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With Beetlejuice Beetlejuice exploding onto multiplex screens today, we got to poking around the old archives and found the first mention of the original Beetlejuice in FANGORIA #72‘s Monster Invasion.
A full-blown set visit came later in FANGORIA #74. Marc Shapiro stopped by “A studio graveyard set” on “the next to last day of filming,” observing the scene where Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder) agrees to marry the titular trickster demon. Shapiro later caught up with Tim Burton during the editing process as the director lamented how to describe his new film to the marketing folks. “It has elements of horror, but it’s not really scary. It’s funny, but it’s not really a comedy. Beetlejuice is just one of those movies that doesn’t fit anyplace.” Burton later adds, “Beetlejuice is going to be a hard sell, but people who seek it out will find the film worth it.”
In hindsight, these comments (and worries) are wild, given that here we are 36 years after the 1988 film’s release, with a sequel that is set to blow the box office wide open. I don’t need to tell you that Beetlejuice became not just a cult sensation but a pop culture phenomenon. According to Variety, the original movie grossed $75 million off a $15 million budget, and it was the 10th highest-grossing movie of the year. The original spawned an animated series and Broadway musical based on the feature film’s characters and an avalanche of merchandise tie-ins.
Following the original film’s success, Universal Studios had a long-running live show, Beetlejuice’s Rockin’ Graveyard Revue featuring a cast of Universal Monsters (led by our host with the most) singing and dancing to pop songs. The Monster’s rendition of “When A Man Loves A Woman” as he serenaded The Bride has been seared into my brain as a core memory ever since.
There is no shortage of merchandise tie-ins for the newly released sequel, from diapers (seriously!) to Fanta Soda and the much-lamented Beetlejuice Beetlejuice popcorn buckets being sold for at least triple the retail price by internet resellers (scourge). But I wonder if there’s any chance we’ll get a new version of Beetlejuice’s Rockin’ Graveyard Revue. One can dream.
Marc Shapiro’s set visit ends with his observing the now iconic scene of Michael Keaton atop a graveyard tombstone as Ryder’s Lydia Deetz reluctantly utters his name thrice, releasing him into the world of the living. He dusts off his jacket and menacingly proclaims, “It’s showtime.” I wonder whether Shapiro knew in that moment even a fraction of the impact that scene and this movie were going to have on pop culture (and goth kids everywhere). Like the ground breaking wide open in the model it’s set in, once the juice was set loose, there was no putting it back. And we’d never want to. Dear Mr. Burton, we found it and it’s been well worth it.
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is now in theaters, and you can access the FANGORIA archives to read high-quality scans of Volume 1 issues in their entirety for free.
