This is an audio transcript of the Life and Art from FT Weekend podcast episode: ‘Halloween Chat: ‘Beetlejuice’ and the lost art of soft horror’

Lilah Raptopoulos
Welcome to Life in Art from FT Weekend. I’m Lilah Raptopoulos, and this is our Friday chat show. Today, to celebrate Halloween season, we have decided to return to a classic that’s recently been revived and lives forever in the public imagination: the original 1988 film Beetlejuice. Beetlejuice was directed, of course, by Tim Burton. It stars a young Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis, who play a married couple living in the countryside who die in a car accident and quickly realise that they’ve become ghosts. And a family from the big city has bought and moved into their home. Their job is to scare the family away and they contact an unhinged demon named Beetlejuice to help, played by Michael Keaton. High jinks ensue.

[‘BEETLEJUICE’ TRAILER PLAYING]

Lilah Raptopoulos
Beetlejuice is a cult classic. It’s a Halloween costume staple. It’s been remade as an animated series, a theme park ride, a musical, and as of last month, a legacy sequel, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. And today, we’re going to talk about why it endured and whether films like it even exist any more.

OK, let’s turn on the juice and see what shakes loose. I’m Lilah in New York, and I am alone. I am utterly alone. Joining me from London is the FT’s political columnist, resident film buff and our favourite bio exorcist — I have been told to see what happens if I say his name three times — Stephen Bush, Stephen Bush, Stephen Bush. Hi, Stephen. Welcome.

Stephen Bush
Hi.

Lilah Raptopoulos
With me in New York, his qualifications are, I’m doing the whole thing: he attended Juilliard, he’s a graduate of the Harvard Business School, he’s travelled quite extensively, he lived through the Black Plague, and he had a pretty good time during that. It’s our executive producer, a horror expert, a huge Halloween fan: Topher Forhecz. 

Topher Forhecz
Hi, happy to be here. I will take horror expert, among my many titles.

Lilah Raptopoulos
I think. As one of the few people who I have watched horror films for.

OK. So when we were deciding how to celebrate Halloween season, I lobbied hard for this, the original Beetlejuice, because it’s just this cult classic that keeps reappearing in the culture. And I wanted to rewatch it. It was, for all of us, a rewatch, not a first-time watch. So why don’t we start with this? Stephen, what is your relationship to the film and what was it like to rewatch it?

Stephen Bush
Yeah. It was odd one watching it again. I was sort of goth-adjacent as a teenager, I guess. I never sort of committed to the style, but I, you know, I loved all of that stuff. And it’s one of those . . . and then I realised it’s a film that I thought I had a stronger set of memories of than I did. And I realise it’s a film which I primarily remember as an aesthetic, as a kind of costume party staple, rather than it being a film which I had any strong memories of. And it was slightly strange. Watching it again had an oddly dreamlike quality because I realised I remembered the images of it much more strongly than the plot.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yes, me too.

Stephen Bush
And . . . actually, the thing I found a bit odd about it was realising I don’t think it’s that good.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Whoa.

Topher Forhecz
I just gave up my ghost.

Stephen Bush
It was a real kind of . . . oh, maybe, actually it slightly made me increase my . . . not so much my opinion of the sequel, but it did slightly give me that feeling of, oh was the first one good or was I just 15 and watching it at a house party at the time? It’s . . . I mean, in some ways it’s — as with a lot of Tim Burton’s stuff — it’s a great artist’s film rather than actually being a great film, I think.

Lilah Raptopoulos
OK. What was it like for you to rewatch it, Topher?

Topher Forhecz
So I dearly loved this movie. And part of the thing is that I have now reached the age where you can safely grow up with a movie and I can have different experiences of it by viewing it at different times in my life. And so I think I can’t really escape that. Like, I can’t really escape the, like, sense memory of the Danny Elfman score and the long credits. And just like what that does, the chemicals in my brain just like brings me back to my childhood.

But I think the thing that I really picked up on this time is just the density of the plot and how quickly it moves mirrored with the density of jokes in the . . . they’re just like it’s constantly firing things at you and it moves in like a 90-minute pace. And there’s stuff in there that I think as an adult you pick up on in ways that you don’t as a kid. I just think it’s a movie that is so dense that it rewards multiple viewing experiences and then you bring things to it as you get older, including, unfortunately for my case, being a jaded New Yorker and like this movie is a movie about jaded New Yorkers. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah. Who leave New York. 

Topher Forhecz
You know, and can’t and are like not fazed by a bunch of ghosts because they’ve seen too many weird things on the subway, you know? And so they’re like, huh. OK, how can we make money off it? You know, or like Charles just wanting peace and quiet in the country and then immediately is like, trying to, like, turn the whole town on its head. And like, I feel personally attacked by that as someone who will, like, go upstate and just be like, so nice to get out of the city. But what did you think?

Lilah Raptopoulos
Well, I guess I would like to state the obvious, which is that this movie is just a total delight to watch. It’s just fun. It’s an early Tim Burton, and so it has all the things you would expect from a Tim Burton. But it was at the time people didn’t know him, so they didn’t expect it, which was probably exciting. There is claymation, there is an in-between sandworm world inspired by Salvador Dalí, there are shrunken heads. This ghost couple, the Maitlands, can pull their faces out into insane-looking shapes. The costumes are incredible. Beetlejuice’s striped suit is iconic. Catherine O’Hara is the perfect evil stepmother. It’s just great. It’s like funny, it’s gross, it’s kind of mundane too. It makes death seem not scary, but sort of mundane. So anyway, all of that is a total joy.

I will say that like Stephen, I actually also this film, I realised as I was watching it existed almost like exclusively in my unconscious. I know I watched it as a child. I didn’t remember almost any of the plot. But then occasionally a scene would come up, like when they first meet Beetlejuice, it’s about 45 minutes in and he says, hold that for me, will yah? And he takes a mouse out of his pocket and he gives it to Geena Davis and she freaks out. And in that moment, just it all came flooding back to me. I felt like I was five again. So my rewatch was a total joy. But Stephen, why didn’t you like it? I’m dying to hear why you didn’t like it.

Stephen Bush
I think it’s partly the . . . both my reaction to it and the sequel are reminders of the perils of going back to something that you haven’t watched for a very long time. Because where I think it really works is as an intelligent children’s movie, right? It has loads of great jokes with watching adults. And one of the things Catherine O’Hara is really skilful in it, she does a good job of kind of double acting. She sort of works as a kind of grotesque figure for children, while doing a lot of the more subtle jokes about someone from the city who’s done that — to me, the most horrific act of all — which is to leave the city.

Lilah Raptopoulos
I agree, Stephen.

Stephen Bush
The bit I’d completely forgotten is how much it’s a movie about the Maitlands. And actually in an odd way, I almost this time around or do you know what I would actually much rather watch a movie about like these two people who are young and in love, who then suddenly are stuck in this house together, they think forever. I was just like, oh, but actually, this is a really interesting idea, isn’t it? And this is, god, I have become one of those angry bros who downright stings on Rotten Tomatoes. Essentially, I realise my problem is is that I watch a children’s movie and I’m aggrieved that it was for kids.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Interesting. Yeah. It’s almost like you wanted the movie to grow up with you.

[‘BEETLEJUICE’ MUSICAL SCORE PLAYING]

Lilah Raptopoulos
I want to get a little bit deeper into why this film, you know, like stuck so stubbornly in our cultural imagination for so long. Like, again, the symbol is powerful of this guy in the striped suit and the crazy hair, I guess. What about it made it unique at the time. What about it sort of allowed it to be iconic over time? What do you think it is?

Topher Forhecz
Yeah. I think for me, I think what made it stand apart, and I think it is kind of interesting to bounce . . . I, you know, sort of going off of what Stephen saying about it is kind of just a kid’s movie and or a theme or, you know, being that edgy. Is that a fair characteristic, Stephen?

Stephen Bush
Yeah. (inaudible)

Topher Forhecz
OK, great. I think the thing that has really helped the movie live on is that there is a lot of craft still devoted to the movie, which is kind of what I was saying about the density of jokes where it’s like every little bit of the movie has been considered. From, you know, like this weird comb art piece sculpture is almost a character in the movie. Like you see it so vividly. The set design has been very considered. The underworld, the rules of the underworld are all very considered. There’s so much craft and attention to detail that I think that has really helped stick Beetlejuice in the public consciousness, and I think that’s really helped it carry on.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah, there are a lot of just like iconic visuals. There’s Catherine O’Hara’s lightning bolt sideburns. There’s, you know, Winona Ryder’s spiky tooth bangs. There’s also this classic dinner-party scene that really held up perfectly. It was, you know, the ghosts are messing with this dinner party that this horrible couple has put on to try to scare the family away. And to do that, they, like, possess or take control over the dinner guests. So they turn the whole party into puppets who are forced to do the Calypso and forced them to start singing and performing Harry Belafonte’s “Day-O”. And then their shrimp cocktail reaches out like arms and sucks them into the bowls. And it just really scratched the itch for me. Stephen, what do you think about it sort of made it memorable over time?

Stephen Bush
I think it’s a couple of things. I think particularly the thing about Beetlejuice is because it is, yeah, a film in which a director with a very distinct visual sensibility is able to produce this film that is very distinctly his, but where actually in some quite good ways it is a tight 90 minutes. You know, for all I said, I thought I wasn’t sure was actually that good. It’s tight. It doesn’t have long scenes where you’re going, come on, Tim, wrap it up.

And then I think the other reason why it endures is that the average child who watches it then did graduate to Edward Scissorhands, to the rest of Tim Burton’s oeuvre. And so it’s a film which I think for lots of people is the beginning of their relationship with films, with horror, also with the idea of a film having an author. And I think that’s one of the reasons why it has a kind of enduring resonance. In addition to the fact that, yeah, I’m going to slightly recant my opening of the podcast, in this, in fact is ultimately just a solid children’s flick that goes in lots of unexpected ways.

The thing I realised watching it is and the film The Others, which is a horror film from the mid-noughties, is actually, when you think about it, a beat-for-beat remake, but played straight. And it does lots of really clever things. It plays with lots of genres. And the first time you watched it, you don’t realise it’s playing with lots of genres. And it then has, and obviously this particularly appeals to small children, then has this kind of, you know, loud, scatological character who, yes, is only in it for a very brief amount of time. But when he’s in it, is magnetic.

[‘BEETLEJUICE’ MUSICAL SCORE PLAYING]

Lilah Raptopoulos
So I wanted to switch gears a little bit and talk about children’s movies today. I asked you both to watch Beetlejuice, the original. But we also all saw the sequel that came out this fall, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. And I think the comparison is pretty interesting because it does have all the fun weirdness of Tim Burton, and it’s also a delight to watch. But it was also just . . . I mean, in my opinion, it was doing so much, it felt like Beetlejuice on steroids, like there were maybe two too many plot lines. It was almost like a Marvel movie, like we were on the run. It was chaotic. I just really wanted them to slow down and trust that we had attention spans.

Topher Forhecz
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I do. I think there’s a couple of things going on there. One of which is I feel like Beetlejuice Beetlejuice really isn’t a kid’s movie and it feels like it’s made for the people who have seen Beetlejuice. And also I feel like that plays on its like themes of, you know, generations of women looking out for each other and trying to reconcile with one another, which I also think kind of fell apart in the middle of it. But I also that is indicative of what you’re saying, which is, yeah, that movie is just a straight-up mess. But . . . 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Fun mess.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah. Well, that’s the thing. Like, it’s nice to see Tim Burton again. I feel like I haven’t seen Tim Burton in 20 years because he’s just . . . I just feel like he’s just been pumping out things that he really . . . it’s hard to find him in it. And you could see him actually being concerned with the jokes in that movie as opposed to, you know, I feel like he almost felt like just at some point he woke up and he’s like, well, I guess I just have to do Alice in Wonderland because I’m Tim Burton, I’m weird and like, we’re just going to have to do it.

So it was it was a nice return to form, but I think it does give way to you can tell as a filmmaker, Tim Burton is more interested with punch lines themselves. He’s really good at those, but I don’t think he’s a story guy. Like I just . . . I think my favourite movies of his, I haven’t seen Ed Wood, full disclosure, and I know that’s a lot of people’s favourites, but I love Mars Attacks, I love Batman Returns, I love Beetlejuice, I love Batman. But a lot of those movies, arguably their scripts are total messes, but they’re just a lot of fun to hang out in. So and I think that’s more what Beetlejuice 2 felt like to me.

Stephen Bush
Yeah, I mean, I think . . . I’m going to be incredibly pretentious, I think, or as David Foster Wallace once said, all stylists often become prisoners of their own style. And I think the thing about Beetlejuice is, it is, is Tim Burton, a long time ago became a prisoner of his own style. And I suspect one of the reasons why I was slightly . . . why I have this kind of slight weird relationship rewatching Beetlejuice where I realised I most enjoyed it when it was the least like a Tim Burton film, which isn’t because the Tim Burton film bits of Beetlejuice don’t work. It’s because I’ve seen too many bad late-period Tim Burton films. It’s one of the biggest mistakes I made in lockdown was to rewatch a lot of Wes Anderson films in a very short space of time. And it made me start to hate some of the later ones. Not because they were any worse, but just because I was tired of the style.

The sad thing about looking back at the original Beetlejuice is it’s a film without a successful book behind it, or pre-existing IP or a directorial name where nonetheless, this relatively neophyte director is allowed to do quite a lot but clearly is being restrained a bit. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is a film which kind of leans into lots of his weaknesses. And if, like me, you’ve started to find his style a bit like, OK, yeah. There’s a thing with weird eyes. OK cool. Then it becomes quite wearying quite quickly.

Topher Forhecz
Yeah.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So do you think that a movie like Beetlejuice could be made today? It feels like we’ve been circling this idea that kids’ films today aren’t the same. And from my perspective, Beetlejuice was cool because it kind of made weird mainstream. It was accessible, but it was weird. And that feels sort of missing now, and I’m not sure why. I felt like there were a lot of films at the time that were spooky but soft. There was Hocus Pocus, there was The Witches, there was Death Becomes Her. That’s missing now.

You know, these days, like, scary movies feel laboured to me or they feel stylised or they feel like really made for the internet, like Megan or Cocaine Bear or the A24 movies. They’re not playful, you know. I don’t know if that’s because family-friendly soft horror, like, it’s kind of gone as a genre. I don’t know if it’s because TV has taken that over, like it’s just made a bunch of spooky things for teens on Netflix like the show Wednesday. What is it? What do you think it is?

Stephen Bush
Well, it is partly about the market change, right? The family film has slightly disappeared slash the only available family film are Marvel movies, and even they seem to be in some slight commercial trouble. That kind of like sort of fun horror, then? Yeah. Broadly speaking, everyone, even someone who’s watching Beetlejuice for the first time, knows that Lydia is never actually going to be forced to marry Beetlejuice. Right? And OK, there are some children who do find Beetlejuice scary, right? But there’s a cosiness to it.

That kind of cosy horror doesn’t exist any more, really. And I suspect it is because fewer and fewer films are made for the whole family. Right? And actually, when I think about, you know, even so, even say like Inside Out 2, which is a very good bit of children’s entertainment, which has some, you know, I would say some probably profound things to say about the human condition. Right? So it’s not scary. It’s not really trying to be. It’s not got a kind of anarchic feel to it because ultimately it’s not built for, because it doesn’t need to be, a family of four of three different ages all sitting in a multiplex watching it together. And that is a slightly sad thing about, you know, things becoming more siloed.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Mm-hmm. What do you think, Topher? You’re looking with a furrowed brow.

Topher Forhecz
I think it does come down to box office and what is going to get people in seats. And this isn’t really a clever or original answer but, you know, you see a lot more sequels these days. I think there is a tendency by studios to play it safe, to not take flyers on anything that might scare away families or be too much. And that creates sort of a tampering down of creative risk. You know, Beetlejuice is a movie that has neck wounds and cuts and people flattened and eaten by sharks, and there’s a club scene for some reason. And I just think there is sort of a weird crisis within the box office where they don’t want to take a risk on that.

You know, movies are too expensive these days. I think probably the closest thing that we’ve had recently is sort of in the claymation space with, you know, things like Coraline maybe. But yeah, I think that there is a lack of interest on the studio’s part to want to devote a bunch of money to something that might be too off-putting or too spooky or too much for kids. That being said, horror is doing great, at least in general. I mean, Terrifier 3 is like one of the best performing movies in America.

Lilah Raptopoulos
So then I guess my question about that revolves around this feeling that there actually is a lot of desire for this, like, soft horror. I asked our listeners on Instagram, just like what their favourite horror or favourite Halloween movies are. And they were all like, I mean, this might be because they’re my listeners, but a lot of them were like Practical Magic and Sleepy Hollow and Hocus Pocus and Scream and, you know, movies that were like kind of scary but also kind of not scary. And so it seems like there’s this appetite for it. There’s obviously this appetite for straight-up scary right now, otherwise they wouldn’t be made. I guess I’m trying to sort of figure out why.

Topher Forhecz
Horror fans will show up to the box office. But maybe from a studio perspective, it’s better to just turn it into a limited series on TV because you don’t know if the kids like young children will show up in a way that they already have Disney+ at home so they can just watch Hocus Pocus 2 there.

Stephen Bush
I think there are two things. I think one, there is a more broad infantilisation of children and teens. And there are, you know, there are a whole bunch of sort of further restrictions on what young people can do. And I suspect that slightly bleeds down into a kind of expectation, although this is the thing that things like Hocus Pocus and Beetlejuice are and The Witches are all doing is they are pushing at the limit of, is this too scary for kids?

And we’re clearly in a cultural moment where the commercial returns of cosy horror are not guaranteed, but the backlash of, oh, you’ve made something too scary for kids, feels larger and something that you’ve got to be more worried about. And I think those two things are linked. But I do not you know, I . . . one of my many terrible habits is a habit of stalking strangers’ letterbox choices. And I am fascinated by the phenomena of people who are clearly going to films with their partner where you get the one person who is basically one-star, I hate horror, and then the other person making like one-star, I hate romcoms.

It’s like, guys, you know, you don’t have to go together. But I think there is this time for this kind of unmet desire for that kind of child, you know, child-friendly, therefore kind of by definition a more upbeat, slightly more of a moral centre form of horror, where you know, than actually, broadly speaking, you know, goodwill prevail and only really terrible characters will actually meet some kind of violent end. Of a kind which just is currently being squeezed out both commercially and culturally.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Topher Forhecz
I feel like the main takeaway that always comes across when we all gather on this show is just studios need to be braver.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah, yeah. All right. Stephen, Topher, thank you so much. We will be back in just a moment for More or Less.

[‘SWAMP NOTES’ PODCAST AD PLAYING]

Lilah Raptopoulos
Welcome back for More or Less, where each guest says one thing they want to see more of or less of in culture. This week we are hijacking More or Less so each person can go into detail, making the case for their favourite Halloween movie. I put a call out for listeners on my Instagram about this so I’ll shout out some of those too later. But first, Stephen, what’s yours?

Stephen Bush
This is a controversial pick because I’m going to pick what’s actually has its name on the title. It’s not really a Tim Burton film, The Nightmare Before Christmas. Now, some people would go, wait a second, it’s a Christmas film. But it’s a film about how the inhabitants of Halloweentown try and put on their own version of Christmas with macabre consequences. But I think it’s really it’s a film that you can watch from any time from the start of October until Christmas Eve. It’s a Halloween and it’s a Christmas film. But I think it’s a brilliant example, I think, of the type of cosy horror we were talking about. You know, Mr Oogie, he’s got these horrible sort of claymation-y bugs. The main character is, you know, this skeleton who is kind of scary, but, you know, also kind of reassuring. I think it’s a delightful Halloween movie. It’s one of my favourite Halloween traditions is to watch it. And yeah, I love it very much.

Lilah Raptopoulos
It’s a great one. Great movie, I agree. Topher, what about you?

Topher Forhecz
So I am going to fudge this and say this is my favourite Halloween movie this year. This year in my house we have been trying to watch cult classics and sort of B horror movies, whereas I think Beetlejuice is a perfect object. We have been celebrating the imperfect objects that have been sort of relegated to the dustbin of horror history. And there is this one imprint that I want to shout out that restores and publishes these sort of schlocky horror movies called Vinegar Syndrome. They’ve been a great resource. And the movie that played like gangbusters to a crowd this year is a movie called Blades, which the pitch . . . 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Plural.

Topher Forhecz
Blades. Yes, correct. The pitch that I read that made me buy the movie was it’s like Jaws, but instead of a shark, it’s a lawnmower, and instead of the ocean, it’s a golf course. And it’s just pure, terrible, wonderful, nonsensical nonsense. But it’s . . . it really . . . it brought the house down this year. Blades.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Great one. Blades. OK. Mine is one that I watched as a child and then my partner brought back into my life as an adult, and it still held up. It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, 1966. It’s only 25 minutes. It’s just a real classic. And my favourite part is this subplot where Linus believes in the Great Pumpkin, which is basically like this pumpkin that comes down on Halloween and gives everybody presents. And he decides to wait for him in a pumpkin patch. But he has to choose the most sincere pumpkin patch.

So I don’t know. Every time I watch it, I think about what it means to be a sincere pumpkin patch and the, like, kind of delusion of belief and belief in things that you just want to be true and how that’s really just the joy of being a kid and wanting witches to be real and wanting broomsticks to fly and, you know, believing in ghosts. So It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. Yeah.

A few listener ones. I will put a link to them in the show notes, but we have quite a few screamheads who say that Scream is 35 per cent Dawson’s Creek, 65 per cent horror. A listener named Dean rewatched House recently, the 1977 Japanese psychedelic comedy horror.

Topher Forhecz
Hell, yeah. That movie rocks. We watched that this year. That is a movie that has an auteur vision like that is just unto itself. There’s nothing like it. It’s great.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah, he says it still holds up as bonkers and amazing. Tons of love for Hocus Pocus, as I said. One listener described Rosemary’s Baby as, domestic surveillance and paranoia is my favourite genre and also it’s a movie about a haircut. And finally, a recommendation for giallo films, the Italian murder slashers from the 60s and 70s, which actually Beetlejuice Beetlejuice references with the great Monica Bellucci.

OK. We’ll put all of these recommendations in the show notes. Topher and Stephen, this was so much fun. Thank you both for coming on the show.

Topher Forhecz
Thanks.

Stephen Bush
Thank you.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Lilah Raptopoulos
That’s the show. Thank you for listening to Life and Art from FT Weekend. I have dropped all of the movies we mentioned today into the show notes and also linked to Stephen’s newsletter there. If you’re into UK politics, it is the cream of the crop. Also in the show notes are ways to stay in touch with me on email and on social, where I’m mostly on Instagram @LilahRap chatting with all of you about culture.

I’m Lilah Raptopoulos and here’s my wonderful team. Katya Kumkova is our senior producer. Lulu Smyth is our producer. Our sound engineers are Joe Salcedo, Breen Turner and Sam Giovinco, with original music by Metaphor Music. Topher Forhecz is our executive producer and our global head of audio is Cheryl Brumley. Have a lovely weekend and we’ll find each other again on Monday.