The Film: The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) Buy it from CHUD on Blu-Ray or DVD
The Principals: Henry Selick (directed) Danny Elfman, Chris Sarandon, Catherine O’Hara
The Premise: Jack Skellington, the cool dude around Halloweentown, accidentally finds his way into Christmas town and inspired by the novel holiday inadvertently endangers the sanctity of both. Filmed in the now famous stop-motion aesthetic developed by Tim Burton and Henry Selick, it would go on to become enormously popular, be an annual 3D re-release, and stock the shelves of Hot Topics nationwide.
Is it Good: While I would gladly blast if off the face of the world to undo every dollar of profit Hot Topic has ever brought in, it’s quite good. The songs are catchy, the animation is bold and interesting, and the story is original. There’s a wonderfully unmatched blend of scary and sweet, fun and frightening. While Tim Burton tends to get all of the credit (half of which he does deserve) and be the only name mentioned, but Henry Selick’s fantastic direction gives this the spark that puts it over the top. Now that we’ve seen Selick completely untethered with Coraline to do his own thing, it’s even more apparent how much talent he was bringing to the table.
That said, Tim Burton’s aesthetic inspired a team of animators to produce an incredibly rich and detailed stage of a world for the story to transpire within. Even Danny Elfman, who was still close enough in temporal proximity to Oingo Boingo to still be writing interesting, fresh music is a standout here, endowing Jack Skellington with a wonderful singing voice.
Is it worth a look: Quite possibly an annual look. Like many great films that inspire stupid cults, the goods are ultimately there, and this thing is a classic, no doubt. The animation is so fluid and well-done, but the effect so definitely analogue that it feels timeless. This could have been made thirty years ago or three.
Random Anecdotes: An anniversary album was released a few years ago and included the track below, a performance of This Is Halloween by Marilyn Manson. While this was obviously engineered to appeal to the aforementioned cult of silly goth teenagers with Zero The Ghost Dog tattoos on their ankles that they’ll regret in five years, it’s surprisingly good. Enjoy.
9 comments
such a great movie. I only go to Disneyland during the Halloween season so I can see the Nightmare version of the Haunted House, which is so much better.
Wrong. This movie is terrible, and you should all feel ashamed for enjoying it. The songs are repetitive and boring, the and the story is so halfassed you'd swear they never actually had a script. The villain is useless, and so is this stupid movie.
Oh, but it LOOKS pretty, that's important, I guess.
Galva is sad that Nightmare Before Christmas is not a super hero movie.
Boohoo, the villain is useless, boohoo…
I agree with UBU, Galva is a sad little person, and I pity them. I also kind of resent all the Hot Topic hate. I don't go in there regularly, but they have some decent comic and video game apparel.
"you should all feel ashamed for enjoying it."
I do feel ashamed, but for completely different reasons (for example, wasting my time replying to a post on chud.com).
I remember thinking this was the greatest film ever made when i thought the child was pulling an ACTUAL corpse's head out of the box. It lost some 'oomph' when I realised it was a toy's head instead; still, it's a great moment.
Great film. I know one of those morons with a tattoo that comes from this movie. And if this film didn't exist, she'd be blindly worshipping something else.
Thank god CHUD has the courage to review this little known movie. Most of the world has never heard of Nightmare Before Christmas, and I'm glad CHUD is here to expose all of us to those film gems that slip under the radar. Hopefully they can find time to review a hard to find movie about aliens I have heard of called E.T. Not sure if you can get a copy of such an obscure movie though.
Actually, #8, finding a copy of ET with guns instead of walkie-talkies is pretty challenging.
Comments are shown as archived from the original site; new comments are closed.