Sumith Prasad
Tim Burton’s 1988 horror comedy film ‘Beetlejuice’ and its sequel, ‘Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,’ are set in the small town of Winter River, Connecticut. Barbara and Adam Maitland, the protagonists of the original movie, look forward to a peaceful time in their farmhouse at the top of a hill that overlooks the town. Adam runs a hardware store in the region, and after the couple’s deaths, the Deetz family moves into their house. Lydia Deetz attends Miss Shannon’s School for Girls. Even though the place is similar to the winter towns in the Nutmeg State, Winter River has no connection to them!
East Corinth in Vermont Doubles For Winter City
Winter River is a fictional town in Connecticut created for ‘Beetlejuice.’ Even though there is a quaint little town called Deep River in the Constitution State, it is unrelated to the region in the film series. East Corinth in Orange County, Vermont, stands in for Winter River in ‘Beetlejuice’ and ‘Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.’ Several locations in the town were used to set up the fictional Connecticut region for the two movies. Barbara and Adam Maitland’s house is a façade built on the top of a hill located near Jewell Lane. A store space was utilized to double for Maitland Hardware, and a Masonic hall was chosen to present Lydia Deetz’s Miss Shannon’s School for Girls.
When Tim Burton decided to make a sequel to the 1988 film, he again chose East Corinth to stand in for Winter City. Surprisingly, the town in Vermont hadn’t changed much despite the gap of decades between the two films. “No one had been back there since the first film other than the fans. But when I flew there, you could tell it was pretty much unchanged. It was the same town it had always been, and you could see why they’d gone there in the first place,” production designer Marc Scruton told Condé Nast Traveler. He recreated Winter City in East Corinth in twelve weeks using sets. Scruton built the Victorian house, red-covered bridge, Maitland Hardware, a fire station, and more in the region for the sequel’s production.
The recreation process might have been easier because the notes made for the original film were used for the sequel. “We built it on the same hill, the same town, the same house, the same measurements, everything. They had all the old notes from the original,” Jenna Ortega told EW. However, the crew went to West Wickham in South East London, England, for the fictional town’s graveyard and church. The English region was over sixty miles away from Warner Bros. Studios Leavesden, where the scenes inside the house were shot. The scene in which Ortega’s Astrid driving through Winter River was shot in Boston, Massachusetts.
Beetlejuice is Part of East Corinth’s Identity
The residents of East Corinth celebrated the shooting of ‘Beetlejuice’ and ‘Beetlejuice Beetlejuice’ alike. “It was such a lovely town, but there wasn’t much around. But honestly, when we shot there, it was like a festival,” Marc Scruton added in the Condé Nast Traveler interview. Several townsfolk showed up with lawn chairs on the locations, and some of them even used costumes and rode horses. The experience of shooting in the region was captivating for Jenna Ortega, a new addition to the cast of the film series.
“And it was strange [because] we’d be shooting, and people who lived in that town in Vermont were coming over with books signed by Tim [Burton] from 30 years ago or photos from the original Beetlejuice, like, ‘Oh, we were here when they first came back!’” Ortega added in the EW interview. The town’s residents welcomed the sequel’s crew by playing ‘Beetlejuice’ for a week while the shooting progressed. ‘Beetlejuice’ and ‘Beetlejuice Beetlejuice’ are the only high-profile projects shot in East Corinth. Therefore, it is unsurprising that the film franchise is part of the town’s identity.
Read More: Why is Beetlejuice Spelled Betelgeuse?
