National Film Vault

FILM NOTES

Warner Bros. released Beetlejuice in March 1988, with Tim Burton directing from a script by Michael McDowell and Larry Wilson. The film arrived at a moment when studio fantasy was leaning toward the safe and familiar; Burton's vision — grotesque, comedic, and genuinely strange — carved out its own space. It became a sleeper hit and helped establish Burton as a filmmaker of distinct commercial and artistic consequence, influencing the aesthetic of supernatural comedy for years afterward.

This cell carries the confirmed title Beetlejuice and places Betelgeuse — the character known alternately as Betelgeuse and Beetlejuice — in his signature black-and-white striped suit, caught mid-tumble against blue-toned lighting. The two near-identical consecutive frames suggest a moment of supernatural chaos, the kind of kinetic, disorienting energy central to the character's screen presence.