‘Tis the week of Halloween, and while many will dress up to exploit their neighbours for free sweets this Friday, cinephiles across the land will be using this festive holiday as an opportunity to shut the blinds, boycott the TV schedule and sit down to a Macabre-Marathon of all films spooky. And if there’s one film that is guaranteed to be on everyone’s list, it is Tim Burton’s classic stop-motion fantasy, The Nightmare Before Christmas. A favourite at both Halloween and Christmas, this film is safe enough for children and the easily scared, whilst also being weird and gothic enough to suit the tastes of those with darker palates. And this year, just to prove it’s as classic in age as it is in quality, the film is also celebrating its 21st anniversary, since the US cinematic release on this very day in 1993.
The film, for those shockingly not in the know, is based on a poem by infamous gothic director Tim Burton, and follows the story of Jack Skellington, the proclaimed ‘Pumpkin King’ of Halloween Town; a town as it’s name suggests, full of ghoulish characters with a penchant for nightmarish tricks, who venture out into the real world once every year to scare the people silly. While his subjects rejoice in their task to terrify, Jack laments on the repetitiveness of it all, and yearns for something new and exciting. His wish is granted when he stumbles upon the portal door to ‘Christmas Town’ – a magical village where, in the same way that the Halloween Town residents prepare for their festivities each year, the elves and Santa Claus (or Sandy Claws, as Jack mistakenly calls him) merrily prepare for Christmas. In a spell-bounding musical sequence, composed by the inimitable Danny Elfman, Jack is completely astounded and enthralled by the twinkly, warm atmosphere of Christmas Town, and craftily sets to make this newfound holiday his own, with disastrous consequences, thanks to the unadvised help of his Halloween friends.
The characters, painstakingly brought to life through stop-motion animation (the technique in which crafted models are manipulated and filmed frame by frame to give the illusion of movement) are enchanting – and the romance between Jack and his Frankenstein-like rag doll beau, Sally is heartwarmingly beautiful. The villainous Oogie Boogie, a repulsive jazz-singing sack of bugs, adds an element of danger and evil, to the plans of an otherwise well-meaning Jack. His minions Shock, Lock and Barrel are also mischievously good fun. Sally’s creator, Doctor Finklestein, is one of the creepier characters of Halloween Town, and reminds those who may dismiss this as a typical Disney children’s film, that there is still an element of the gothic and the disturbed to the story. Danny Elfman’s wondrously emotive score and soundtrack, accompanied by the captivatingly detailed animation by director Henry Selick, makes The Nightmare Before Christmas a wonderful film that will catch your imagination, quench your appetite for something spooky this Halloween, and maybe even get you excited for Christmas all in one sitting!
Words by Annie.