It Shouldn't Work, But It Does!
Movies like Beetlejuice and What We Do In The Shadows destroy my precious theory on how to make a successful horror-comedy, comedy-horror-comedy. Whaaa!
We’ve discussed John Landis’ An American Werewolf in London. American Werewolf is the perfect example of a horror movie that is also funny. I guess I should stipulate, intentionally funny. The film works because the horror stuff is played straight. The comedy stuff works because Landis knows that, in a horror movie, all anyone has to do to get a laugh is behave normally. They don't behave all, "horror movie serious." No one ever smiles, no one ever has a normal thought or casual comment. Everyone is painfully humorless, afraid and suspicious (see: NOPE).
They only thing worse is when characters try to be funny. When they go from acting like they're in a horror movie to acting like they're in a comedy and back to... ARGH! STOP! Jesus! In the face of the heightened reality of a horror movie, all you have to do to get a hearty, genuine laugh is behave the way people normally behave. Done. That's it!
Nowhere is this better exemplified than in the brilliant and hilarious scene in An American Werewolf In London where the doomed David (David Naughton) is visited in the hospital by the zombified remains of his best friend Jack (Griffin Dunne). Jack was killed in the same attack that made David a werewolf. He was, in fact, ripped to shreds, but until the werewolf's curse is broken, Jack is doomed to walk the Earth as the undead. So he comes back comes, a ghastly assemblage of wounds. But nothing hurts, cause he's dead, so he just strolls about casually. After David’s shock subsides, the two friends lapse into a normal conversation about who did and did not attend Jack’s funeral. Jack complains that his ex-girlfriend went home and slept with a friend of theirs. You know… guy talk. And that’s the genius, people. David and Jack are behaving just like two twenty-year old guys. They don’t have to try to be funny. Under the circumstances, just acting normal is enough.
But what about movies where they don’t observe those rules? What about a movie like, say, Beetlejuice? Because on paper, in my opinion, Beetlejuice shouldn’t work. But it does! In Beetlejuice, everything’s wacky. Reality is wacky, the afterlife is wacky. The dead people are wacky, the living people are wacky. No one is following my precious, precious rules! But man, it works.
Beetlejuice began as a script by a writer named Michael McDowell. The first draft told the story of a young married couple’s adventures in the afterlife after they are killed in a car accident. Soon after, another family moves into their beloved home and ghostly hijinks ensue. It was a haunted house story told from the ghost’s point of view. Still funny, but much darker and more somber than the carnival ride that eventually hit the screen. The script found its way to the (David) Geffen Company and eventually into the hands of a young director named Tim Burton.
At the time, Burton had only one feature film to his credit. But that film called Pee Wee’s Big Adventure. It’s difficult to recall just how revolutionary Pee Wee’s Big Adventure was upon its release. The film is essentially a live-action, Tex Avery cartoon, energized by Paul Reubens’ genius performance and Burton’s no-holds-barred imagination. It was one of those magic occurrences where the right people got together with the right idea at just the right time. Nothing made sense and it all came together brilliantly. At best, things like that come along once a career. Tim Burton made it happen twice in a row.
1985's Pee Wee's Big Adventure, written by Paul Reubens, Michael Varhol, and Phil Hartman. Yep, that Phil Hartman. Every. Frame. Is. Perfection.
Like Pee Wee’s Big Adventure, Beetlejuice doesn’t follow any hard, fast rules. Like Pee Wee’s, it starts with an innovative script, is centered around a bravura performance by its title character and has, behind that character, a rock solid, five-star, supporting cast. Both films are driven by the inexhaustible imagination of Tim Burton. As I’ve said, they follow no particular set of rules, but they both work great.
After the success of Beetlejuice, Burton got sidetracked into mega-whopper blockbusters with Batman and Batman Returns, a vaguely autobiographical fairy tale called Edward Scissorhands, and, in my opinion, his one, undisputed masterpiece, Ed Wood. He wouldn’t give straight up comedy another shot until 1996’s Mars Attacks!
Mars Attacks! followed the Beetlejuice playbook to be sure. There is no hard and fast set of rules. The Martians are wacky, the people are wacky. Mars is wacky. Earth is wacky. There’s a big star, Jack Nicholson, at the center of the piece and…
It doesn’t work. Do I have a theory? Oh yeah, I’ve got a theory…
Next. Also, Young Frankenstein puts on the Ritz!