VENICE LIDO, Italy – There aren’t many 36-year-old sequels that have opened an international film festival. In fact, there’s only one: Tim Burton’s propulsive and continually inventive ghostly comedy “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” whose world premiere Wednesday kicked off the 81st Venice Film Festival.

The film reunites Burton, 66, with Michael Keaton reprising the long dead — 600 years! — Betelgeuse and two other veterans of the original, Winona Ryder and Catherine O’Hara. They were in Venice alongside new cast members Jenna Ortega, Monica Bellucci, Willem Dafoe and Justin Theroux.

Why did the 1988 “Beetlejuice,” a massive hit, still intrigue so many decades later to produce this sequel?

“It’s interesting,” Burton said at yesterday’s press conference. “People asked about it. The funny thing about ‘Beetlejuice,’ I loved it but I could never place it to anything.

“But to work with Michael and Catherine and Winona made it more special. And then the new people got into the spirit of it. It was a very personal project.”

Added Keaton (who subsequently collaborated with Burton in an acclaimed Batman trilogy), “It’s a world unto itself 100 percent. To say it’s unique is an understatement.

“There are so few opportunities to be in something you can say is 100 percent original and unique. Where did this come from? It’s just from out there.”

Burton harked back to making the original “Beetlejuice” to create a feeling that this was personal, an echo of the under the radar silliness that was allowed to flourish without studio interference.

“The past few years I got disillusioned with the movie industry you might say. I realized if I do it again, I want to do it from my heart.  Like (Ryder’s) Lydia character, I got a little bit lost sometime along the way. So for me this was re-energizing. I liked doing it with people I loved. It didn’t matter how it turned out. It was the joy of making it.”
Bellucci, Italy’s revered and iconic cinematic siren, makes an unforgettable impression as Delores, Beetlejuice’s revenge-driven ex-wife. She rises from the dead and several packing crates to reassemble multiple body parts that she secures with staples to give new meaning to the term femme fatale.

“I’m honored to be entering Tim’s world,” she said. “As a filmmaker he knows how to create situations that are fantastic, horrific and emotional at the same time.

“That helped me create this monster who’s more than a monster. She’s a creature. Her duality is that she’s charming and dangerous and for me a metaphor of life. We all have emotional scars.

“I love Tim’s world,” she added, “because I love comic books as well.”

“Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” opens in theaters nationwide Sept. 6. 

Michael Keaton is back in “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.” (Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures)