Great '80s Movies That Still Hold Up Today

Tim Burton was in demand after making his directorial debut with the critically acclaimed comedy "Pee-wee's Big Adventure" in 1985, but he was holding out for a project suited to his sensibilities. "I was being offered any bad comedy," Burton told the Independent. "It was a case of, you do a bad comedy, you get offered all the bad comedies." Eventually, he got his hands on "Beetlejuice," which began life as a straight-up horror movie before being reworked into the hilariously macabre cult classic it's known as today.

The film stars Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis as a recently deceased couple struggling to haunt their old home. They want the pompous new inhabitants Charles and Delia Deetz (Jeffrey Jones and Catherine O'Hara) gone, so they enlist the help of Betelgeuse. Michael Keaton's character was a hostile, terrifying demon in the first draft, but Burton brought his particular brand of humor to proceedings, and the result is a bizarre but brilliant movie that has aged like a fine wine.

Winona Ryder gives a breakout performance as apathetic daughter Lydia Deetz, but it's Keaton who steals the show here. His hyperactive performance remains something to behold, and for him, it's the perfect film. "From an art perspective, I don't know how you get better than 'Beetlejuice,'" he said. "If you consider the process of taking something from someone's mind and putting it on the screen, I think that movie is incomparable. When things are like that, they'll just last forever."