Beetlejuice (1988)

Back on the big screen for the Halloween season, Tim Burton's 1988 comedy still runs a brisk 92 minutes and still gives Michael Keaton barely a quarter of an hour as the "bio-exorcist" who hijacks the picture. Geena Davis and Alec Baldwin are the newly dead Maitlands, stuck haunting their Connecticut farmhouse; Catherine O'Hara, Jeffrey Jones and a teenage Winona Ryder are the Deetzes who move in and redecorate. The film won the Academy Award for makeup and launched Burton's partnership with Keaton a year before Batman. The possessed dinner party remains the set piece people come for, and the sandworm model work holds up better than most late-'80s effects. Showtimes vary by theater.