Charles Deetz Death in BEETLEJUICE BEATLEJUICE Was Based on Tim Burton's Worst Nightmare
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice screenwriter Alfred Gough recently opened up about Charles Deetz’s fate in the film and revealed that it was actually inspired by Tim Burton's worst nightmare of dying.
Charles' death is the major plot in the story as it’s the event that brings his wife Delia (Catherine O'Hara), his daughter Lydia (Winona Ryder), and his teenage granddaughter Astrid (Jenna Ortega) to return to Winter River.
When they are all together Delia explains how Charles died and the audience is treated to a dramatized stop-motion animated sequence showing the events.
We see in the sequence that Charles was in a plane crash while traveling for one of his bird watching adventures. After surviving the plane crash in the ocean a shark swims in and bites him in half.
From there on out, Charles is a half-eaten, now-headless ghost that was brought to life with practical make-up and costume effects.
Gough explained in an interview with EW the inspiration behind the scene, saying: "The way Charles dies in that animated piece is Tim's nightmare of dying.
“He literally pitched that: 'My nightmare is, I'm in a plane crash, I survive the plane crash, I almost drown, and then a shark eats me.’ We were like, 'Well, that's genius. So that's going to be how he dies.'"
Hey, it worked! It was an amusing an entertaining way to handle that character.