Beetlejuice (Poe-Pourri): Movies about Writing (Copy)

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.

The Spectre of Edgar Allan Poe: Movies about Writing

Let’s stay in the 70s for another installment. The Spectre of Edgar Allan Poe is a 1974 trip. A terrible, terrible trip that would make you swear off all substances forever, even aspirin.

Robert Walker Jr. plays a lackluster Poe who starts the film getting sympathy from Lenore (Mary Grover) about his job as a literary critic. They frolic to take his mind off his agony (Lenore is NOT wearing a corset or bra under her costume and jumped around too much for this movie to ever be taken seriously), however, Lenore collapses. Poe cries out with a bland and rather calm, “Help” and the opening credits are accompanied by a bad 70s rock ballad.

Lenore is declared dead and almost buried alive only to cry out in a last second. She pops out of the casket like a cheap Halloween scare with stark white hair (a.k.a. a ghastly wig even scarier than her performance). Somehow they got Tom Drake (Meet Me in St. Louis) to play Poe’s doctor friend and Cesar Romero (from lots of stuff - look him up) to play the doctor at Lenore’s mental hospital. I did like seeing Carol Ohmart from House on Haunted Hill as Romero’s wife and an adult Marcia Mae Jones from Shirley Temple movies as Sarah, a nurse with practically no lines.

The hospital even more anachronistic than Lenore’s free-range boobs. It’s “humane” facility full of activities to keep the mind busy and a loving, clean environment. Psh. I could go into a history of asylums and how such ideas did exist, but rarely and not in the ways portrayed in the movie. Maybe if I ever do a Ted Talk I’ll just ramble about this topic for fifteen minutes, but believe me when I say - nope. Not happening in Poe’s time and his part of the world. Also, who’s paying for this place? Where’s Lenore’s family?

Fear not those of you bored and wondering why this movie was even made? Here comes the terror. The mild, saw it coming in the first thirty minutes terror. The hospital is not all it seems. The doctor has locked away his brother-in-law in the basement and performs illegal medical experiments on the patients. Dun Dun DUUUUUUNNNN! This revelation is followed up by about seven minutes of Poe being tortured with snakes and knives while his friend wanders through the same shot several times calming saying, “Edgar?”

I won’t give the rest away. I will warn that there’s a torture chamber, madman who makes the same sounds as a dog having rabbit chasing dreams, and a twist . . . I think that’s what it was supposed to be anyway.

Despite Poe fitting in some drinking and long-winded musings, he doesn’t write much in this film other than to chronicle the tragedy of Lenore, a woman who serves as no other character than to be the object of his depression. Even the description he gives of Lenore is flat and more of a fantasy than a woman.

Beetlejuice (Poe-Pourri): Movies about Writing

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.