Love & The Dead

As a kid I was completely and totally obsessed with the movie Beetle Juice. I would pop it in the old Beta Max machine and watch it over and over again. Barring the adult humor I didn't understand (like the suicidal beauty queen or the suit being strung along the endless miles of bureaucratic paperwork that has overwhelmed the ever-increasing world of the deceased) I was enthralled with the characters and each of their quests for fulfillment. I remember being taken by the love between Alec Baldwin’s and Geena Davis’ characters Adam and Barbara, especially in one of the scenes nearest the end. Otho uses the handbook for the dead to resurrect the ghosts into the world of the living. They are thrust into their old wedding garments and within seconds of their crossing the void between the world of the dead and that of the living they have aged beyond recognition. I can still picture the tenderness with which Barbara helps reattach Adam’s unhinged jawbone and gingerly caresses hisface. Or the most poignant of shots, when they take in their last gazes of each other and tightly grasp each others withered, vine-like hands as they slowly crumble into dust. That to me, as a child, and even now, is the perfect symbol of love. I am a bit strange.