When Oscar-winning hair and makeup designer Christine Blundell received the call to work on Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, she found herself at a crossroads in her career. Feeling stifled by corporate projects, Blundell’s first conversation with Tim Burton reignited her passion: "He wanted everything done practically, in-camera. It was a eureka moment for me."
Blundell embraced Burton's world, refining Beetlejuice’s iconic look with crumblier textures, decayed skin, and crusty decomposed fingernails, a touch Michael Keaton insisted on. Keaton also guided the wig styling, ensuring it performed to perfection.
Collaborating closely with creature effects head Neal Scanlan, Blundell helped craft haunting afterlife characters, using real tools for surreal contraptions and creating gruesome effects like cat bites on dummy legs. Burton’s playful vision kept the team on their toes: one morning, he envisioned Beetlejuice’s eyes exploding cartoonishly at the sun, prompting Blundell to fashion a fiberglass mask with ping-pong ball eyes on the spot.
From lighting challenges in various afterlife settings to balancing the pallor of Danny DeVito’s green skin and Willem Dafoe’s dual homage to Hollywood glam and classic horror, Blundell’s work brought Burton’s dark, comedic world vividly to life. As Blundell recalls, "You’ve got to forget the rules. You’re walking into Tim’s world and seeing what he sees."
