Tagline:
A ghoulish tale with wicked humor & stunning animation.

Wide Release Date:
October 29, 1993

Directed by:
Henry Selick
Screenplay by:
Caroline Thompson
Produced by:
Tim Burton, Denise Di Novi

Starring:
Chris Sarandon
Catherine O’Hara
William Hickey
Glenn Shadix
Paul Reubens
Ken Page
Ed Ivory

PREGAME THOUGHTS

This movie was released when I was six years old, and I didn’t want to see it at all because I was a pissy little baby about anything that could have possibly been adjacent to a realm that contained semblances of anything even remotely scary. Also, my mom watched it and hated it, and this was at an age when I actually listened to my mom’s opinions instead of nowadays when she says things like “I’m pro-life but I don’t think the government should ban abortions” or “Trump is spry, he got hit by a bullet and walked away.”

‘Tis the season, though, and my 7-year-old really wants to watch this. I’ll even invite my 4-year-old, why not? Early trauma builds character.

THE 550(ish)-WORD SYNOPSIS

Halloween Town is a dreary place filled with monsters, ghoulies, and nefarious Republicans. He Who Presides over the Town is Jack Skellington (speaking voice: Chris Sarandon; singing voice: Danny Elfman), the Pumpkin King! He is in charge of organizing the yearly Halloween celebration, but he’s getting fucking sick of it year after year after year. He even sings about it in front of the moon!

♫♪♪ It’s a dead man’s party! Who could ask for more? ♫♪♪ ♫♪♪

The next morning, Jack wanders aimlessly around the woods and comes across a set of trees with holiday symbols painted on them — an area of the woods he has never come across before. After falling into Christmas Town and delighting in the merriment of the all the Christmas cheer that he has never experienced before, Jack becomes obsessed and wishes to bring a touch of Christmas back to Halloween Town.

Upon his return, Jack gathers up the denizens of Halloween Town and tries to teach them the ways of Christmas, but much to Jack’s chagrin they all incorporate Halloween-themed ideas into his descriptions of Christmas ideals. With furious frustration, Jack holes himself up in his house and uses SCIENCE to study Christmas in order to understand it enough to get his point across. After many unsuccessful days, Jack decides to pivot to working on improving Christmas! It won’t go well.

Jack gathers up the denizens of Halloween Town again and announces that they will take over Christmas duties this year. He assigns various tasks the the befuddled residents, such as singing carols and wrapping presents. However, local female Frankenstein Sally (Catherine O’Hara) sees visions of Jack’s failure. Jack doesn’t heed the warnings and instead assigns Sally the task of making him a Santa suit!

He also tasks a trio of ne’er-do-wells named Lock (Paul Reubens), Shock (Catherine O’Hara), and Barrel (Danny Elfman) with kidnapping Santa (Ed Ivory) and keeping him safe while Jack performs his Christmas shenanigans. The trio succeeds in the kidnapping, but they take him to Oogie Boogie (Ken Page), a bogeyman for unclear reasons. That happens later! For now, Jack tells Santa that he’ll be taking over being Santa and that he shouldn’t worry his pretty little head about anything. Sally tries to stop Jack from carrying out his plan to no avail. Then she attempts to rescue Santa from Oogie Boogie, but she gets captured herself as well.

Hey! I want one!

Jack plays Santa and accidentally scares the shit out of people in the real world with his creepy shrunken head gifts. The road to Hell is paved with good intentions, I always say. The authorities advise the populace to lock down for their protection and Jack is shot down from his sleigh by the military. He is presumed dead by Halloween Town, but he is very much alive! And he got his fill of Christmas and enjoyed his time indulging in the festivities, but now it’s time to make up for all his wrongdoings. So he rescues Santa and Sally from Oogie Boogie by unraveling him and revealing the mess of bugs within. Santa is like “thanks for nothing, asshole” and leaves to save Christmas himself. He replaces all of Jack’s shitty gifts with real ones. Halloween Town rejoices at Jack’s non-dead return.

Santa feels bad for calling Jack a cunt and brings snow to Halloween Town, much to Jack and the rest of the town’s delight! Jack and Sally love each other for some reason, too. The end.

TOM’S DISCUSSION CORNER

General Movie Thoughts

I’m not at all a fan of stop-motion animation, so that’s strike one for me. I just find it tough to watch for superficial reasons, plus I can’t stop thinking about all the work it must take to create such a project and I lose myself in an anxious fit. NEVERTHELESS, I sat through the whole thing with my family and found it so-so. Jack Skellington is clearly the best part of the movie, mostly because he’s the only character with an actual personality. I didn’t expect much anyway in the plot department — Halloween Guy becomes obsessed with Christmas and becomes Christmas Guy, but doesn’t do it right — but, god, is it just me or this movie incredibly slow? Afterward I was surprised that the movie was a mere 76 minutes, because a lot of it just dragged. It takes forever for Jack to actually get to Christmas Town, and after that it takes forever for Jack to start doing Christmas things. Meanwhile, an awful and unnecessary love plot is shoehorned in that just kind of sort of happens and doesn’t really matter in the story. Like, this is supposed to be a movie about the Pumpkin King of Fuck Mountain becoming enamored by Christmas. Why does he have to get his bone on, too? Pun intended.

C’mon, baby. Give me that sexy Glasgow smile!

I’m also not a fan of musicals, so that’s strike two for me. I can tolerate your average Disney movie, and more often than not I’m not bothered by the music, but every song (save for “This Is Halloween”) is flat, boring, and not very catchy. I didn’t find them particularly fun to listen to, not even “What’s This?”, the defining song. I’m an enormous Danny Elfman fan, having been obsessed with Oingo Boingo in high school. I’m used to the weirder aspects of his vocals where his voice sounds like a rubber ball bouncing around the room. Elfman’s singing in The Nightmare Before Christmas is lackluster and uninteresting! Danny Elfman has one of the greatest voices in off-kilter pop music and there’s no soul to this! Arrrrghh, frustrating!

I’m also not a fan of just how ugly the settings and characters are, so that’s strike three for me. This movie sure isn’t for me, as it turns out. I usually don’t have a problem with such an aesthetic, but it must be the combination of stop-motion animation and the overall dingy brownness of the scenery. Even Christmas Town seemed desolate and sad. This was obviously an artistic decision and they succeeded fabulously. A veritable feast of creepiness and oddball antics! But I think I’d rather watch Corpse Bride and I barely even want to watch that.

95% of you will disagree with me, and I’d like to invite you all to suck it.

Kris Kringle has lost some weight.

IMDb TRIVIA FUNHOUSE!

Tim Burton has said the original poem was inspired after seeing Halloween merchandise display in a store being taken down and replaced by a Christmas display. The juxtaposition of ghouls and goblins with Santa and his reindeer sparked his imagination.
Since then, he has made the same movie 45 more times.

It is stated in “The Making of…” book that the most difficult shot to film in the entire movie is the shot in which Jack is reaching for the doorknob to Christmasland. Viewers can see the perfect surround reflection of the forest around Jack in the background.
Oooooooh, aaaaahhhhh, wowwwwww, coooooooool. If only every movie had a majestic shot of someone reaching for a doorknob where the full effects of the camerawork or the illustrations are completely unnoticed by everybody in the audience.

Danny Elfman found writing Nightmare’s 10 songs as “one of the easiest jobs I’ve ever had. I had a lot in common with Jack Skellington.”
I don’t have room for all the f’s it would take to write out the long “pfffffft” I had in mind.

It took a group of around 100 people three years to complete this movie. For one second of film, up to 12 stop-motion moves had to be made.
See, this is the kind of shit that makes me exhausted even watching stop-motion animation. I just imagine all the tedious work that goes into it. I read once that the first episode of South Park took a whole staff three months of non-stop work to create. No wonder The Nightmare Before Christmas barely cracks 80 minutes, they were all probably like “fuck this” and flipped the table over, signifying the end of production.

In the soundtrack, an epilogue poem is included that implies that Jack had “4 or 5 skeleton children” several years after the film. The mother of said children is unknown.
How do we know it was just one mother? Skellington gets around, is all I’m saying.

During Jack’s first visit to Christmas Town in the song “What’s This?” we see him unintentionally smashing a snowflake, destroying a snowman and scaring a little sleeping elf – a taste of the unwitting destruction that Jack’s curiosity in Christmas will bring.
Good bit of trivia! Looks like someone watched the movie and interpreted scenes correctly!

Zero the Ghost Dog. Best character by a long shot.

IS IT WORTH A WATCH?

In the end, this IS a movie for children. My 7-year-old loved it, my 4-year-old liked it, and I think this is exactly the kind of movie that a young, budding goth would eat the fuck up. On those merits, it wins! But I wasn’t a fan. Don’t listen to me, though. Listen to Roger Ebert! He gave the movie three-and-a-half stars and called it a feast for the imagination! He’s dead now, though, so your mileage may vary on his current opinions of the movie.