“Beetlejuice” (1988)
After “Pee-wee’s Big Adventure,” Burton had already been hired by Warner Bros. to develop “Batman,” but the studio was reluctant to greenlight the picture until the young director had further proven himself. Fortunately, a script for a dark supernatural comedy called “Beetlejuice” came along from writer Michael McDowell, who’d penned “The Jar,” an episode of “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” that Burton directed in 1986. After a rewrite by Larry Wilson and Warren Skaaren to lighten the tone a little, the film turned out to be a monster hit, and saw the go-ahead given for “Batman.” And it’s no surprise. A canny subversion of haunted house cliches, which sees recently deceased couple Barbara and Adam Maitland (Geena Davis and Alec Baldwin) trying to evict a garish family from their marital home, aided by their goth-y daughter Lydia (Winona Ryder) and the sinister ‘bio-exorcist’ of the title (Michael Keaton), the film was fiercely original and visually extraordinary, truly marking Burton as a talent to watch. So much of what would become his hallmarks are pioneered, from the intricate production design (by Bo Welch) to the like-nothing-else stop-motion special effects, but it’s also funnier and looser than much of the director’s work, the spirit of Pee-wee still running high. One forgets, given the merchandising that followed, that the title character (a comic tour-de-force from Keaton) is featured relatively little, but it’s a mark of how good the rest of the cast, from the game duo of Baldwin and Davis to future Burton favorites like Jeffrey Jones, Glenn Shadix, Catherine O’Hara and Ryder, that you’re never biding time waiting for his next reappearance. Talk of a sequel, to be penned by “Dark Shadows” writer Seth Grahame-Smith, has resurfaced in recent months, but one hopes that all involved only go ahead if they can match the original.
“Edward Scissorhands” (1990)
After “Beetlejuice” and “Batman” proved huge hits back to back, Burton was allowed to make something closer to his heart, a return to the personal, melancholy feel of early shorts “Vincent” and “Frankenweenie.” Avon Lady Peg (Dianne Weist) comes to a mysterious, Gothic old home that overlooks her suburban home, and discovers the titular Edward (Johnny Depp, in his first work with Burton), who was created Frankenstein-style by an elderly inventor (Vincent Price, in his final role) who died before he could complete his creations, leaving him only with fearsome scissors for hands. Peg adopts Edward into her home, where he befriends the rest of the family (including Alan Arkin as dad Bill), and soon falls for her daughter Kim (Winona Ryder), but the townspeople soon prove to be less welcoming than they first seemed, thanks in part to the machinations of Kim’s boyfriend (Anthony Michael Hall). Falling somewhere between a fairy tale and a classic Universal monster movie, it was easily the purest Burton experience yet seen on screen, but there’s a humanism Burton has rarely matched since. Depp’s heartbreaking, near-silent performance is, of course, at the heart of it, but Burton was for the most part sympathetic towards the townspeople too: the Boggs are about as perfect an adoptive family as you could ever ask for, and, while they’re eventually turned against him, everyone else is initally warm and non-judgemental towards their freakish new arrival. Accompanied by perhaps Danny Elfman‘s finest ever score (well, that or ‘Pee-wee‘…), it’s probably the quintessential Burton picture.
