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When I ranked all of Tim Burton’s movies eight years ago, and for the record he has only made two since, I placed Beetlejuice fourth. This was ahead of both of his Batman films and Ed Wood.

Having rewatched it, I don’t know what I was thinking. There is plenty here to still enjoy but even though this is a film I have seen numerous times, none of those occasions were within years of me doing that list and nostalgia had me awarding it a much higher place than it deserves. (If you want to go back and look at the ranking in question, let’s imagine it coming in at number ten just after Big Eyes.)

What Beetlejuice does have, and I am sure this is why I remembered it so fondly, is a lot of Burton’s style and sensibilities. This was only his second feature length movie of course, after Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, and it really announced him to the world as a distinctive and original filmmaker. Arguably outside of the animated films he has been involved in, this is his most Burtonesque movie and it does carry a dark charm. His macabre imagination and gallows humour are very well showcased here and while I recall the title player Michael Keaton’s casting as Batman immediately after this being a real surprise so too should Tim Burton have been as director. His is a very individual style that it is surprising to now see has fitted so well over so many existing characters and stories (and some it hasn’t).

One of my issues with Beetlejuice watching it today, is actually with Keaton’s portrayal of the central spook. It is no fault of Keaton or even of Burton, but he is not as much fun as I used to think he was. Some of the humour is quite broad to modern eyes and he is generally a lot nastier looking at it now. He is labelled as a pervert in the script and to be fair these behaviours are never legitimised, but he really is a predator and a creep. I’ll be interested to see how he plays in the new sequel (review to follow by the end of the week).

In fact I would say that the success of the film is in the delightful work of the other cast. Keaton was certainly going for it and it’s a performance few could have given but without the heart of Winona Ryder, and even more so Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis, this movie would not work at all. Davis was following The Fly with this and while she is great in that too, this is the first time she’d displayed her immense likability on the big screen. Balwin’s previous film was She’s Having a Baby where he was Kevin Bacon’s bachelor buddy so this was a real alternative turn for him too. Of course all three of them immediately became huge stars and the evidence for why is clearly here.

So while its cult status is understandable to a contemporary audience that the follow up film will have brought it to, Beetlejuice is a bit hit and miss. The story itself feels quite underdeveloped, almost a little disjointed, too. It is more a series of themes sketches. The bad guy is dispatched far too easily at the end as well. (If Frank Herbert, David Lynch and Denis Villeneuve have taught us anything it’s that it’s not that easy to ride a sandworm.)

Still, everyone involved went on to lots of better things, and I can see that is also true of Burton now as well. This week I will discover if his latest film is one of them. I’m not going to steer anyone away from revisiting or discovering Beetlejuice but don’t expect all of the juice to shake loose.