2. Beetlejuice
One of the finest comedies of the '80s. Recently deceased couple Adam and Barbara Maitland need help to rid the new tenants of their beloved home, the ghastly Deetz family, yuppies to the core with the exception of goth daughter Lydia. Their largest problem is, having only just leapt the divide between life and death, they make pretty incompetent ghosts. Who ya gonna call? Wisecracking con artist, and ghoul with an agenda, Betelguese of course.
How Did The Original Script Differ?In the original draft, Beetlejuice was imagined as an outright horror. Beetlejuice was to be a winged reptilian demon who transformed into a "small Middle Eastern man" to interact with the Maitlands and the Deetzes and was hell-bent on killing them instead of frightening them. Lydia was a minor character who was the victim of an attempted rape by Beetlejuice, and her 6 year old sister Cathy was the one who interacted with him, resulting in her mauling while the demon was in the form of, ridiculously, a giant squirrel.
Did The Change Improve The Film?What do you think? Death by squirrel? Rape? Half the charm of the finished film was that Beetlejuice was a horrible, slippery bounder who you still ended up falling in love with, thanks in no small part to a mesmeric performance by Michael Keaton. The original draft sounds like a pumped up version of a ten-a-penny demon horror such as Jeepers Creepers, the likes of which the history of celluloid is already littered with. Thank the lord for a victory of ingenuity, and for Tim Burton.