It’s Friday 13th, so posting about Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice and nightmares seems like a good shout. Little bit of a spoiler if you haven’t watched the film, though, as this story involves describing one of the scenes.
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice screenwriter Alfred Gough recently spoke about the way character Charles Deetz passed onto the afterlife in the film, revealing that it was Tim Burton‘s worst nightmare.
Charles’ death at the beginning of the movie is the major event that brings the characters together and returns them all to that old familiar house in Winter River.
When Delia explains to Lydia what happened, we’re treated to a stop-motion playthrough of the events that led to Charles’ death. And we get to see what actually killed him (spoiler: it was a shark).
During an interview with EW, Gough explained where the scene came from:
The way Charles dies in that animated piece is Tim’s nightmare of dying. He literally pitched that: ‘My nightmare is, I’m in a plane crash, I survive the plane crash, I almost drown, and then a shark eats me.’ We were like, ‘Well, that’s genius. So that’s going to be how he dies.’
Well, it was kinda perfect, and got around some obvious problems with the character later on by having him walk around headless. I’d say it was a very good call, and an entertaining choice for the character.
However, I’m sitting here thinking: ‘C’mon, Tim. That’s the best you can do? I’d have imagined you coming up with a far worse nightmare death than that!’
Maybe it’s just me feeling underwhelmed by Tim’s worst nightmare.
What do you think – was Charles Deetz’s way of dying a good choice, or would you have done it differently? Let us know what you think in the comments.
