25 reasons why we still love Beetlejuice
By G.G. Andrew
Screenshot of official Beetlejuice trailer via warnerbros.com.
9. The Music
Like many Tim Burton films, the music adds much to Beetlejuice. The theme song is a great mix of upbeat mayhem, spookiness, and unrestrained fun—perfect for a film with ghosts and frights but also many, many jokes. Music and sound underscores a lot of the humor of scenes, like in the exchange where Adam first reads the title of their ghost handbook.
“Handbook of the Recently Diseased,” he says, and scary music plays briefly.
“Deceased,” Barbara corrects.
“Deceased?” The scary music plays again.
Like the rest of the movie, the use of calypso music in certain scenes—the Day-O scene at the dinner table, for instance—is a random but hilarious addition, adding to the film’s overall fun weirdness.
The music was created by Danny Elfman, who has worked with Tim Burton on all but a handful of his movies since 1985, including Batman, Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, and The Nightmare Before Christmas. On IMDB, he’s quoted as saying of his career, “I get drawn to things that don’t make any sense, and I learned early on not to resist that.” Though it’s hard to say which projects he meant, this could pretty much describe Beetlejuice for Elfman, as well as the rest of the cast. We’re all lucky he didn’t resist.