Films: Beetlejuice (1987)
Alias: Several, most notably Betelgeuse
Type: Mystical
Location: Eldritch location/Civilized area
Height/Weight: That of average humans (most of the time).
Affiliation: Good (Everyone else), Evil (Betelgeuse)
Summary: Think there's nothing after you kick the bucket? Well, fear not, because all you got to do is get in line to see your ultimate fate, alongside all the others who died tragically (and weirdly). Just hope no one exorcises you, and pray to God that you don't enlist the world's only Bio-exorcist in the underworld...
History: Bad news is that newlyweds Barbara and Adam Maitland are dead. Good news is that they can still live at home for another 125 years. Trouble is that a stuck-up new family is coming in to wreck it. Now they have to haunt them out...with little results. Desperate, they turn to a former assistant of the undead bureaucracy: the unhinged mad spirit Betelgeuse. Problem is, he has his own ways of haunting...
Notable Kills: Nothing special.
Final Fate: Betelgeuse attempts to marry the mortal teen Lydia Deetz in order to reign supreme in the mortal world, but Barbara turns the tables on him by riding a demon sandworm and having it eat him. As the Maitlands enjoy their afterlife, the mad bio-exorcist has to stay in the afterlife waiting room behind over nine trillion souls for his crimes.
Powers/Abilities: Shapeshifting, pure omnipotence in general.
Weakness: Exorcised folk end up in a Hellish limbo for all eternity. In Betelgeuse's case, saying his name three times fast sends him back if he's in the middle of business.
Scariness Factor: 3.5-Most of the afterlife services are fairly benign, if a little overworked, but Betelgeuse is hated by them all for a reason. Unreasonable and mindlessly self-indulgent, this guy brings a twisted sense of humor to his frankly self-serving services.
Trivia: -A sequel was planned, but with a title like "Beetlejuice Goes Hawaiian", we're thankful it didn't happen.
-This film was so popular that it spawned an animated 1989 cartoon, with an alternate continuity featuring a (slightly) more benign Betelgeuse being friends with Lydia as opposed to trying to court her. Thank God too, because otherwise this show wouldn't get the cult following it had.
