Beetlejuice Page #8

DELIA:

Call it Graveyard Green

and she'll love it.

OTHO spray-paints the word VIRIDIAN on the wall -- right over a

wedding picture of ADAM and BARBARA.

Behind DELIA and OTHO, the room's closet door swings slowly open

with an ominous CREAK.

DELIA and OTHO turn that way, with a suggestion of dread.

BARBARA --

stands inside the closet. She grins a ghastly grin, grasps her

temples, and tears off her face, leaving nothing but muscle and

bone beneath. Her eyeballs dangle on her cheeks.

DELIA and OTHO stare aghast.

OTHO:

Well, we just have to hope that

the other closets are bigger

than this one.

He walks over and slams the door in BARBARA's contorted face.

INT:
HALLWAY -- SAME TIME

DELIA and OTHO come out of LYDIA's bedroom.

OTHO:

This whole house smells so

dowdy. Whole lifetimes

of dowdiness. Generations

of dowdiness.

DELIA:

The master bedroom suite.

DELIA opens a door on the opposite side of the hallway -- ADAM

and BARBARA's old room.

INT:
MASTER BEDROOM -- SAME TIME

The room looks as if BARBARA and ADAM left it just a few hours

ago. DELIA and OTHO poke around, the crassest of crass

intruders.

OTHO goes over to the closet door, and opens it -- but before he

actually looks inside, his attention is drawn back to DELIA.

DELIA:

I was thinking of a pale

ochre.

OTHO picks up a porcelain figurine he finds particularly

offensive.

OTHO:

I was thinking dynamite.

He tosses the figuring, then turns and looks in the closet.

We're expecting another apparition -- but it's just ADAM's

clothes. OTHO fingers the material with distaste.

OTHO (cont)

What happened to the people

who lived here before?

DELIA:

They died.

OTHO:

Yes of course, but how did

they die?

DELIA has gone over to the bathroom door, and pushed it wide

open. But before she goes in, she stops a moment to think.

DELIA:

I think they drowned.

Behind DELIA, in the bathroom, the old-fashioned bathtub suddenly

overflows with vile water. ADAM's face-down bloated corpse bobs

to the surface, and then suddenly spills out onto the tiled

floor, flipping over to land face up. His head, drowned stare is

ghastly.

DELIA stares downward directly at the corpse, then she points at

it.

DELIA:

Otho, I cannot live with

these tiles.

The bathroom is now empty. No water, no drowned corpse.

EXT:
SIDE AND BACK OF HOUSE -- DAY

CATHY has come out the front door and has gone around the side of

the house, exploring her new home with wonder and delight.

She reaches the orchard at the back of the house. The pears are

no longer bearing, but the apples are now. She plucks one from

the trees and bites into it.

CATHY is suddenly pushed forward, nearly falling. Recovering

herself, she whirls around. She is staring into the face of

ADAM'S DEER.

For a moment, CATHY is startled and a little frightened. She's

not used to wildlife. Then she recovers.

CATHY:

Oh. You're hungry.

She gives him her apple to eat.

A second-floor window is suddenly flung open at the back of the

house, and DELIA leans far out.

DELIA:

RABIES! RABIES!

CATHY! RUN!

The DEER drops the apple from its mouth, and bolts back into the

forest.

CATHY stares after it.

INT:
HALLWAY -- DAY

OTHO and DELIA comes out of another room.

OTHO:

The new Silver Palate cookbook

has a wonderful recipe for

terrine of venison. (Wearily)

Is there much more of this?

DELIA:

There's Cathy's room. But we

don't even have to look in

there. She'll love whatever

you do to it. She's such a

little sheep.

OTHO:

Oh, as long as we're here...

OTHO reaches out and turns the knob on the third bedroom door.

The door swings ominously open on CATHY's room. This had been

BARBARA's sewing room, and is furnished accordingly -- straight

out of Better Homes and Gardens 1963.

There is a difference however because on the rag rug in the

middle of the floor lies the headless corpse of ADAM MAITLAND.

Standing over him, holding in one hand a long knife and in the

other ADAM's blood- and gore-dripping head, is BARBARA -- with a

maniacal look on her face.

OTHO:

How ghastly.

DELIA:

An honest-to-God sewing

room.

Inside the room, the eyes of ADAM's severed head open and look up

at BARBARA.

ADAM'S HEAD

They don't see us. They can't

hear us.

Outside, DELIA is shaking her head.

DELIA:

The woman who lived here had

the aesthetic instincts of

Betty Crocker.

BARBARA:

I'm going to get her.

DELIA:

I cannot convey to you the

extent to which this house

bores me.

OTHO:

I'm not so sure about that.

I think this place probably

has real atmosphere. Once you

get out all this tacky furniture,

strip off the wallpaper, take

down a few walls, enlarge the

first-floor windows, alter the

traffic patterns, re-do the

exterior, call in the landscapers,

and -- perhaps -- give some

thought to a solarium for

rare cacti -- once you do all

that, the place might just be

livable. Isn't there a third

floor?

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