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 mainstream Hollywood rarely trusted directors with such aggressively strange material, and its commercial success helped establish Burton as a major studio voice. Combining practical effects, Danny Elfman's score, and a genuinely dark comic sensibility, it remains a defining work of late-1980s American fantasy filmmaking.

This cell, titled Beetlejuice, Barbara and Adam, captures Michael Keaton's Betelgeuse alongside Geena Davis as Barbara Maitland and Alec Baldwin as Adam Maitland in a dimly lit interior setting. The adjacent duplicate frame reflects the nature of 35mm strip preservation, offering collectors two nearly identical windows into the same charged moment between these three central figures.