

Um, in this, like Beetlejuice, to me he's almost like a cross between, uh, Freddy Krueger, the Heath Ledger Joker, and like Ace Ventura or something. That works because he's got like fun energy, but he's like, can make himself into weird shit, but he still has the same patterns, you know, like Freddy Krueger.

Steve

And also kind of like, was it, uh, was it Little Monsters? Howie Mandel, uh, and, and Fred Savage. Did you see that one?

Nic

Oh, I haven't seen that one.

Steve

Howie Mandel plays this like monster in another movie. I think it's called Little Monsters, uh, but it's very much similar to this as well. Yeah, um, we'll have to get to that one someday.

Nic

But it is great. It's great to know that he improvised a lot of this stuff because because it is just like, that had to have happened in a flow.

Steve

Like, there's not a right way to say, hey, oh, one second, hey, I actually went to Juilliard, you know, like all that shit that he does.

Nic

Really good. Um, yeah, so, so they ask him for, uh, his qualifications and stuff, and they ask him, can you be scary?

Steve

Right?

Nic

And he's like, I could be scary. And the— we're seeing the back of Beetlejuice's head as he's making this scary face that's just, you know, the scariest imaginable.

Steve

They're screaming. Like, it's definitely— and we see like, like either tentacles or snake heads or something is coming coming to the side. Yeah, we know it's something active and scared. We don't actually see it, you know, that's just for Adam and Barbara to freak out about. But they kind of decide maybe this isn't a good idea, we don't want him to participate, maybe we're gonna change our minds. And so they like leave the model or whatever, right? Yeah. And he's pissed, he's super mad about it. And this is when he would— we get the one F-bomb dropped in the movie, goes, nice fucking model.

Nic

Oh, not only that, so he kicks the tree over, he goes, oh, nice fucking model, and then he grabs his crotch and it goes goes, and it like honks his— honks his dick. Uh, like when I was a kid, I would— look, thank you to the gift that the MPAA gave us by letting this slide through on a PG movie, because that gave me endless delight as a kid that this was in the movie. Um, because I remember seeing that and just losing my mind. My 5-year-old niece has watched this movie, and she has certainly repeated that. And then she said, Daddy, he says nice fucking model, and then he grabs his penis. Which is just so fucking funny.

Steve

From the mouths of babes.

Nic

Really, really good. And it's funny that they left that in because there's not really a whole lot, uh, language-wise objectionable in the rest of the movie. They're not sneaking in a bunch of bitches and asses. No, they're cashing in all their chips on the one F-bomb, and I'm glad they did.

Steve

Yeah, I mean, it's very much like— I mean, even a little, uh, less close to the line than Spaceballs, which actually had the word shit show up a few times before fuck, even in the future nothing works at the end of that movie. But yeah, I do love a good, there's like 4 or 5, really it's a very small number, but there's like 4 or 5 PG movies from the era that feature a single well-placed F-bomb. Caddyshack 2 definitely has one as well. But yeah, so, you know, in the sort of like, in that era where PG-13 existed as a possibility, that's sort of what I'm thinking about. PGs post the PG-13 being created that have F-bombs are very rare, but there are like 4 of them.

Nic

Those brave PG-13.

Steve

Yeah, exactly. Well, certainly these days, you put a single F-bomb in a movie and that's the only swear word, You're still PG-13 at a minimum. Like, so, um, but yeah, so now we have, uh, Delia and Charles are hosting a dinner party. They've invited over— so there's Otho, uh, who is apparently staying with them, I guess, because he's there all the time.

Nic

Um, and then another woman that they kind of seem like they're together, both those date, but then I think she left on her own without him after that.

Steve

With Dick Cavett and his wife. Like, I don't know who these people also are. They're like financiers or something. Um, and— or no, it's his— or he is Delia's— uh, Dick Cavett's character.

Nic

He's the art manager agent. Yeah.

Steve

And he says he's never ever made money on Delia's art because it's all terrible.

Nic

Delia, it's not terrible in that I tried to make this look like a horse and it doesn't really look like a horse. It's terrible in the sense it looks like a close-up like Ren and Stimpy hairball. Like it just, it all looks gross and it doesn't look like anything.

Steve

And it doesn't look like there was a lot of skill applied. Like, you know what I mean? It very much looks like the stuff that a preschooler makes playing with clay, you know, where they can throw it in a kiln for them and now you've got an ashtray. It looks like that kind of thing, and it's very bad. But the dinner party scene is hilarious. This is when Otho mentions that people who commit suicide become civil servants, which is again, super funny, 'cause we saw that. And then Charles, his toast is, "Make all your buildings go condo." Which I think is hilarious, 'cause it implies so much, right? That first of all, this is pre the big condo boom, right? Of the kind of late '80s and into the '90s, where lots of apartment buildings did start going condo. But it also implies that the friends of his who have expensive apartments would be able to afford to buy their apartment if allowed to, right? These are people with money that if they could, if their apartment, if their buildings went condo, they could buy their apartment. This is how I interpret it. I don't know, maybe I'm missing a thing.

Nic

Yeah, I was thinking he was seeing them as like real estate developers, like, may you turn this worthless warehouse that you own into a bunch of condos. Oh, okay. But maybe that's more from like a 2000s vibe.

Steve

Maybe.

Nic

But, but yeah, it's really funny that he said that. And it might just be intentional nonsense of Tim Burton just being like, dude, all the people I can't fucking stand right now are talking about condos all the time, so I gotta make fun of that.

Steve

How can I make this character more insufferable? Yeah, let's make him a huge fan of buildings turning into condos. That actually sucks.

Nic

And they're eating this— they have their dinner in front of them and it looks like a futuristic shrimp cocktail or something. It's very odd. Yeah. And Lydia's there and she's like, hey, I saw some ghosts. Like, she's trying to tell them and they're just like, hey, you know, shut your ass up. Um, so at a point in the dinner, I think it's, uh, it's Delia, Catherine O'Hara, who first starts.

Steve

And this is one of two major set pieces in the movie featuring a Harry Belafonte song. There are actually four Harry Belafonte performances on the soundtrack because there's a couple times early in the movie we didn't mention it talking through, but when, um when Adam and Barbara are still alive, that they're listening to Harry Belafonte on like a record player or something. Other songs that he did, but this one, the Banana Boat Song, and then later Jump in the Line right at the very end of the movie. But yes, this is a big Harry Belafonte scene, and it's like most of the song, and we've talked a lot about doing the whole song and stuff, but it's a hilarious like dance number.

Nic

It builds so nicely because you get such a range of emotions from the characters, you know, where they're first just like, what is this crazy person doing? Oh my God, what am I doing? What's happening to me? To this is the most fun I've ever had in my life.

Steve

They're loving it. And unfortunately it is Adam and Barbara trying to scare them. The one scary part that does happen is when the shrimp reach up and grab them, their arms or whatever. Like that was wildly frightening. Even like this time watching it through, I kind of forgot that. I remember the dancing and the marionette sort of stuff and how funny that is. I forgot about the shrimp jumping up to grab their faces.

Nic

Oh my God. Yeah. They turn into these like monster mitts.

Steve

It looks a lot like when Dana, you know, Dana Gordon gets attacked— not Dana Gordon, that's freaking Entourage— in Ghostbusters when Dana gets grabbed on her, uh, chair. Yes, all the different arms. Totally felt a lot like that. Um, but yeah, so they're, they're going, and Adam and Barbara are like celebrating. They're like, oh, we got them! They're gonna run, dude. And they literally go, let's look out the window, they're gonna start running out of the house because they're so terrified. And they don't. And we cut back down to them and they are all— yeah, they are, they're giddy, they love it. Oh, they love it.

Nic

They're also trying to find the angle, like like, hey, I think we can make some money off this.

Steve

From the jump, Charles is like, this is an amusement park, this is gonna be amazing.

Nic

And it's like, dude, this is your sanctuary. All you've been talking about is how you want to go somewhere for peace and quiet, and now you want to make your house into this nightmare tourist trap?

Steve

Well, now he sees dollar dollar bills, y'all.

Nic

Crazy. Um, so they tell Lydia, because they finally believe Lydia, right? And they're like, go upstairs and get them.

Steve

Yeah.

Nic

And she comes down, she's like, no, They won't come down. Um, I think they feel bad because you didn't get scared.

Steve

Yeah, they were trying to scare you and it didn't work.

Nic

And then Delia says, they're dead, it's a little late to be neurotic.

Steve

It's a great line.

Nic

Yeah, she's fantastic.

Steve

Oh my God. But this is when— so they all decide to go up to the attic to try to like confront them or like whatever. I think this is when the— uh, maybe it's on their way back down because they don't find anything. Oh yeah, because they go up, they don't find anything. Uh, we learned that Adam and Barbara are hiding by hanging out the window. Yes, right, so that they can't be seen at all, or like a to the room, but Otho finds the Handbook for the Recently Deceased and he takes it with them. As they all start heading back down the stairs, the stair banister turns into a snake and it's Beetlejuice. It's his head. It kind of attacks them. He pushes Otho down the stairs. He literally drops Charles from like, this is the second floor down to a very hard surface. Apparently doesn't hurt him significantly, but it's like, you know, he really starts attacking. And I think this is, they, they, get him away. Do they get— do they just— does Barbara say Beetlejuice?

Nic

Beetlejuice?

Steve

Beetlejuice?

Nic

Yeah, yeah, she says his name 3 times and it puts him back into the model and stuff. And he's down in the model. This is kind of cool. This is the only time it shows him like relative to a full-size person when he's shrunk down. Yeah, he's yelling at her and she goes to like pick him up. Yeah, but then these spikes come out of him, you know. She's like, ow, drops him down there.

Steve

Uh, he gets stuck in the like, you know, the plastic sort of ground that represents the grass. Yeah. Gets stuck to it pretty bad. But this is when he's like, you know, realizes there's now a new building there in town. It's Dante's Inferno room. Girls, girls, girls, nude, this and that, whatever. So he heads on over there and Adam and Barbara's like, Adam, why did you build that in the mall? He's like, I didn't put that there. And they are basically summoned back to Juno who tells them, yeah, that was my idea. I needed to distract him. Like, you know.

Nic

Yeah. And she's pissed, you know, she's like, like, you know, you shouldn't be working with the— I told you to not work with this guy. And why haven't you scared these people away yet? Yeah, yeah, you know, you gotta work on this. How are you gonna scare them? And they both work on making their scary faces. And, uh, it looks— you remember that Spy vs. Spy, like, bad magazine?

Speaker B

Yep.

Nic

They kind of made their faces into those, like, long plague masks, right? Yeah. And, uh, yeah, Adam has this very long, pointy, like, crow head kind of looking face.

Steve

He sticks his hand so far the back of his head that his fingers stick up like a, like a coxcomb at the back of his head as well. It's very interesting. Look, really great stuff.

Nic

Good, uh, good makeup effects here for sure. Um, all right, so Lydia, uh, now encounters—.

Steve

Well, she's writing, she's writing a suicide note. She's gonna commit suicide. She writes a note about like, I am totally alone, like all the— utterly alone. And he starts, and you know, if you— when— after you read that, by the time you read this, I'll have leapt from the whatever bridge, basically the same bridge that, that, uh, Adam and Barbara died falling off of. She's gonna go do that, but she wants to go tell them first, I'm coming to join you. Well, she goes up there and they're not there because they're talking to Juno. They're in the afterlife, like, you know, offices or whatever. So this is when, yeah, she encounters Beetlejuice down in the model. And I believe this is when she's about to say— she says Beetlejuice twice, then Adam and Barbara come in. And before— and she says Beetle, but before she can finish it, Barbara stops her and explains, like, no, no, this isn't cool. And she's like, but I'm gonna join you, and all this stuff. And they talk her out of the suicide, basically. And they're just like, you know, no, you don't understand. This doesn't make things easier. This is harder than even living. You need to like live your life. And this I think is when we cut to like Otho is gonna do a séance. So Robert Goulet has come visit. They're gonna do this. Oh no, that's right. They take the model downstairs and they're trying to do like a presentation about how they're gonna do the whole town. Right? It's something like that. And like, this is gonna be a whole thing and like all this stuff. And Robert Goulet's not impressed 'cause he hasn't seen the ghosts. And he's like, so far you got me, you show me nothing.

Nic

Nothing, right?

Steve

Like, if I don't see some ghosts, like, what's the point?

Nic

During the presentation, they mentioned that, uh, we're gonna have the same person involved who brought everyone the talking Marcel Marceau statue, which is a famous mime. Fire joke then, now I don't know. He's probably fallen off a bit. I don't know what his TikTok numbers are like.

Steve

Yeah, no, no, you'd have to find a new mime, I think, to really make that joke now. But, uh, but yeah, no, very funny. Um, and so, but you know, it's come down to like, you know, this isn't gonna work if we don't see the ghosts, and they're not gonna come down. So Otho's got a plan, and Otho's like, he's gonna do a séance, and he's basically gonna whatever. And he's been reading through the book, and he starts, he reads this poem. It's actually a poem. It's not something that was made up for the movie. It's a poem. I don't know what it is. But anyway, why would it even be in the handbook? Why does the handbook, or are we to believe this is Otho's knowledge he's bringing on his own? 'Cause it seemed like he got it out of the handbook, but why would there be an incantation like this in the Handbook for the Recently Deceased? It doesn't make any sense.

Nic

[Speaker] That book is weird 'cause it seems like just shows you whatever it is you need at that time. Like, it's not even like, uh, just open it to the middle and it'll be the thing that you need to do. But yeah, that's a very good point.

Steve

It was just a bit strange.

Nic

And, uh, and the thing with the séance is I guess he needs their wedding clothes. Their clothes from their wedding are laid out there so that, you know, they'll theoretically appear in there. And they do. Yep, it works. Otho's amazing. He could—.

Steve

And yeah, and Barbara comes first and she's, you know, she fills up the wedding dress and whatever but immediately starts decaying. Yeah, Because it's like now she's actually being brought back into the world of living where she is sitting in a grave having died months ago and is decomposing. So that's kind of happening to her now. And Lydia, in desperation, goes to get Beetlejuice to help stop this basically. And he tells her, well, I want out for good.

Nic

And apparently, whether he's making this up or not, so, uh, you gotta marry me.

Steve

Yeah, right. So he needs a green card to the land of the living. So he has to get out. So she has to say his name so he gets out, but then she has to agree to marry him. Them in order to make this permanent. And then he says he'll help them, which of course he has no intention of doing. But she goes ahead and says, you know, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice. And this is when, you know, a great, really quick two words, but him saying, "It's showtime." You know, such a classic Beetlejuice moment.

Nic

Built for the trailer.

Steve

Yeah, there you go.

Nic

That line.

Steve

And he comes up through the model, basically breaking the model apart with these big, his arms are all curled up. He's got this crazy carousel-like hat on. On top of which, by the way, is the Jack Skellington sort of, symbol, the thing that looks like Jack Skellington very much with the little like the skull with the little like, uh, looks like sewn mouth and the big black eyes. It looks, it's gonna turn, you know, that symbol comes back. Apparently it's something Tim Burton had been drawing for a long time before he really envisioned all of Nightmare Before Christmas. Um, so a little, a little element there, which is fun.

Nic

And Beetlejuice's hat, I'm pretty sure that, uh, we saw the Daryl Hannah character wearing that in Wall Street at some point.

Steve

Black and white stripes or whatever.

Nic

Uh, yeah, so he, he turns like he morphs. This is very Freddy Krueger-ish here where these like rolls come out that are supposed to be like his legs or arms, and then it turns into one of those test your strength things that you hit with the big mallet and it'll tell you how, how strong you are, which is a cool effect. Yeah. And that blasts Goulet and the other person out of there, right?

Steve

And they're just gone. I think we see them again for the rest of the movie. They're just gone.

Nic

They just get launched somewhere into space. Uh, Otho's fate I think is funny is that Beetlejuice changes his like very, you know, nice and carefully picked out clothing into like a polyester suit, like a leisure suit, which is like something that, uh, like Kevin Arnold's dad in The Wonder Years would wear to a wedding or something like that. Um, yeah, so that's funny that that's like his own personal hell is being trapped.

Steve

It looks like Cousin Eddie from The First Vacation movie for sure.

Nic

Yeah. Um, and then the, uh, the sculptures start to come alive.

Steve

He brings a couple of Delia's sculptures come alive and kind of, and kind of grab and capture Delia and Charles. So So, you know, there's one that has like big kind of, uh, they look like teeth, almost like a Venus flytrap kind of look. And they wrap around Delia, holding her and holding her mouth closed. And then every time somebody tries to say Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, he's able to like, you know, knock them away. Or like he makes a, you know, Barbara gets one Beetlejuice out and he turns her mouth into a zipper. Yes.

Nic

I love that effect.

Steve

And then she unzips it and says Beetlejuice again. So now it's whatever. But then he puts like, he like gets a metal plate. It looks like, uh, I remember the COVID of like, I think it was a, it was either a Dick novel or somebody like that that was like, I have no mouth and I must scream. I can't remember which of the like cyber sort of futurist novel authors wrote it, but it was like the COVID of it was always this guy with no mouth or like The Matrix, right? There's a moment like, how will you scream, Mr. Anderson, if you don't have a mouth? Like that kind of thing. But yeah, so it's like all this stuff is going on. Those effects are awesome.

Nic

Yeah. Yeah, the zipper turning into the metal plate. Super cool. The wedding is being officiated by some very odd-looking—.

Steve

This is where the movie looks like an alien almost.

Nic

Like, this would be a weird movie to watch if you took some kind of hallucinogen that took an hour to kick in, because you'd really like start to be like, whoa. Um, yeah, so there's this little alien guy who's, who's officiating the wedding. So, um, now Adam is trying to, uh —well, he got like strong.

Steve

He got like strong. He's in the model. He's in that little truck. Yes, he's got—.

Nic

Now he's driving it across the floor like Stuart Little. That's right. And, uh, he manages to crash into Beetlejuice's foot right as, you know, the wedding's about to be finalized.

Steve

And it's weird because they've, they've both said I do, although Beetlejuice said it for Lydia in her voice, right? Yeah. But like, we're only waiting for the man and wife, you know, kind of moment, which is like, they've already got a ring. Like, technically this would be done. And whatever, like like, you know, venue that this was like authorized under, you know, under which auspices. Like, it would be done at this point, whatever that means. Um, but yeah, the wedding, he keeps trying to do it. Barb gets teleported by Beetlejuice back to Sandworm Town, whatever the outside realm is. And you're kind of like, gosh, I want to get in. A sandworm is coming for her, so it's like a little scary. But the next time we see her is her and the sandworm busting in like through the wall by the fireplace. And the sand— she like jumps off and the sandworm just eats Beetlejuice basically. Just like, that was quick.

Nic

Like, it did, uh, this whole thing did like come to a head very, very fast. Yes. Uh, and it is funny talking about it because like, oh, that was probably 6, 7 minutes of actual movie that just tied everything up. Um, yeah, the sandworm— the sandworm takes out Beetlejuice, so he's not a problem for them anymore. So they're just, uh, yep, they're ghosts and they're in the house. Yep. And so we did—.

Steve

We don't get a, um, a description— we don't get like a title card or anything that tells us how long, but we do fast forward some amount of time school for girls, Miss Shannon's School for Girls, which is apparently where Lydia goes. And I got to comment on this real quick. We see the end of the school day, a bunch of girls in school uniforms— these are clearly students— standing outside as Lydia comes out the building and like walks off to go home. Every one of those girls looks like a middle-aged housewife to me. Okay, thank you. Every one of them.

Nic

They're all named Pam, right? Yes.

Steve

Oh my God, 100%. Yes.

Nic

When I was watching that, I was losing my mind. I was like, I don't want to shame a bunch of teenagers from—.

Steve

But it's like you You weren't fucking teenagers. There's not a woman on that standing there that was under 45 years old. Like, not a one. It was crazy to me. I don't know what the deal was there. Um, but yeah, but they get home. She gets home and she immediately is talking on Adam. And now it's like Adam and Charles and Delia and Barbara, they're all coexisting. They all just live together. They're all coexisting. They're all happy about it. And so Lydia comes home and is talking, you know, and says like, how was the science? Barbara asked, how was the science test? She goes, oh, it's disgusting. They like wanted me to dissect something and I wouldn't. And so I got a C. It's like, "Well, at least it's not an F, you know, whatever." And then, "What about the math test?" She goes, "Well..." And Adam's like, "We studied for that for a week!" Like, they're full-on, like, taking this girl under their wing, you know, to, like, be parents for her. But she got an A, and so she's like, "So can I?" And it was like, you know, and then this is, like, one of, I think for everybody, one of the most, like, memorable kind of moments, even though it's right at the end of the movie. But, like, you know, jump in the line, "Shake, Señora" by Harry Belafonte playing while she actually is dancing and, like, going up into the air and floating near the stairwell as the song— and again, most of the song plays, and it is a large chunk of the song. At one point we cut to up in the den and Charles is sitting there and goes, "Oh, sounds like Lydia got an A on the math test." Yeah. This is great. Is it funny, man? Clearly a thing that happens a lot there.

Nic

To wrap it up as like, oh, this happy family, this weird like blended family that's now figured it out. Yeah.

Steve

And then we get one little epilogue sort of scene where we do get Beetlejuice back in the waiting room, in death's waiting room, right? And it says he's got a ticker tape, you know, with his number on it and it's like 9 trillion or something. It's an incredibly huge number. And it says like, "Now serving 3." And he looks over next to him and there's like a, you know, not exactly culturally sensitive, but like a witch doctor kind of character who has number 4, like a single little thing. And he like tries to show, "Oh, look, there's Elvis." And he like drops his ticker and then grabs it and goes, "Oh, all right, looks like I'm next. Okay, I got a date in about an hour, hour and a half. Okay." And that's when the witch doctor gets some dust or something, sprinkles it on his head and his head shrinks. Shrinks as he's like saying, hey, what's going on? And his voice keeps getting higher as the head gets smaller.

Nic

I will say that's the worst looking effect in the whole movie, and it kind of sucks that it ends on that. Yeah, because it's like, meh, you could have, you could have left that one up.

Steve

Puppety. The puppet sort of pre-shrunken head on that, that you see is wonderful. It looks fantastic. But yeah, this sort of like, we got to make Michael Keaton's head look small in the frame, but like, poofed it small.

Nic

Maybe it would work better. Yeah.

Steve

Yeah, something like that. But it, it's okay. But yes, good that that happens to Beetlejuice though.

Nic

He gets a good comeuppance there at the end of the movie. And yeah, we have like— things are tied up nicely. It's kind of weird, uh, you were saying like how you got into horror with this like being a PG. Like, I don't know what today's like PG beginner horror movies are. Yeah, so I'm glad that we had this.

Steve

And I don't think there are any more nowadays. The best you can do is there's PG-13 horror. So if a horror movie doesn't get really bloody, gruesome, violent in that sense. Like movies like The Conjuring, I think, are PG-13, or like Insidious, like where it's like, it's more about the scariness of the situation and less about here's a room full of blood, you know, or whatever. Like, you know, it's not a slasher or anything like that. That's sort of your entry-level horror. But those are like, those are very serious, scary movies. So there's not— I don't know that there's that much entry horror these days. I, you know, and here's the thing, my kids are still young enough that it doesn't really matter yet. I'm not They're, they're, they don't, they're not made of the same stuff we were made of in the '80s. They would, they wouldn't handle Gremlins. That's really what's entry horror still is, the same movies. It's Gremlins and Poltergeist. Yeah. And this, and like, you know what I mean? It's like, those are the entry-level horror movies still. Um, but yeah, so, but that's, uh, that's Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice. All right. Um, yeah, this was my pick. So, you know, I'll go ahead and give it down. Like, this was just so much fun to watch. And like I said, it's, it's something that's both been, you know, pretty culturally important, I think, for, for people around our age, you know, the, when this hit and sort of like that that middle to late elementary school age and, you know, being Pee-wee Herman adjacent and encoded that way in a little bit is great too. Movie that I, you know, I think like you, I think I'd thought I'd seen it through more than I really had. I've probably seen it all the way through 4 or 5 times maybe over the course of time, but so much of it sticks with you so indelibly, right? That it's just there all the time in the back of my mind that that's Beetlejuice. It was a ton of fun to watch. It was a ton of fun to revisit. This is kind of like, you know, You know, funny enough, another Burton Elfman. This, I feel very much like when we watched Pee-wee's Big Adventure where it was like, I really should have revisited this sooner. This was a lot of fun to watch, you know, but not a fantastic, not a great, not the greatest movie ever. There's definitely like slow parts, you know, it, it, there, I don't love all of the, like, I feel like there's probably not enough happens at parts. Like there's a lot of stuff where it's just kind of like people talking and it's like, oh, okay, let's get to the fun stuff. But I'm a solid 3.5 out of 5 on Beetlejuice. You know, I enjoyed it. It's definitely worth watching again if you haven't seen it in a long time. And I do think it's, you know, older kid friendly. You know, I don't know that I would show this to like my 7-year-old, but maybe, you know, my son turns 12 next month. Maybe this would be something he could watch then, you know, that kind of thing. But like, yeah, I mean, it's a lot of fun, very worth watching. Keaton's fantastic in it. You know, the whole cast is solid, but like Keaton's fantastic. And of course, Catherine O'Hara is hilarious. And the fact that she kicks off the whole Deo dinner party scene is so classic and so great. And she's just so wonderful. So yeah, I'm a 3.5 out of 5 on Beetlejuice.

Nic

Yeah, I, I agree. Um, I mean, the bits of this movie that are good are just so good, and the things that I'm happy about in this movie are just so unique. Like, it, it's wonderful that Tim Burton was able to take that money and do all these practical effects and these models and all these things that just continue to be his signature. Yeah. Um, and I'm glad, you know, this is what got him Batman, I'm sure, if it wasn't already in the works and everything. And, you know, that relationship with Michael Keaton, that gave us so much. Yeah. Uh, but yeah, as a movie, like, put together as something to watch for an hour and a half, it's not the best. But there's so much that, like, I'm glad this exists. I'm glad I rewatched it. I'm glad I saw it when I was a kid. Uh, I love some Keaton. I don't love Alec Baldwin. I don't feel like there's a reason for it to be him versus someone, like, a lot cheaper. And, you know, um, but, uh, overall, just you know, a lot of fun. And, uh, like we said, there's not a ton of movies like this that will, like, let you into this fantasy horror world without scaring the shit out of you and traumatizing you. So I am a 3 out of 5 on Beetlejuice. I think it's definitely, uh, worth checking out.

Steve

All right, so 6.5 out of 10 is the official call from the two dads on Beetlejuice. And that was our movie for 1988. So next week we're gonna watch a movie from 1989 to continue our march. So Nic, what are we watching from '89?

Nic

Yeah, so a little bit of a through line, I guess, between Beetlejuice and the movie from '89, just in that Juno, uh, the, the afterlife guide, has her throat ripped open. And, uh, and I thought maybe we'd go somewhere in 1989 where we could rip a couple throats. And, uh, we're gonna go to the Double Deuce Bar, and we're gonna hang out with our buddy Dalton, played by Patrick Swayze, and we're We're gonna spend a little time in the Roadhouse.

Steve

Oh my God, you know, I thought he'd be bigger. Uh, I love Roadhouse. Fantastic movie. This is one of those movies that like, uh, I've seen a bunch of times. Didn't see it probably till college initially. It definitely was, you know, later, uh, pickup for me. But now I've seen it, you know, a dozen times maybe. And it's just one of those movies that like, it gets better every time you watch it. There's so much that's wild and wacky about this movie. It's gonna be a lot of fun to talk about.

Nic

A lot of actually good and a lot of so goofy that it's good. Like, yeah, it's gonna be a great one.

Steve

It's so many bare butts, just constant bare butts in this movie. Yeah, you just have to deal with that, but that's okay. Excellent. Road House, next week, 1989. That's a wrap. So if you like what you hear, consider heading over to Apple or Spotify and leaving us a 5-star review. It helps new folks find the show. Be sure to check out our website at twodads1movie.com. That's the number 2 and the number 1. There you can explore the movies we've covered, sign up for our newsletter, The Rewind, and even get sneak previews of upcoming episodes. We'd also love it if you followed us on Instagram @twodads1movie. Once again, this has been Beetlejuice, another episode of Two Dads, One Movie. I'm Steve.

Nic

And I'm Nic.

Steve

Thank you so much for listening, and we'll catch you next week. Thanks, everyone.