Beetlejuice (1988) - 47 mistakes

Revealing: When Barbara and Adam are digging up Beetlejuice's grave, you can see that a piece of cardboard states "FRAGILE" or something in small print which is proportional to Barbara and Adam at that time. However, the lettering should be ten times larger if the cardboard was proportional to the actual model.

Continuity: When the Deitz family first check out the house, Otho shakes up a can of spray paint, takes off the cap, and hands it to Delia. When it cuts to the next scene, you can see Delia take off the can's cap again.

Continuity: In the part where Barbara and Adam are asked to draw a door on a wall in case of an emergency, there is already a chalk outline of where a door would be.

Revealing: In the scene where Barbara is showing Adam that they have no reflections by moving the horse in front of the mirror, Adam's reflection can be seen in the windows in the background.

Revealing: Adam and Barbara aren't supposed to have reflections, but when they enter the recreation of their home (just before they meet Juno), their reflections are shown perfectly in the glass display case that holds Delia's sculptures, behind them.

Continuity: When Otho is calling the spirits of Barbara and Adam to return we see Barbara first, suspended above the table in her wedding gown.  She "ages" so rapidly during Otho's chant that her skin shrivels and her feet curl up, causing one of her shoes to fall off onto the table. A few minutes later we see a long shot of both Barbara and Adam suspended above the table, but her shoes are both on and there is nothing on the table.

Revealing: When Barbara is moving the little plastic horse in front of the mirror to prove that she's invisible, the "reflection" of the horse is not synchronised with the actual horse.

Visible crew/equipment: When Otho is doing the Seance, Adam and Barbara appear in their wedding clothes and then float above the table. When Lydia releases Beetlejuice, everyone gets up and leaves the table, and in this wideshot the black wires that Adam and Barbara are suspended from are visible.

Revealing: When Adam, who should have no reflection, walks out of the door to go retrace his steps, he is really clearly reflected in the big glass panel in the door. Then after Barbara pulls Adam from the SandWorm land, they walk back into the house through the same doors, and are both reflected in the glass panels of the door. So much for ghosts...

Continuity: When Beetlejuice is in the waiting room at the end of the movie, he speaks to one man with a shrunken head, who does not reply. He then turns to the voodoo man sitting to his right, and he notices that this man has the a lower ticket number, so he steals this mans ticket and then throws his own ticket into the voodoo mans lap. But in the next shot the ticket is not in the voodoo mans lap, but it is on the seat beside his left leg.

Continuity: When Barbara tears the top of the wrapping paper off of the present (tube of wallpaper) Adam bought her, in following shots the way the paper is torn and the way it hangs, changes. In the very next wide shot the whole of the wrapping paper is suddenly off of the tube of wallpaper, without enough time given for Barbara to have pulled it off. In following shots Adam and Barbara kiss and cuddle on the couch, and in one shot you can see that the wrapping paper had reappeared, and is still wrapped around the tube.

Continuity: After drawing the chalk door, Adam knocks on it three times, and then it opens. Adam then sets down the “Handbook for the Recently Deceased” and puts the piece of chalk down next to it. But later, when Lydia sneaks up into the attic, she finds the handbook, now with the piece of chalk sitting on top of the book.

Visible crew/equipment: When Barbara tries to leave the house and falls into the sandworm's world you can clearly see her knee pads.

Continuity: The distance between the picture hanging on the wall and the light switch wire often changes through the movie. Look at the distance between the two when Adam walks past to throw the spider out of the window. When Barbara pokes her head into the room in the following shot to give Adam his present, the picture now hangs right beside the light switch wire

Continuity: When Adam and Barbara try to scare the new residents out of their house, Barbara holds up Adam's head by the hair. He has glasses on and they are up on his nose where one would wear glasses. However, the next shot is a close-up of the head, and the glasses are down on the end of his nose.

Continuity: In the wedding scene at the end when Barbara comes crashing through the ceiling on the sandworm, Beetlejuice looks up at the ceiling, which is still intact, and screams - a split second later Barbara actually crashes through and the sandworm devours Beetlejuice.

Continuity: When Otho is going through the house suggesting changes he is wearing white sneakers in one room and red ones in the next.

Visible crew/equipment: When Adam, Barbara and Juno ascend a staircase, talking about how Adam and Barbara should start more simply if they want to scare the Deitz family out of their home, there are two tape markers - a yellow and a blue one, very clearly on one of the steps.

Revealing: When Delia and Otho go upstairs, Delia takes her can of spray and writes the word “mauve” on one of the walls. The faded marks of mauve spray paint are quite evident on the wall as she sprays the word, which reveals that this was not the first take of the scene.

Continuity: When Adam and Barbara are sleeping, they awake to a sudden commence of the whole house shaking. There is one close shot of the items on the mantelpiece. Watch the items. There are reels of cotton on the centre of the mantel which vanish between shots, and in the wide shot a book has appeared in front of one of the photo frames, which wasn’t there beforehand.

Continuity: When Adam creates the door to gain access to the spiritual world, he draws the outline and door knob quite visibly with chalk. Yet when the door is closing after they have gone through it, though you can still see the outline of the door, the door knob has mysteriously vanished.

Continuity: When Lydia dances at the end, the two times we see the top of her head, her hair is parted differently.

Continuity: During the scene where the new family eat dinner for the first time, there are candles in front of the dad (they are in metallic candle holders). They are in an order like large, small, medium. But in the close up shot of the dad they have changed places to medium, small large. The sizes may be different but the concept of the mysterious shape shifting candle holders is the same.

Continuity: When Charles is sitting by the window, he picks up a book and starts to look through. After he mutters “ah, birdies,” he turns to the next page, and on the left page there is just a small paragraph of text at the bottom of the page. Yet in the next wide shot there is now another big paragraph of text on the centre of the page. It is meant to be the same page, yet it obviously is not.

Continuity: When the house starts shaking, we see a shot of Adam roll over in bed with a blanket wrapped around his body. In the next shot the blanket is in a totally different position around him.

Visible crew/equipment: When the small priest emerges from the fireplace and then when he goes on to do the wedding ceremony for Beetlejuice and Lydia, you can see a thick black tube running out of the priest's right leg, trailed behind him.

Continuity: When the Deitz family and their guests are eating, the bowls of shrimp are sitting on small mats. Delia and Charles’s mats often change from black to grey colour, at random through the whole dinner scene.

Continuity: When Barbara picks Beetlejuice up from the model town, in one shot his arm is wildly shaking around in fury, but in the next close-up his arm is now tucked in between Barbara’s fingers.

Continuity: During the scene where the Deitz family and their guests get possessed to sing and dance along to “Day-O,” the positions of the black and white napkins, the wine glasses, the cutlery, the wine bottles in the ice-buckets, etc., change many times throughout this completely hilarious scene.

Continuity: When Charles is looking out of the window, he pushes one slat of the blinds upwards, and then bird watches with his binoculars. When Lydia comes in and makes him jumps, he turns around, and this particular slat falls back downwards, into place. But in the very next shot this same slat is pushed in an upwards position again. When he sits back down again as Lydia leaves, the slat is back down again.

Audio problem: When Adam, Barbara and Juno walk into the attic, Juno says "You should have been studying those lessons since day one." However, her lips never move.

Continuity: During the dinner party scene, the positions of the shrimp which hang around the small colourful sushi bowls often change. Sometimes they hang over the bowls, sometimes inside the bowl. This happens with Delia’s shrimps especially.

Continuity: During the dinner party, in one shot from behind we see Otho has very little wine in his glass, but in the following shot of him from in front, his glass is now nearly full. Nobody refilled it between the shots.

Continuity: As Adam speeds towards Beetlejuice's foot in the miniature red car, the amount and position of plaster and rubble around Beetlejuice's foot changes between shots.

Continuity: When Charles and Delia are sitting out on the white terrace, Charles holds a glass with brown coloured drink in it which is three-quaters of the way full, and Delia's glass is half full. When Otho walks onto the terrace, Charles's drink is clear-coloured and the glass is filled right to the top, and Delia's glass is now three-quaters of the way full.

Continuity: After Adam has drawn the chalk door on the wall, he walks forward and closes the “Handbook for the Recently Deceased.” In the next shot, as he knocks on the chalk door three times, the handbook is now open. In the next shot as he steps back, the handbook is now closed again.

Other: In regards to the mistake about the Polaroid pictures when Lydia is taking shots of Adam and Barbara in sheets, not only do the pictures develop too quickly, but they are also taken very quickly and "shoot" out of the camera, which, if you've ever taken a Polaroid photo, you know does not happen. The photos come out slowly and stay in the camera until you pull them out.

Revealing: When Beetlejuice rises from the grave, and then flies after Adam and Barbra, for a split second, you can see a wire over one of his shoulders, but it is pretty hard to spot. Best seen frame-by-frame on the DVD.

Revealing: After the scene where Barbara's fingers catch fire, the Maitland's walk down the hall (and Barbara says "I'll make us some coffee), and in the picture hanging on the wall to the left of the screen, we see their reflections. They shouldn't have reflections, as proved by the mirror.

Revealing: In the scene when Beetlejuice is getting married, you can see the priest in the fireplace after he supposedly burns up.

Revealing: When we see that Barbara and Adam are hanging out of the window in order to hide from the Deitz‘s, it cuts to Beetlejuice yelling “Oh boy. You guys are really a couple of spooksters.” In this shot of him shouting, he does not have any white makeup applied to him, nor does he have any of the green patches that run down his neck. In this shot he does not look his usual “dead” state, but looks normal. They obviously forgot to make him look “dead.”

Continuity: Adam draws the chalk door on the wall, and next to the door there is a long wooden pole. But in the next shot the wooden pole has now moved along, to cover up the right chalk door-line.

Continuity: When Alec Baldwin tries to leave the house and ends up in the sand world for a few seconds, his wife says that he was gone for two hours when he gets back. When the wife is sent to the sand world for a minute at the end of the film, she returns to the house only a few minutes later.

Continuity: When Delia spray paints the word “mauve” on the wall, between shots it is apparent that the script of the word changes. One example would be that in the first shot the tops of the letter “M” are pointed, like triangle tips, but in the next they are more rounder. The writing also moves lower on the wall.

Continuity: When Barbara shows that they have no reflections by moving the horse in front of the mirror, Adam is seen waving his left hand (in the over-the-shoulder shot) and it cuts to a longer side shot as he's finishing waving his RIGHT hand.

Other: When Adam and Barbara have their sheets on, trying to scare the mother, they walk out in failure and Lydia takes pictures of the ghosts - polaroid photos fall out and Lydia picks up one which is already developed - they take longer.

Revealing: When Beetlejuice is using "Zagnut" candy bar as the bait for the fly on his grave, the size of the "Zagnut" is not realistic - the fly should be much smaller than the "Zagnut" bar.