Town of Terror
Plot
In Puzzle City, St. Louis, The Maitland Family decide to spend their vacation decorating their idyllic country home. As they are driving home from a trip to town, Undine swerves to avoid a dog and the car plunges into the river. After returning home, The family notice they now lack reflections and find a Handbook for the Recently Deceased.
They begin to suspect they did not survive the car accident. When Adam attempts to leave the house, he ends up in a strange and otherworldly desert-like landscape populated by enormous sandworms. The encounter lasts only a few seconds for him but after being rescued by Undine, she claims that he was gone for two hours.
The house is sold and the new owners are the Electric Company. Keith Watson (played by Ricky Smith) is a member of the Electric Company who can generate images in mid-air, which especially comes in handy when explaining difficult words, and can also magnify images as well; Lisa Heffenbacher is a well-liked girl who has the power to unscramble any anagram that she finds; Jessica and Hector are best siblings ever.
Consulting the Handbook, the Maitlands travel to an otherworldly waiting room populated by other distressed souls where they discover the afterlife is structured according to a complex bureaucracy involving vouchers and caseworkers. The Maitlands' caseworker Juno informs them they must remain in the house for the next one hundred and twenty-five years on pain of a dire fate. If they want the Electric Company out of the house, it is up to them to scare them away.
Although Francine, Dax and Maitlands remain invisible to Charles and Delia, Lydia can see the ghost couple and befriends them. Against Juno's advice, Francine, Dax and Maitlands contact the miscreant Beetlejuice, Juno's former assistant and a now freelance "bio-exorcist", to scare away the Electric Company. At first, they are unaware his name is pronounced "Beetlejuice", which is why they have such difficulty pronouncing it and thereby summoning him.
However, Beetlejuice quickly offends the Maitlands with his crude and morbid demeanor: they reconsider hiring him, though too late to stop him from wreaking havoc on the Deetzes. The small town's charm and the supernatural events inspire Charles to pitch his boss Maxie Dean on transforming the town into a tourist hot spot, but Maxie wants proof of the ghosts. Using the Handbook for the Recently Deceased, Otho conducts what he thinks is a séance and summons the Maitlands, using their wedding clothes, but they begin to age and decay as Otho had unwittingly performed an exorcism instead.
Horrified, Lydia summons Beetlejuice for help; but he will only help her on the condition that she marries him, enabling him to freely cause chaos in the mortal world. He saves the Maitlands and disposes of Maxie, his wife, and Otho, then prepares a wedding before a ghastly minister. The Maitlands intervene before the ceremony is completed, with Barbara riding a sandworm through the house to devour Beetlejuice.
Finally, the Deetzes and Maitlands agree to live in harmony within the house. Beetlejuice is stuck in the after-life waiting room. He stole a number ticket from a witch doctor who shrank his head.
