This will be a short one, because it’s based on a short one.
Remember the Beetlejuice cartoon? What? You never watched it? My nostalgia riddled mind will tell you it was amazing . . . so probably best not to trust me. All you really need to know is that Lydia and Beetlejuice are friends in the cartoon, there’s no Barbara and Adam, and it had a lot of little kid humor (so. many. burping. jokes.).
Beetlejuice is freaked out one night reading a book of poems Lydia left at his roadhouse in the Netherworld. I don’t know why the ghost lives in a roadhouse, but I digress. Poe shows up at his house with a rapping raven, a literal steamer trunk, and handfuls of cash which he throws around when he cries about Lenore. I didn’t know writer’s got residual check’s in the afterlife?
The greedy Ghost with the Most invites Poe to stay at the roadhouse as he continues his search through the Netherworld for Lenore. Seriously, where is Poe getting all of this moolah? He was never rich in life. Anyway, Lydia comes over to fangirl over the wailing author while Beetlejuice is driven mad in a montage of Poe tales.
Due to this episode airing when I about seven or eight, I thought Lenore had been a real person, not an allegory for the loss of Poe’s wife and other women he loved. I also thought the Masque of the Red Death was a little mask with a runny nose.
