Psycho's Movie Reviews #220: Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)

The Nightmare Before Christmas (also known as Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas) is a 1993 American stop-motion animated musical dark fantasy Halloween/Christmas film directed by Henry Selick (in his feature directorial debut) and produced and conceived by Tim Burton. It tells the story of Jack Skellington, the King of "Halloween Town" who stumbles upon "Christmas Town" and becomes obsessed with celebrating the holiday. Danny Elfman wrote the songs and score, and provided the singing voice of Jack. The principal voice cast also includes Chris Sarandon, Catherine O'Hara, William Hickey, Ken Page, Paul Reubens, Glenn Shadix, and Ed Ivory.

The Nightmare Before Christmas originated in a poem written by Burton in 1982 while he was working as an animator at Walt Disney Productions. With the success of Vincent in the same year, Burton began to consider developing The Nightmare Before Christmas as either a short film or 30-minute television special to no avail. Over the years, Burton's thoughts regularly returned to the project and in 1990, he made a development deal with Walt Disney Studios. Production started in July 1991 in San Francisco; Disney initially released the film through Touchstone Pictures because the studio believed the film would be "too dark and scary for kids".

The film met with both critical and financial success, earning praise for its animation (particularly the innovation of the stop-motion art form), characters, songs and score. It has grossed $91.5 million worldwide since its initial release and garnered a cult following. It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects, a first for an animated film. The film has since been reissued by Walt Disney Pictures, and was re-released annually in Disney Digital 3-D from 2006 until 2010.

Plot

Halloween Town is a fantasy world populated by various monsters and supernatural beings associated with the holiday. Jack Skellington, respected by the citizens as the "Pumpkin King", leads them in organizing the annual Halloween celebrations. However, this year, Jack has grown tired of the same annual routine and wants something new. Wandering in the woods the next morning, he encounters six trees containing doors leading to other holiday-themed worlds and stumbles into the one leading to Christmas Town. Awed by the unfamiliar holiday, Jack returns home to show his friends and neighbours his findings, but unaware of the idea of Christmas, they compare everything to their ideas of Halloween. However, they do relate to one Christmas Town character: its ruler, Santa Claus, or "Sandy Claws" as Jack mistakenly calls him. Jack sequesters himself in his house to study Christmas further and find a way to rationally explain it. After studying and experimentation accomplish nothing, Jack ultimately decides that Christmas should be improved rather than understood and announces that Halloween Town will take over Christmas this year.

Jack assigns the residents many Christmas-themed jobs, including singing carols, making presents, and building a sleigh pulled by skeletal reindeer. Sally, the feminine creation of local mad scientist Doctor Finklestein who secretly loves Jack, experiences a vision detailing that their efforts will end disastrously, but Jack dismisses this and assigns her the task of making him a Santa Claus suit. He also tasks mischievous trick-or-treating trio Lock, Shock and Barrel to abduct Santa and bring him to Halloween Town. Jack tells Santa he will be handling Christmas in his place this year and orders the trio to keep Santa safe, but against his wishes, they instead deliver Santa to Jack's long-time rival, Oogie Boogie, a bogeyman who has a passion for gambling and plots to play a game with Santa's life at stake. Sally attempts to rescue Santa to save both him and Jack from their potential fates, but she is captured as well.

Jack departs to deliver his presents in the real world, but they instead frighten the populace, who contact the authorities and are instructed by them to lock down their homes and residences for protection. When word spreads about Jack's presumed wrongdoings, he is ultimately shot down by military forces, causing him to crash in a cemetery. While all of Halloween Town sadly believe him to be dead, Jack actually survived. As he bemoans the disaster he has caused, he finds he enjoyed the experience nonetheless, reigniting his love of Halloween, but soon realizes he must act fast to fix his mess. Jack returns home and infiltrates Oogie's lair, rescuing Santa and Sally before confronting Oogie and defeating him by unravelling a thread holding his cloth form together, causing all the bugs inside him to spill out and reduce him to nothing. Jack apologizes to Santa for his actions, to which he, despite being furious at Jack for the trouble he caused and ignoring Sally's forewarnings, assures him that he can still save Christmas. As Santa replaces Jack's presents with genuine ones, all of Halloween Town celebrates Jack's survival and return. Santa then shows Jack that there are no hard feelings between them by bringing a snowfall to the town, which fulfils Jack's original dream in a way and causes the residents to finally realize the true meaning of Christmas. Afterwards, Jack and Sally declare their love for each other.

Production

Development

As writer Burton's upbringing in Burbank, California, was associated with the feeling of solitude, the filmmaker was largely fascinated by holidays during his childhood. "Anytime there was Christmas or Halloween, it was great. It gave you some sort of texture all of a sudden that wasn't there before", Burton would later recall. After completing his short film Vincent in 1982, Burton, who was then employed at Walt Disney Feature Animation, wrote a three-page poem titled The Nightmare Before Christmas, drawing inspiration from television specials of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, How the Grinch Stole Christmas! and the poem A Visit from St. Nicholas. Burton intended to adapt the poem into a television special with the narration spoken by his favourite actor, Vincent Price, but also considered other options such as a children's book. He created concept art and storyboards for the project in collaboration with Rick Heinrichs, who also sculpted character models; Burton later showed his and Heinrichs' works-in-progress to Henry Selick, also a Disney animator at the time. After the success of Vincent in 1982, Disney started to consider developing The Nightmare Before Christmas as either a short film or 30-minute holiday television special. However, the project's development eventually stalled, as its tone seemed "too weird" to the company. As Disney was unable to "offer his nocturnal loners enough scope", Burton was fired from the studio in 1984, and went on to direct the commercially successful films Beetlejuice and Batman for Warner Bros. Pictures.

Over the years, Burton regularly thought about the project. In 1990, Burton found out that Disney still owned the film rights. He and Selick committed to produce a full-length film with the latter as director. Burton's own success with live-action films piqued the interest of Walt Disney Studios chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg, who saw the film as an opportunity to continue the studio's streak of recent successes in feature animation. Disney was looking forward to Nightmare "to show capabilities of technical and storytelling achievements that were present in Who Framed Roger Rabbit." Walt Disney Pictures president David Hoberman believed the film would prove to be a creative achievement for Disney's image, elaborating "we can think outside the envelope. We can do different and unusual things."

Nightmare marked Burton's third consecutive film with a Christmas setting. Burton could not direct because of his commitment to Batman Returns, and he did not want to be involved with "the painstakingly slow process of stop motion". To adapt his poem into a screenplay, Burton approached Michael McDowell, his collaborator on Beetlejuice. McDowell and Burton experienced creative differences, which convinced Burton to make the film as a musical with lyrics and compositions by frequent collaborator Danny Elfman. Elfman and Burton created a rough storyline and two-thirds of the film's songs. Elfman found writing Nightmare's eleven songs as "one of the easiest jobs I've ever had. I had a lot in common with Jack Skellington." Caroline Thompson had yet to be hired to write the screenplay. With Thompson's screenplay, Selick stated, "there are very few lines of dialogue that are Caroline's. She became busy on other films and we were constantly rewriting, re-configuring and developing the film visually."

Filming

Selick and his team of animators began production in July 1991 in San Francisco, California with a crew of over 120 workers, utilizing 20 sound stages for filming. Joe Ranft was hired from Disney as a storyboard supervisor, while Eric Leighton was hired to supervise animation. At the peak of production, 20 individual stages were simultaneously being used for filming. In total, there were 109,440 frames taken for the film. The work of Ray Harryhausen, Ladislas Starevich, Edward Gorey, Étienne Delessert, Gahan Wilson, Charles Addams, Jan Lenica, Francis Bacon, and Wassily Kandinsky influenced the filmmakers. Selick described the production design as akin to a pop-up book. In addition, Selick stated, "When we reach Halloween Town, it's entirely German Expressionism. When Jack enters Christmas Town, it's an outrageous Dr. Seuss-esque set piece. Finally, when Jack is delivering presents in the 'Real World', everything is plain, simple and perfectly aligned." Vincent Price, Don Ameche, and James Earl Jones were considered to provide the narration for the film's prologue; however, all proved difficult to cast, and the producers instead hired local voice artist Ed Ivory. Patrick Stewart provided the prologue narration for the film's soundtrack.

On the direction of the film, Selick reflected, "It's as though he Burton laid the egg, and I sat on it and hatched it. He wasn't involved in a hands-on way, but his hand is in it. It was my job to make it look like 'a Tim Burton film', which is not so different from my own films." When asked about Burton's involvement, Selick claimed, "I don't want to take away from Tim, but he was not in San Francisco when we made it. He came up five times over two years, and spent no more than eight or ten days in total." Walt Disney Feature Animation contributed with some second-layering traditional animation. Burton found production somewhat difficult because he was simultaneously filming Batman Returns and pre-production of Ed Wood.

The filmmakers constructed 227 puppets to represent the characters in the movie, with Jack Skellington having "around four hundred heads", allowing the expression of every possible emotion. Sally's mouth movements "were animated through the replacement method. During the animation process, only Sally's face 'mask' was removed in order to preserve the order of her long, red hair. Sally had ten types of faces, each made with a series of eleven expressions (e.g. eyes open and closed, and various facial poses) and synchronized mouth movements." The stop-motion figurine of Jack was reused in James and the Giant Peach (also directed by Selick) as Captain Jack.

Soundtracks

Main articles: The Nightmare Before Christmas (soundtrack) and Nightmare Revisited

The film's soundtrack album was released in 1993 on Walt Disney Records. The film's soundtrack contains bonus tracks, including a longer prologue and an extra epilogue, both narrated by Sir Patrick Stewart. For the film's 2006 re-release in Disney Digital 3-D, a special edition of the soundtrack was released, featuring a bonus disc that contained covers of five of the film's songs by Fall Out Boy, Panic! at the Disco, Marilyn Manson, Fiona Apple, and She Wants Revenge. Four original demo tracks by Elfman were also included. On September 30, 2008, Disney released the cover album Nightmare Revisited, featuring artists such as Amy Lee, Flyleaf, Korn, Rise Against, Plain White T's, The All-American Rejects, and many more.

American gothic rock band London After Midnight featured a cover of "Sally's Song" on their 1998 album Oddities.

LiLi Roquelin performed a French cover of "Sally's Song" on her album Will you hate the rest of the world or will you renew your life? in 2010.

Pentatonix released a cover of "Making Christmas" for their 2018 Christmas album Christmas Is Here!

In 2003, the Disneyland Haunted Mansion Holiday soundtrack CD was released. Although most of the album's songs are not original ones from the film, one song is a medley of "Making Christmas", "What's This?", and "Kidnap the Sandy Claws". Other songs included are original holiday songs changed to incorporate the theme of the film. However, the last song is the soundtrack for the Disneyland Haunted Mansion Holiday ride.

Release/Reception/Box Office

The Nightmare Before Christmas was originally going to be released by Walt Disney Pictures and be part of the Walt Disney Feature Animation line-up, but Disney decided to release the film under their adult themed label Touchstone Pictures, because the studio thought the film would be "too dark and scary for kids," Selick remembered. "Their biggest fear, and why it was kind of a stepchild project, was they were afraid of their core audience hating the film and not coming." To convey Burton's involvement and attract a wider audience, Disney marketed the film as Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas. Burton explained that, "…it turned more into more of a brand-name thing, it turned into something else, which I'm not quite sure about." The film premiered at the New York Film Festival on October 9, 1993, and was given a limited release on October 13, 1993, before its wide theatrical release on October 29, 1993.

The Nightmare Before Christmas was reissued under the Walt Disney Pictures label and re-released on October 20, 2006, with conversion to Disney Digital 3-D. Industrial Light & Magic assisted in the process. The film subsequently received three re-releases in October 2007, 2008, and 2009. The El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood, California has been showing the film in 4-D screenings annually in October, ending on Halloween, since 2010. The reissues have led to a re-emergence of 3-D films and advances in RealD Cinema.

In October 2020, The Nightmare Before Christmas was re-released in 2,194 theatres. It made $1.323 million over the weekend, finishing fourth behind Tenet.

On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds a rating of 95% based on 100 reviews, with an average rating of 8.27/10. The site's critics consensus reads, "The Nightmare Before Christmas is a stunningly original and visually delightful work of stop-motion animation." On Metacritic the film has a weighted average score of 82 out of 100, based on 30 critics, indicating "universal acclaim". Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade "B+" on an A+ to F scale.

Roger Ebert gave a highly positive review for Nightmare. Ebert believed the film's visual effects were as revolutionary as Star Wars, taking into account that Nightmare was "filled with imagination that carries us into a new world".

Peter Travers of Rolling Stone called it a restoration of "originality and daring to the Halloween genre. This dazzling mix of fun and fright also explodes the notion that animation is kid stuff. … It's 74 minutes of timeless movie magic." James Berardinelli stated "The Nightmare Before Christmas has something to offer just about everyone. For the kids, it's a fantasy celebrating two holidays. For the adults, it's an opportunity to experience some light entertainment while marvelling at how adept Hollywood has become at these techniques. There are songs, laughs, and a little romance. In short, The Nightmare Before Christmas does what it intends to: entertain." Desson Thomson of The Washington Post enjoyed the film's similarities to the writings of Oscar Wilde and the Brothers Grimm, as well as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and other German Expressionist films.

Michael A. Morrison discusses the influence of Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas! on the film, writing that Jack parallels the Grinch and Zero parallels Max, the Grinch's dog. Philip Nel writes that the film "challenges the wisdom of adults through its trickster characters", contrasting Jack as a "good trickster" with Oogie Boogie, whom he also compares with Seuss' Dr. Terwilliker as a bad trickster. Entertainment Weekly reports that fan reception of these characters borders on obsession, profiling Laurie and Myk Rudnick, a couple whose "degree of obsession with the film is so great that … they named their son after the real-life person that a character in the film is based on." This enthusiasm for the characters has also been profiled as having spread beyond North America to Japan. Yvonne Tasker notes "the complex characterization seen in The Nightmare Before Christmas".

Danny Elfman was worried the characterization of Oogie Boogie would be considered racist by the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP). Elfman's predictions came true; however, director Henry Selick stated the character was inspired by the Betty Boop cartoon The Old Man of the Mountain. "Cab Calloway would dance his inimitable jazz dance and sing 'Minnie the Moocher' or 'Old Man of the Mountain', and they would rotoscope him, trace him, turn him into a cartoon character, often transforming him into an animal, like a walrus," Selick continued. "I think those are some of the most inventive moments in cartoon history, in no way racist, even though he was sometimes a villain. We went with Ken Page, who is a black singer, and he had no problem with it".

Around the release of the film, Hoberman was quoted, "I hope Nightmare goes out and makes a fortune. If it does, great. If it doesn't, that doesn't negate the validity of the process. The budget was less than any Disney blockbuster so it doesn't have to earn Aladdin-sized grosses to satisfy us." The film earned $50 million in the United States in its initial theatrical run and was regarded as a moderate "sleeper hit".

The Nightmare Before Christmas made an additional $11.1 million in box office gross in its 2006 reissue. The 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2020 reissues earned $15.8 million, $2.5 million, and $2.3 million respectively, increasing the film's total box office gross to $91.5 million.

Budget $24 million

Box office $91.5 million

My Review

I was a kid when I first saw Tim Burton's Nightmare Before Christmas, but I wasn't scared by it in the slightest - this world is one entirely of the imagination, and in a sense saying that the film is scary for younger children is something of a compliment. 'Nightmare' is both a horror film and a musical, and fantasy and a suspense film, and like most Burton effort, comedy is thrown in at just the right moments.

With Henry Selick as director and Michael McDowell & Caroline Thompson as the screenwriters, Burton has fashioned the worlds of Halloween-town and Christmas-town as real originals, working on the cliches that are in each holiday and surrounding the worlds with a host of terrific and terrifying characters. While Halloween-town has a mayor (appropriately with two faces, one smiling one distressed), the real leader is Jack Skellington (Chris Sarandon voices with a great Danny Elfman as the singing Jack) who orchestrates Halloween every year for its citizens. But he's grown weary over the years, and after stumbling upon Christmas-town, loaded with good will towards men and a large man in a red suit, he gets his town riled up to overtake the joyous holiday. Despite one protest by Sally (an amazing Catherine O'Hara), the doll-girl who loves him, the town goes on creating Jack's vision. The results are hilarious and, indeed, spellbinding.

Much credit is given to Burton and Selick for their work on the film, but a lot should also be attributed to Denise Di Novi (co-producer and co-designer), Rick Heinrichs (visual consultant), Pete Kozachik (D.P.), and of course Danny Elfman for his perfectly fitting score and song creations. Along with the talented voice actors, Nightmare Before Christmas ends up a triumph of artistic ingenuity. Some could construe it as too weird or too stylish, but for the cult audience it has garnered over the past ten years it remains of of Burton's finest accomplishments.

A pioneering work of animation at its time, The Nightmare Before Christmas is a stop-motion animation musical concerning the Pumpkin King of the Halloweenland named Jack Skellington who is bored from planning the annual Halloween celebrations every year. While on his way back home, he discovers a portal to Christmasland & is instantly infatuated with the lively Christmas spirit. Unable to understand its concept, he decides to celebrate the holiday & gets the residents of his town to help him prepare for it which, as expected, goes wrong.

Due to its dark, brooding & creepy yet hilarious atmosphere, many mistake this film to be Tim Burton's work, which is further complicated by his name on the title which was strictly for marketing purposes. But it's actually Henry Selick who helms the director's chair with writing & production credits going to Burton. The film makes brilliant use of stop-motion animation blended with puppetry to come out as something fresh, original & intensely creative plus the steadily narrated story only helps the film work charmingly well.

The script is very lively, the concept is new as well, cinematography is distinctive, editing manages to trim the film enough to tell its tale under 80 minutes, the voice actors are nicely cast & music as well as songs by Danny Elfman is a strong supportive character in itself that makes the story work with Elfman also voicing many characters. On an overall scale, The Nightmare Before Christmas would've been an unforgettable experience had I watched it at a younger age but as of now, although it didn't disappoint, I still felt no real affection towards it.

I admit it, I really love Tim Burton. I know his films are very oddball, but he has a wide imagination and his films are visually amazing. And I like a vast majority of his films, Edward Scissorhands being my personal favourite, and I love Batman and Batman Returns too. Henry Sellick is also promising, from the likes of James and the Giant Peach and Coraline. The Nightmare Before Christmas is a brilliant film. Is it an animated classic. Yes I think it is! It is wonderfully weird yet lots of fun as well. Visually and technically, the film looks absolutely amazing, with wonderful Gothic backgrounds and detailed colouring. Skellington silhouetted against the moonlight is quite possibly the film's most haunting image. The story is great, about Jack Skellington discovering Christmas Town but doesn't understand the concept so he kidnaps Santa Claus. And the characters are endearing and weird, ranging from jazz playing zombies, Four-tenor like vampires to a wolf man. Then we have the title characters, Jack Skellington is a wonderful protagonist, really interesting to say the least. And Sally for an inventor's creation is very beautiful. The songs from Danny Elfman (the fact that he didn't get an award for his score for Edward Scissorhands is the biggest music snubs ever) are great fun, haunting, funny, clever and intelligent. The voice acting is top notch, Chris Sarandon does a great job as the speaking voice of Skellington, and Danny Elfman himself provides the singing voice superbly. Catherine O'Hara is sweet and innocent, and Ken Page (the voice of King Gator in All Dogs Go To Heaven) is a hoot as Oogie Boogie. All in all, weird, but visually stunning, funny and intelligent animated movie. A definite classic! 10/10!!!