One of the many reasons to be so thankful for the resurgence of Tim Burton with Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is that it shows us how his knowledge of film is wider than we give him credit for. Part of the disappointment of his recent career has been how it feels like his filmmaking approach had stagnated into simply photocopying a bland “Tim Burton filter” on top of ho-hum material. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice shot a lightning rod through Burton’s system, energizing him into flexing muscles that had seemingly gone stiff and reaching deeper into his bag of cinema references to spice up his approach. Of the many touchstones he glances at, the juiciest is his shout-outs to Italian giallo icon Mario Bava, whose legacy informed a number of moments throughout the film.

Tim Burton Doesn’t Hold Back His Love for Mario Bava

In terms of direct callouts, the most direct is when he’s specifically name-dropped by Lydia (Winona Ryder) when discussing how her daughter, Astrid (Jenna Ortega), was born. In a moment of tender heart-to-heart connection when Astrid finds a box full of old photos of Lydia with her deceased father, Richard (Santiago Cabrera), one of the photos is of a pregnant Lydia standing outside a theater advertising a Mario Bava movie marathon. Lydia details how her water broke when she was watching Kill, Baby… Kill!, which is a spooky murder mystery that’s considered one of the highlights of Bava’s career.

Burton has repeatedly admitted that he relates to Lydia the most of all the Beetlejuice characters and how he’d fallen back in love with Bava films as preparation for the making of the sequel. Therefore, tying one of Bava’s most treasured films (one involving ghosts, no less) to the emotional core of the story grants that reference an extra level of sentiment, one that comes straight from Burton’s heart and intertwines him closer to one of his most beloved creations. But that was a relatively simple dialogue reference, as Burton would use a more visually bold tactic to devote an entire scene to a different era of Bava.

The Romantic Flashback of Beetlejuice and Delores Was One Big Bava Reference

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice builds upon what was previously a one-off joke in the first film about Beetlejuice (Keaton) having an ex-wife, and the sequel tells us more about how he was once married to a woman named Delores (Monica Bellucci). During the Black Plague, he was a grave-robber, and she was a member of a soul-sucking cult, and the two fell in love. Except she actually just wanted to poison him, and he had to kill her in self-defense (except she didn’t actually die…?). This entire sequence is told to us by Beetlejuice himself, dubbed over in Italian, with the camerawork adopting the Bava giallo aesthetic. It’s all ghoulish black-and-white, tilted camera angles, far-too-close close-ups, and a revelry in the surreal disconnect between the ugly violence, the craggy environments, and the properly enunciated dialogue. Unlike Bava, who operated in a firmly terrifying key, Burton’s rendition is much more playful and tongue-in-cheek, playing up the comedic potential without making it a mockery of the style. It speaks to the dexterity that Burton can sometimes wield; the ability to be at once a tribute while simultaneously gently prodding, much like with his wonky recreation of 1950s schlock films in Mars Attacks!

So is there anything to this more than just a fun filter? This wouldn’t be the first time that Tim Burton has borrowed the Bava aesthetic, albeit not as directly as he did here. While Sleepy Hollow owes much more to the Hammer Horror film subgenre, it treads pretty lightly into Bava territory with its foggy streetways and platinum blonde mysterious women characters. Both of his Batman movies arguably used Bava-esque camera angles to accentuate the nightmarish and dangerous qualities of Gotham’s nighttime streets. Corpse Bride’s marriage of a gloomy and repressive countryside village with the bright primary-color-shaded lights in the afterlife hints at Bava’s evolving aesthetic, from the haunting black-and-white earlier films to his more impressionistically colorful films like Black Sabbath. If anything, his usage of the Bava touch in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice feels like an evolution for Burton, as he’d previously used it in a largely serious tone, seeking purely to put true honor on a maestro that he looked up to. Now, Burton feels confident enough to skewer one of the greats to better fit the more comedic-minded approach that is truer to his vision nowadays. If there’s anything the world needs right now, it’s a more confident Tim Burton.

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is in theaters now.

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