One of my favorite things from the 1980s was the fact that they took PG-13 and R rated movies and went HMMM how do we get money from children with these? Oh I know! Let's turn fucking RoboCop into a cartoon! I know Beetlejuice was PG and I watched it as a kid but it was the 1980s. PG movies shouldn't have been turned into cartoons either! Beetlejuice admittedly works pretty well as a cartoon because the movie was already was a fucked up live action cartoon anyway. It's just another reason why the 1980s were probably the greatest decade we ever got to enjoy. I wish I got to enjoy more of it first hand.. What a time to be alive.
Beetlejuice was a Tim Burton movie made in 1988. It made more money than anyone thought possible. It was about a lunatic ghost named Beetlejuice played perfectly by Michael Keaton. Some people who died at this house want him to get the people living the hell out of there. It was creative and wild and had tons of cursing. It was perfect for Saturday Morning! I miss when Tim Burton gave a shit about making a good movie. Those were the days weren't they people? In 1989 Tim Burton, Nelvana (remember them from like 5 or so posts ago? Well they did this show too!) and the Geffen Film Company all worked together to make this cartoon.
The cartoon was well different from the movie despite I and many other kids having seen the movie at an age way too young to see a movie like that because it was the pre-internet era and we didn't have 1,000 and 12 people telling us the right way to live our lives. Our parents just didn't want to listen to the recap of the TMNT episode they already had to watch with us because we had one television so they put this movie on to shut us up. Anyway Beetlejuice is a prankster in this series and Lydia is his best pal. The two places episodes usually took place in where Peaceful Pines where Lydia lived with her parents or Neitherworld (a renamed Afterlife) where all kinds of weirdo creatures lived. Like a french skeleton and a hairy monster! And a tap dancing Spider. It was fun damnit.
I've also got to talk about the cast for this one because it's a doozy. It has John Stockton who was Beastly from The Care Bear Family in it! It had a character from the 1979 teen super camp movie Meatballs in it! It had Sailor Jupiter in it! It had Allyson Court, you know Jubilee from the X-Men and Loonette the Clown for people in the Great White North! One of Tara Strong's first roles was this show! And Ron Rubin who voiced Artemis in the DiC Sailor Moon dub which I really want to do a Final Episode of but can't find the dub version. He was also on shows like C.O.P.S. and Stickin Around. Also according to Wikipedia he went to Chris Kraft's wedding was covered in Elephant dung and stranded in Botswana. Oh and all his stuff was stolen. And it took him a few years to get back to America. And when he got back to America he ended up being hospitalized for 18 months. Now that's a story I need every bit of information about to be told to my ears.
I loved the movie and this show as a child. It was a good thing too because thanks to Nelvana's involvement this show got rerun for so long. I remember it being on NTV in the early morning hours. It was worth getting up to see because it was a damn hoot and a half. I also recently found out that they created a Talking Beetlejuice Doll. I totally have to own that. I'm a very serious almost 36 year old man.
The Final Episode was called "Not so Peaceful Pines" and came to us on December 6th, 1991. I'm surprised it wasn't a Christmas episode and that I'd have to put it off for a few months because as I have mentioned before there are three shows that end on a Christmas episode. I would like for you all to try and guess which three! It'll be fun! It aired on Fox Kids and was the 94th episode. The first three seasons were on ABC and it was only like 27 or 28 episodes. The fourth season was like FUCK THAT and pulled 65 episodes out for us all to enjoy! The Final Episode starts up with Beetlejuice wanting to go to bed after a hard days work of being an asshole. He needs his beauty sleep. However he is woken up from his slumber by a rock band from the real world.
He goes outside and is threatened by the hairy monster with a cowboy hat that was called The Monster From Across the Street. He has a dog named Poopie. I like him, he reminds me of Gossamer from the Looney Tunes cartoons. Anyway Beetlejuice runs off because he was threatened with getting his ears washed. Beetlejuice enjoys waxy ears damnit. He goes to find Lydia in the real world which is also where the loud ass music is coming from. Beetlejuice at first wants to go join the party but after seeing the Mayor get thrown right into a trash can. Beetlejuice and Lydia go to help him.
The Mayor must not realize that he can get the police to shut the party down so he offers anyone who can stop the party money to do so, so Beetlejuice always wanting money so he can buy more ear wax or something takes the Mayor up on his offer and even gets him to sign a slime contract. I think it would have been weirdly amusing if Beetlejuice ended up taking the Mayor to court. No what happens is that Beetlejuice actually clears the Party out incredibly quickly and the Mayor says it wouldn't be fiscally conservative to give him any money for such a quick job. Beetlejuice is so pissed he makes a pun about being torn up and well turns into two Beetlejuices. His good half and his bad half.
Bad Beetlejuice wants to wreck the shit out of the town while Good Beetlejuice pretty much does nothing because he's a wimp. They try all kinds of stuff until they decide to go to the Nietherworld to find Dr. Zigmund Void. I'm pretty amazed they decided to make this guy an character that apparently appeared in several episodes. What a weird world. Anyway this guy looks like Sigmund Freud and he has a big crack in his head. Bad Beetlejuice and Good Beetlejuice get into a fight and Zigmund Void gives him shock treatment by dropping a fucking telephone pole on his head. It ends up giving him lightning powers because well it's a cartoon and he decides to go back to the mayor and fuck HIS shit up.
He shoves the mayor into a ballot box and then Lydia gets the bright idea of doing word association. They start changing into different things while Lydia says words in a funny accent. They get them by having Good Beetlejuice turn into a pin and Bad Beetlejuice turn into a stripe. He is now the whole Beetlejuice again! He is told by Lydia that he has to clean up the entire mess Bad Beetlejuice made. He then makes a joke about having a splitting head ache which causes his head to turn into Bad Beetlejuice and Good Beetlejuice.
FINAL VERDICT: A weird ending to a weird show. I had a lot of fun watching this Final Episode and laughed at so very many corny jokes. I think shows like this is where my love of corny jokes and puns come from. I had a great time rewatching this show and I'm glad I finally got to it.
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