National Film Vault

FILM NOTES

Beetlejuice was released by Warner Bros. in March 1988 and directed by Tim Burton. The film arrived at a moment when Burton was establishing his signature aesthetic of gothic whimsy within mainstream Hollywood, and its commercial and cultural success helped define a particular strain of American fantasy filmmaking that persisted well into the following decade.

This cell, titled Beetlejuice, captures three sequential frames from a scene rendered in deep blue lighting, showing the wild-haired, striped-costumed figure in an inverted orientation against that saturated background. The progression across the frames is subtle but readable, preserving the continuity of a single held moment from one of the film's more visually distinctive passages.