Corrected entry: When the Maitlands' car crashes, there are no side or back windows (so that the car would sink faster).
Corrected entry: When Lydia takes pictures of the ghosts, she's using a Polaroid camera. When she shows Delia the photos (and the photos that are seen later on) they aren't Polaroids at all, they are big pictures. (00:39:25 - 00:53:20)
Correction: It is entirely possible to create larger copies of Polaroids. It is apparent that Lydia is knowledgable about photography (and dark room development), and therefore probably reproduced a larger copy.
Evidence of this process would be welcomed. An internet search only produces results involving scanning the original photo, a process not possible (at home) at the time of the film.
Correction: When the Deetzes are having their first meal, Lydia is promised a darkroom in the basement. Time passes and the house is getting upgrades. So Lydia got her darkroom and had time to enlarge photos for her family to see.
Corrected entry: All the dead are still in the condition they were when they died, e.g. The scuba diver and the shark, the burned man, the 'run-over' man, etc. The Maitlands drown and, when first seen, are dripping wet, yet they are dry in the next scene and remain dry throughout the movie.
Correction: Since the burned guy isn't smoking, the scuba diver is dry, and no one with a gaping wound is still bleeding, it's reasonable that the Maitlands' clothes would have dried. Their actual bodies are still in the condition in they were in when they died.
Don't bodies "inflate" when they drown? So wouldn't they look puffed up?
But that's not the condition they're in when they died. That's just what their physical bodies might look like later.
Corrected entry: In the dinner party scene, Lydia appears to be sitting at the table with the others, because she makes the comment about having seen the ghosts, but when the ghosts take over and make everyone dance to "Day-Oh", she is nowhere to be seen.
Correction: The reason why Lydia isn't seen is because she walks away from the table just before everyone else breaks into the Day-Oh number, but it is somewhat hard to notice her walk away.
Correction: She actually moves into the corner of the room. In certain shots of the side Otho is sitting, you can see her standing in the corner smiling.
Corrected entry: When Otho and Delia walk through the bathroom of the house with the spray paint cans, you can see the top of the bathroom all cut off to reveal the top of the studio behind it.
Corrected entry: Why does it take Barbara so long to spit out "Beetlejuice" near the end where Lydia is about to get married? She could have said it 3 times faster and had it over with before he could do anything to stop her.
Correction: This is purely to cause tension. It's not exactly the first film it's been used in, how many films have you seen where everything is delayed so that the hero gets in just in time?
Corrected entry: When Adam draws the chalk door, a green light is emitted when the door opens. Lydia notices the green light coming from under the attic door, though this is impossible since the light cannot travel around the corner.
Correction: If the entire room was filled with the green light then it would be seen inside the door.
Corrected entry: Adam adds a funeral scene to the model of the town. There are two wreaths with his and Barbara's names. However, they can't leave the house. No way did he go to a store and buy those.
Correction: He likely already had the wreaths, since he'd already made the graveyard and just added their names separately. He could have had little ribbons with their names for something else and repurposed them.
Corrected entry: This is in the scene right after Adam and Barbara see Juno and turn into "monsters" and they go back to the attic to scare the family and then they run into Lydia. After Lydia is scared, Barbara turns to normal again and is talking to Lydia. While this is happening, Adam is trying to turn back to normal. He walks in front of Lydia and Barbara, and turns around and he has a very large nose. As he walks by them right before he has the large nose, If you look closely at the shadows near where Lydia and Barbara stand, you can see the shadow of Adam putting on the fake rubber nose.
Correction: You see Adam's shadow as he tries in vain to get his nose back to normal. Not Alec Baldwin's shadow putting on the prosthetic. That would have been done before they even began shooting the scene.
Corrected entry: When Barbara and Adam go into the model to first meet Beetlejuice, his grave is dug up right under the tree. This is a stretch, but when they exit the model and they show Adam fixing the tree that Beetlejuice knocked down, the grave below the tree is undisturbed.
Correction: Just because we only see Adam stand the tree up doesn't mean he didn't have time to brush the cardboard bits off the table and push the "grass" back in place. When we see Adam and Barbara again, they are in the middle of a conversation, so he could have had time.
Corrected entry: When Barbara is running down the stairs in the house, you hear her footsteps on the stairs. But if she is a ghost, how can you hear her footsteps?
Correction: It's only said you cannot see ghosts in the movie. It doesn't say anything about hearing them. Like when Barbara and Adam were going "OOOOOO" to try to scare the mom, she heard them - she just thought it was her television so she turned it off.
Corrected entry: In the beginning of the film when your first see Lydia, she has a really short fringe. As the film goes on, especially at the end when shes in the red wedding dress, you see that her fringe has grown several inches.
Correction: That's because several months passed while the Maitlands were in the waiting room. Notice how the house, being renovated when they leave, is now completely finished.
Corrected entry: As ghosts, Adam and Barbara cannot be seen by the people they're trying to scare out of the house. Yet, at Juno's office, they propose making scary faces, and she approves. How would this help?
Correction: It didn't help earlier because they did not know and did not beleive that there were ghosts in the house, but now that they DO beleive that the ghosts are there, they actually can see them. Also, Otho got a hold of the handbook, which is enough proof of the existence of the ghosts to enable them to see the ghosts.
Corrected entry: The opening credits are supposed to be the camera panning over Adam's model of the town, but if you look carefully you can tell that the majority of the footage is of an actual town and the only real shot of the model is shortly before we see the replica of Adam and Barbara's house. After production designer Bo Welch's name appears on screen, you can see a dissolve edit and the trees suddenly look artificial and the street is suddenly missing the yellow lane divider, with the integrity of the asphalt being noticeably different.
Correction: That is not what it's supposed to be. It was suppose to be exactly what it is, a transition from a shot of the real town to the model so that its established the model of the town is in fact a real town and also that there is a model of the town. It's a cinematic way of telling a story without a wordy exposition.
Corrected entry: There is never any point in the movie in which Adam or Barbara learn the correct pronunciation of "Betelgeuse". They simply begin to say it correctly, as if it were obvious, after first pronouncing it completely wrong. The only person to learn the correct way to say it was Lydia, and she never shares this information before Adam and Barbara learn how to say it.
Correction: There was a deleted scene due to socially unacceptable jokes in the script (by today's standards or the film owners). From memory, Beetlejuice plays charades with Adam and Barbara while flirting (jokes) with Barbara, until she guesses his name correctly. It's a very frustrating thing to leave out of the final cut since the storyline built up to that scene quite a bit. It was a funny scene too.
Correction: Betelgeuse is the name of a red giant star near the constellation of Orion and it is pronounced Beetle Juice. Many, many people know that name. The name was printed on his little signs in the model of the town. Their death "social services" worker stops them from fully pronouncing his name. Betelgeuse tells Lydia that he cannot tell her his name, but she has to guess it through charades.
But they both saw his name written down and couldn't pronounce it properly. After they return from seeing Juno, Barbara says it perfectly all of sudden.
Corrected entry: Jane badly wants to sell the Maitland home, so it's not practical that she left all of their furniture, decorations, and other possessions after they died. Any realtor who wanted to make a quick sale would have the place cleaned out, instead of leaving so much stuff for the new owners to deal with.
Correction: Actually, it's not all that uncommon for realtors to sell fully furnished and "staged" homes. And depending on the location and market, they sometimes sell quicker than unfurnished homes, since it means that it's less for the new buyers to purchase. This especially makes sense, since Jane seems to like the idea of selling the house to a larger family who might desire such things. As for their possessions? There was probably no family who wanted them, and Jane probably just hadn't gotten around to getting rid of them yet, since the Deetz family seems to move in rather quickly after the Maitlands died. I feel like at best this is a "stupidity" or "character mistake", but I'd argue it's neither.
Correction: Jane tells Lydia that she "personally decorated that house," so it's not impossible that she was maybe looking to be hired as the new decorator.
I always thought Jane was lying when she said that she decorated the house. The Maitlands were quite offended when the Deetzes began to change everything, as if they decorated the place themselves, and chose/inherited the furniture. I think Jane was nosey and wanted to keep getting attention for herself. But this is just how I interpret it.
Corrected entry: When Adam and Barbara first arrive in the waiting room with all the dead people, one of them looks like Edward Scissorhands. Seems like Tim Burton was giving a little hint on his future project.
Correction: I just loaded up the scene and cannot find this person no matter where I look. The closest I could find is that someone is sitting in a dark suit and another person with kind of a pale face, but they don't really resemble Edward. Where exactly should we be looking?
After the secretary talked to Adam and Barbara and she named the next number and next scene shown the victims and the one I think looks like Edward Scissorhands is the last on the left.
The one in the sleeping bag with a rattlesnake does have the spiky black hair and black around the eyes. I get what you mean but I think it's just a coincidence. Has to be confirmed.
I said it looks like Edward Scissorhands. If Tim Burton was giving a little hint, he certainly wouldn't have the person have scissors for hands, would he? It would have been giving too much info right there for his next project.
I honestly think it's just a coincidence, too. Tim Burton has a very specific style, and a lot of his characters look similar with wild hair, dark circles around the eyes, etc.
Corrected entry: When Lydia is writing her "suicide note" she crumples up the first one, the papers stick together and the paragraph for the second is visibly already written. (01:05:10)
Correction: On the next page, it's the impression of the sentence from the first page-she was pressing down really hard.
Corrected entry: When Alec is forced to show how he would scare the Deitzes, he proceeds to make a "face". Look very carefully - after he pops out his eyes, and then close his hands together and the hands go off screen, it is immediately replaced by two hands with eye on each finger. The hands are *NOT* Alec's, but an offscreen cast member or prop guy. (01:06:15)
Corrected entry: In the scene where Otho and Mr. Deitz are lifting the model to take it out of the attic, they are both on one side and they lift it up. How is this possible if nobody is on the other side to lift up the other end?
Correction: When Ortho and Mr. Deitz walk into the attic to carry out the model, two other men walk in behind them and they both go to the other side of the model to assist in lifting it.
Correction: Or perhaps they had all the windows down on that lovely warm day?
Grumpy Scot
If their windows were open, wouldn't they have had an easier time to get out of the car and live?
Not if they were injured in the crash, or even stunned.
Brian Katcher
The front windows were, in fact, open and, generally speaking, yes, that would've helped them get out faster. But there are other factors, like if they couldn't get the seatbelts undone or possibly received a concussion when they hit the water.