Animation Celebration Saturday - The Nightmare Before Christmas

Disney, 1993
Voices of Chris Sarandon, Catherine O'Hara, Ken Page, and William Hickey
Directed by Henry Sellick
Music and Lyrics by Danny Elfman

This is probably Disney's most popular contribution to the horror genre. Disney was so concerned with the bizarre results, they released it under their adult Touchstone banner. It was a sleeper hit in October 1993, but frequent showings on cable and re-releases in theaters during October have made it a cult favorite. Does it deserve the attention, or should it be sent to Oogie Boogie's dungeon? Let's head to Halloween Town to find out...

The Story: Jack Pumpkinhead (Sarandon) is the leader of Halloween Town, where the bizarre residents work to scare people out of their wits and make Halloween fun. Jack, however, has been doing this for hundreds of years, and he's bored. The night after Halloween, he goes out wandering and discovers odd-shaped doors that lead to other holidays. He enters Christmas Town, a world of peace on Earth, carols everywhere, Santa, gifts, and snow. The skeleton falls in love with Christmas and thinks this is the perfect thing to relieve his ennui. His patched-together rag doll friend Sally (O'Hara) thinks this is a bad idea. Jack and the citizens of Halloween Town don't know the first thing about Christmas. Jack is too excited with his new idea to pay attention to her worries...until they discover that she was right. The "toys" they give the children scare instead of delight them, and Santa (Ed Ivory) falls into the clutches of the most evil citizen of Halloween Town, Oogie Boogie (Page). Now Jack has to fix his mistake, before Oogie Boogie ends Santa and Sally's holidays for good.

The Animation: Wow. Sellick and his crew did some of the most amazing work of any stop-motion film here. The style, all flourishes, stripes, and curly-cues, is unique and beautifully bizarre. The detail is just incredible. Everything here, from the snow in Christmas Town to the bugs crawling around Oogie Boogie to the stitches on Sally, has been painstakingly crafted and molded. It all moves in perfect time with the music, quite a feat given some of the uptempo numbers here.

The Song and Dance: Between the unique design and the unusual story, no wonder this has picked up a huge following over the years. I like how most of the residents of Halloween Town really aren't bad...er, creatures. They enjoy scaring people, not hurting them. Jack's story is interesting and unusual, as is Sally's odd little side plot with her trying to get out from under the gloved fingers of her mad scientist father (Hickey). Oogie Boogie is one of Disney's funnier and more scary villains, and I really wish we saw more of him.

Favorite Number: While the opening chorus routine "This Is Halloween" that introduces the residents of Halloween Town and what they do and Jack's "What's This?" are probably the best-known songs, the entire score is a delight. This is actually a horror operetta, with more music than speech. Elfman is Jack's singing voice, and I don't think anyone has done "What's This?" or "Poor Jack" better.

What I Don't Like: I'd love to see more of characters like the dog Zero, the mischievous kids Lock, Stock, and Barrel, and Oogie Boogie. The villain isn't introduced until nearly half-way through an 80 minute film. We don't really see much of anyone else in Christmas Town besides Santa, either, and only the Easter Bunny from any of the other holiday lands.

The Big Finale: By far the best of Disney's non-canon animated films. I really regret having put off seeing this for so long. It might be a little too spooky for the youngest kids, but for everyone else, I can't recommend it enough.

Home Media: Out of print on DVD, but it was just re-released on Blu-Ray last month, and it's on Amazon Prime.

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Blu-Ray
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