Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice from 1988 holds the distinction of being the first movie I remember seeing in theaters. Kind of a strange choice in retrospect, but the experience was made all the more memorable by that fact that I choked on a piece of popcorn around the time that disembodied shrimp cocktail hands were grabbing faces on the screen. A truly bizarre film that inspired a children’s cartoon, action figure line and more, the “ghost with the most” managed to weasel his way into my childhood again and again. I can see the crusty face with black and white stripes approaching now, iiiiiit’s showtime!

My big take away from the film upon my first watching was the song "Day-O (The Banana Boat Song)" by Harry Belafonte. Sure, I loved watching Beetlejuice’s head spin around like a top and the witch doctor shrinking his head at the end, (so pretty much all the head related gags), but the bright, calypso rhythm was what followed me out of the theater. I remember blurting out “Daaaay-O, me say day-ay-ay-oh” at random moments of boredom and dancing around involuntarily like I was possessed. I could also be found telling nearby females to "Shake, shake, shake, Senora" from time to time. As far as I was concerned, it was Beetlejuice: The Musical.

Back to the film, the other image that stuck with me was the case worker, Juno who puffed cigarette smoke out of a slit in her neck. There’s your anti-smoking PSA right there, kids. It really says something about the comical nature of Tim Burton’s off-kilter character designs, when the most frightening thing in the film is the least monstrous. I was fine with conjured corpses in wedding attire disintegrating before my eyes, but an old lady with a makeshift tracheotomy? No thanks! Give me dangling roadkill creatures any day, but leave the realistic body horror out of it.

About a year after the movie came out, I was up in small town Utah visiting my grandparents and looking for some entertainment that didn’t involve leather bound Time-Life books about the old west and found a goldmine. Not being an athletic kid, I had never stopped into the tiny second hand sporting goods store on Main Street, but with nothing but time to kill I wandered in to find a whole box of brand new Beetlejuice action figures by Kenner! After running back to my grandparent’s and pleading with my Dad for $10, I became the proud owner of some of some of the weirdest action figures ever conceived.

I now had my first (but not my last) Alec Baldwin action figure wearing an ill-fitting red baseball cap on his head, which incidentally could slide down his arm. I guess poking out your eyeballs was too grotesque for Kenner, but decapitations were A-OK. I also scored 2 versions of Beetlejuice as well. One featuring his classic look with creepy carousel head and my then personal favorite, the “Shish Kebab” version where you could stab swords through holes in his chest. I should mention that most of the figures in the line also had removable outer head shell that revealed a shriveled, shrunken head beneath, but this never really excited me.

Also around this time the Beetlejuice cartoon was in full swing. The animated series originally aired on ABC Saturday mornings alongside Gummi Bears and The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (what a combo), but I didn’t really pay attention to the show until it hit Fox Kids on weekday afternoons. In this version Beetlejuice and Lydia were best buddies getting into wacky adventures with other undead weird-o’s like Jaques, the French skeleton and Ginger the tap dancing spider.

Of course the big moment was when Lydia called his name 3 times and summoned her pale pal and jumped into the “Neitherworld”, but I always preferred when “BJ” would come into the real world and help Lydia fight against her snobby classmate, Claire. Beetlejuice was just so good at humiliating people on behalf of his friends. I did get a few of the Burger King toys from their Kid’s Club meals which were inspired by the show, though they were basically just rubber statues. Even though the animated series ended in 1991, everybody’s favorite bio-exorcist still had one more trick up his sleeve.

Beetlejuice’s Rockin’ Graveyard Revue was a live musical stage show presented at the Universal Studios theme parks that had an impressive 10 year run from 1992-2002.  I was lucky enough to get in on the original version of the show during its first year (which I covered in this article) and the production values at the time really blew me away. Beetlejuice was basically the master of ceremonies for a wild mishmash of pop standards and classic movie monsters in a haze of fog machine smoke and confetti.

You got Frankenstein’s Monster on guitar, his Bride on vocals, Phantom of the Opera on keyboards, Dracula vamping it up on the mic and the guy who really dazzled me at the time, the Wolfman. He looked like Teen Wolf crashed the set of the Breakin’ movies with his yellow tank top and bandana tied around his ripped jeans. Each character got their moment in the spotlight, but then Beetlejuice came out dancing to Day-O with puppet chorus line dancers attached to his hips for the grand finale and I was in heaven.

Since then we’ve heard rumors of the sequel film, Beetlejuice Goes Hawaiian and most recently Tim Burton himself saying Beetlejuice 2 is on the way with Michael Keaton reprising his iconic role. Until we see an actual release date and teaser trailer, I’m not holding my breath, but we can still have fun imagining what it would be like.

Speaking of which, the latest episode of my podcast, SequelQuest features a lively discussion about our concept for a sequel to Beetlejuice, just in time for Halloween. You can listen now at this link or check it and our past episodes out in the Podcast section of RetroDaze.

So tell me about your Beetlejuice memories and experiences? Was he a fright or a delight?

Hoju Koolander is a freelance writer, full-time dreamer and co-host of the SequelQuest podcast.

Visit www.sequelquestpod.com to get information on upcoming episodes, fan art inspired by the show and exclusive content.

Contact Hoju on Twitter @hojukoolander or share your ideas for sequels @SQPOD