For this year’s 31 Nights of Horror Challenge, the Day 30 prompt was Family Friendly. This was a tough one because I didn’t want to choose something cheesy like Hocus Pocus or Casper the Friendly Ghost or something like that so we went with another of the Tim Burton movies.We choose The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993).
Just because I cannot see it, doesn't mean I can't believe it!
Storyline
Jack Skellington, the pumpkin king of Halloween Town, is bored with doing the same thing every year for Halloween. One day he stumbles into Christmas Town, and is so taken with the idea of Christmas that he tries to get the resident bats, ghouls, and goblins of Halloween Town to help him put on Christmas instead of Halloween — but alas, they can’t get it quite right.
Our Thoughts on The Nightmare Before Christmas
To us this movie is almost perfect. It I hard to believe that it is 30 years old and still holds up great. It has been a very long time since I have seen it and I watched it with such nuance that I was able to pick out a lot of the Tim Burton Easter Eggs.
Tim Burton’s ‘The Nightmare Before Christmas’ is about Jack Skellington, the Pumpkin King, who lives in Halloweentown. One day he goes through a door in a tree and arrives in Christmastown and sees how happy and beautiful it is over there. When he is back in Halloweentown he shows his friends what Christmas is like, and he suggests to do Christmas this year instead of Halloween. Things do not go as planned.
Everything is beautifully animated and although the story is not that great it is entertaining the whole way through. I liked all the songs in the movie and there are some good laughs as well. Definitely worth watching.
9 out of 10
Trivia
We named one of our puppy litters after this movie, Lock, Shock, Barrel and Burton.
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.
(at around 13 mins) 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.
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.” Having created demos of all the songs in the movie for the director’s approval, Elfman had gotten really attached to Jack, since he could relate to being loved and famous (as he was lead singer of his band Oingo Boingo), but like Jack, he was no longer happy with his situation. Elfman mustered up all his courage to ask his friend and producer Tim Burton if he could voice Jack, but before he could finish, Burton simply told him “Danny, don’t worry about it, you got the part.”
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.
Zero’s nose is actually a tiny glowing jack-o’-lantern.
In the extended ending to the film heard on the soundtrack album, many years later, Santa Claus returns to Halloween Town to visit Jack, and finds that Jack has about four or five skeleton children.
In the first few seconds after the title is shown, you can see that there are actually 7 Holiday Doors. Going counter clockwise, the doors are: A Pumpkin (for Halloween), A decorated Christmas Tree (for Christmas), A turkey (for Thanksgiving), A brightly colored egg (for Easter), a green four leafed clover (for St. Patrick’s Day), a red heart (for Valentines Day), and a red and white and blue firework that can only be seen at the very beginning for just a few seconds. This door could be for American Independence Day or British Bonfire Night.
