The film stars Michael Keaton as the title character, along with Alec Baldwin, Geena Davis, Jeffrey Jones, Catherine O'Hara, and Winona Ryder.

[6] In Winter River, Connecticut, Adam and Barbara Maitland are spending their vacation decorating their large country home that local real estate agent Jane Butterfield constantly pesters them to sell.

After discovering a Handbook for the Recently Deceased and noticing they have no reflections in a mirror, the couple realizes that they drowned in the river and are ghosts.

The house is sold to New York real estate developer Charles Deetz and his second wife Delia, a talentless sculptor.

Under the guidance of interior designer Otho, Delia begins renovating the house with a new-wave aesthetic of postmodern art.

After navigating the afterlife's complex bureaucracy, the Maitlands return home only to realize three months have passed and the house has been completely redesigned.

Unexpectedly, their antics only amuse the group, inspiring Charles to pitch a supernatural theme park to investor Maxie Dean.

Betelgeuse transforms into a giant snake and terrorizes the Deetzes before Barbara banishes him back to the town model.

He summons Adam and Barbara by using their wedding clothes, but they begin aging and decaying rapidly as Otho has mistakenly performed an exorcism.

After the financial success of Pee-wee's Big Adventure (1985), Burton became a "bankable" director and began working on a script for Batman with Sam Hamm.

The original script is far less comedic and much darker; the Maitlands' car crash is depicted graphically, with Barbara's arm crushed and the couple screaming for help as they slowly drown.

[9] Instead of possessing the Deetzes and forcing them to dance during dinner, the Maitlands cause a vine-patterned carpet to come to life and attack them by tangling them to their chairs.

The character of Betelgeuse—envisioned in the first draft as a winged demon who takes on the form of a short man—is also intent on killing the Deetzes rather than scaring them and wants sex from Lydia instead of marriage.

[10]Skaaren's rewrite shifted the film's tone, eliminating the graphic nature of the Maitlands' deaths and further developing the concept created by McDowell and Wilson that the Afterlife is a complex bureaucracy.

[11] Skaaren's rewrite also added to McDowell and Wilson's depiction of the limbo that keeps Barbara and Adam trapped inside their home; in the original script, it takes the form of a massive void filled with giant clock gears that shred the fabric of time and space as they move.

Skaaren also introduced the leitmotif of music accompanying Barbara and Adam's ghostly hijinks, although his script specified R&B tunes instead of Harry Belafonte[11] and was to have concluded with Lydia dancing to "When a Man Loves a Woman".

Skaaren's first draft retained some of McDowell's Betelgeuse's more sinister characteristics but toned the character down to make him a troublesome pervert rather than blatantly murderous.

Betelgeuse's true form was that of the Middle Eastern man, and much of his dialogue was written in African-American Vernacular English.

It also featured deleted scenes such as the real estate agent, Jane, trying to convince the Deetzes to allow her to sell the house for them (having sold it to them in the first place—Charles and Delia decline) and a revelation of how Betelgeuse had died centuries earlier (he attempted to hang himself while drunk—having been rejected by a woman—only to mess it up and die slowly by choking to death rather than quickly by snapping his neck) and wound up working for Juno before striking out on his own as a "freelance bio-exorcist".

[13][14] Several actresses auditioned for the role of Lydia Deetz, including Sarah Jessica Parker, Brooke Shields, Lori Loughlin, Diane Lane, Justine Bateman, Molly Ringwald, Juliette Lewis, and Jennifer Connelly.

Considering the scale and scope of the effects, which included stop motion, replacement animation, prosthetic makeup, puppetry and blue screen, it was always Burton's intention to make the style similar to that of the B movies he grew up with as a child.

The test screenings were met with positive feedback and prompted Burton to film an epilogue featuring Betelgeuse foolishly angering a witch doctor.

[28] The Beetlejuice soundtrack, first released in 1988 on LP, CD, and cassette tape, features most of the film's score, written and arranged by Danny Elfman.

[29] The soundtrack features two original recordings performed by Harry Belafonte used in the film: "Day-O (The Banana Boat Song)" and "Jump in the Line (Shake, Senora)".

Two other vintage Belafonte recordings that appear in the film are absent from the soundtrack: "Man Smart, Woman Smarter" and "Sweetheart from Venezuela".

The website's critical consensus reads, "Brilliantly bizarre and overflowing with ideas, Beetlejuice offers some of Michael Keaton's most deliciously manic work—and creepy, funny fun for the whole family.

[36] Desson Howe of The Washington Post felt Beetlejuice had the "perfect" balance of bizarreness, comedy and horror.

[38] Roger Ebert gave the film two out of four stars, writing that he "would have been more interested if the screenplay had preserved their [Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis] sweet romanticism and cut back on the slapstick".