Background
The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)
is producer Tim Burton's
imaginatively dark, musical fantasy and original yet spooky stop-motion
animated tale. Directed by Burton's colleague at Disney Animation Henry
Selick, it was also known as "Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas"
- and served as a celebratory look at two major holidays - Halloween and Christmas.
Selick's
feature directorial debut was based on the 3-page, 1982 parodic poem
of the same name by visionary producer Burton, written when he was a
Disney animator. His ideas were shelved temporarily, and Burton went
on to direct big budget films for Warner Bros.' including the odd-ball
comedy
Pee-wee's Big Adventure (1985)
, the fantasy-horror comedy
Beetlejuice
(1988),
and the superhero film
Batman
(1989)
, plus 20th Century Fox's
Edward Scissorhands (1990)
.
Due to his heavy workload on Warners'
Batman
Returns (1992)
and pre-production work on
Ed Wood (1994)
,
Burton was forced to turn over the directorial reins to Henry Selick,
while scriptwriter Caroline Thompson (who had written
Scissorhands
)
completed the final script that was earlier adapted by Michael McDowell.
The charming yet gothic, macabre and weird film, the first full-length
stop-motion animated film, was an extraordinary achievement and ground-breaking
in its use of computers to aid the complex, painstaking stop-motion
animation process. Sophisticated computer-controlled cameras executed
state-of-the-art camera movement for this feature film's stop-motion
animation. It was the first fully-animated Disney film to not be
traditionally animated. The stop-motion film was
directly inspired by a number of animated Christmas
TV specials, such as Rankin/Bass' productions of
Rudolph, The
Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964)
and
Santa Claus Is Comin' To Town (1970),
and Dr.
Seuss'
How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (1966)
.
There were over 100 specially trained camera operators,
puppet makers, set builders, and prop makers. There were 13 animators,
8 camera crews, and 4 sculptors. The amazing technical brilliance
of over 120+ animators and other technicians were displayed
with stop-motion animated puppets (227 in number), multiple heads
(and facial expressions) for the two main characters (Jack and Sally).
Puppets (built of a foam latex material covering intricate metal
armatures to allow for flexible movement) were manipulated frame-by-frame
on real miniature sets. There were a total of 19 sound stages, comprising
230 model sets. There are as many as 60 individual characters, with three
or four duplicates each. To allow for different emotions of the main
character Jack Skellington, he alone had 700 heads. The other
main character Sally had a mask for every one of her expression changes.
The painstaking film took nearly three years
to complete (dozens of animators and crew members averaged only about
60-70 seconds of completed film per week), because each different
pose or position equaled a 24th of a second. The animators had to
create unique motions for a total of 110,000 frames.
It featured wonderfully-realized set designs -- such
as the two holiday dream-worlds: the dark, German Expressionistic,
Cabinet of Dr. Caligari-ish and
The Night
of the Hunter
-ish Halloween Town, and the round, bright Christmas
Town (based on Dr. Seuss' artwork, reminiscient of Whoville) -- set
to the jazzily unorthodox, and often spooky lyrics in ten originally-composed
songs by Danny Elfman: ("And since I am dead / I can take off my head / And recite Shakespearean
quotations"). The 76-minute animation's tagline was: "A ghoulish
tale with wicked humour & stunning animation." [Note: Elfman had became prominent in the
early 1980s as the singer-songwriter for the new wave band Oingo
Boingo.]
The original, fanciful yet twisted tale was about
a bored, depressed and skeletal Jack Skellington (Chris Sarandon
with Danny Elfman supplying his singing voice) with shy rag-doll
Sally (Catherine O'Hara) as his understanding and loyal girlfriend
from afar. Jack grew weary of his repetitive role as the Pumpkin
King of Halloween Town overseeing the scary holiday of Halloween.
When he discovered the enchanting, radically-different Christmas
Town and its leader Santa Claus (Ed Ivory), he became obsessed with
trying to capture the town's joy. His well-meaning but disastrous
mission to steal the holiday put Santa Claus into jeopardy when he
was kidnapped and tortured.
The PG-rated family film, released by Disney's more
adult-oriented Touchstone Pictures, was largely ignored in its initial
release (partially due to its scary and dark nature too difficult to
handle for very young children), but gained a dedicated following on
video release that grew quickly and made it a cult favorite. On
a budget of $18-24 million, its box-office total (after many re-releases)
was $77.4 million (domestic) and $91.2 million (worldwide). Although
the animated film has been well-received, its popularity never exceeded
the praise for Disney's other more traditional and safer film of the
year,
The Lion King (1993)
.
Nightmare's
ultimate moderate success enabled
Tim Burton to produce another stop-motion animated film
James
and the Giant Peach (1996)
, based on the Roald Dahl book of the
same name and also directed by Henry Selick.
The incredibly original and creative film received
a milestone Academy Award Nomination for Best Visual Effects - a
first for an animated film. It was an obvious oversight that Danny
Elfman didn't receive a nomination for the inventive musical score.
It was re-released by Disney in Digital 3-D in 2006, and became the
first stop-motion animated feature to be entirely converted to 3D.
Plot Synopsis
The Film's Opening - Halloween Town and Jack The
Pumpkin King:
The introductory lines of the story were delivered
by narrator Santa (voice of Edward Ivory) inside a circle of trees
- to explain the origin of major holidays. According
to the narration, each holiday had its own town or world:
'Twas a long time ago,
Longer now than it seems, In a place that perhaps you've seen in
your dreams, For the story that you are about to be told, Took place
in the holiday worlds of old. Now you've probably wondered where
holidays come from. If you haven't, I'd say It's time you begun.
A hatch or portal opened on a tree with a Jack O'Lantern
decoration, and the camera tracked into the darkness toward Halloween
Town's sign-post - a glowing pumpkin-head on a scarecrow structure,
with both arms outstretched and pointing in the direction of the
town after the wind twisted it around. In particular,
the town of Halloween (or Halloween Town) - was presented with a cold
and shadowy color palette of dark greys, browns, and blacks, due
to its specialization in frightening people.
In the film's amazing
musical opening that began in a cemetery filled with tombstones,
"This
Is Halloween"
was performed by
the malicious denizens of Halloween Town (spooks, goblins, ghosts (one
was two-headed), bats, vampires, ghouls, black cats, witches on broomsticks,
skeletons, monsters, a rotund costumed clown with a grinning row of
teeth, and various other creatures, etc.). [Note: One of the film's
main characters, the town's outcast named Oogie-Boogie, made a brief
appearance as a shadowy silhouette over the full moon.] During one
verse, limbs on a talking Hanging Tree held five swaying skeletons
who had been hung by the neck:
Boys and girls of every
age / Wouldn't you like to see something strange? / Come with us
and you will see / This our town of Halloween / This is Halloween
This is Halloween / Pumpkins scream in the dead of night / This
is Halloween Everybody make a scene / Trick-or-treat till the
neighbor's gonna die of fright / It's our town Everybody scream
/ In this town of Halloween / I am the one hiding under your bed
/ Teeth ground sharp and eyes glowing red / I am the one hiding
under your stairs / Fingers like snakes and spiders in my hair
/ This is Halloween This is Halloween / Halloween Halloween
Halloween Halloween / In this town we call home / Everyone hail
to the pumpkin song / In this town Don't we love it now? / Everybody's
waiting for the next surprise.
Round that corner, man Hiding in the trash cans / Something's waiting
now to pounce and how you'll scream / This is Halloween Red and black
and slimy green / Aren't you scared? Well, that's just fine / Say
it once, say it twice Take a chance and roll the dice / Ride with
the moon in the dead of night / Everybody scream Everybody scream /
In our town of Halloween / I am the clown with the tear-away face /
Here in a flash and gone without a trace / I am the who when you call
'Who's there?' / I am the wind blowing through your hair / I am the
shadow on the moon at night / Filling your dreams to the brim with
fright / This is Halloween This is Halloween / Halloween, Halloween
Halloween, Halloween.
Tender lumplings everywhere / Life's no fun without a good scare / That's
our job But we're not mean / In our town of Halloween / In this town
Don't we love it now? / Everyone's waiting for the next surprise /
Skeleton Jack might catch you in the back / And scream like a banshee
Make you jump out of your skin / This is Halloween Everybody scream
/ Would you please make way for a very special guy? / Our man Jack
is king of the pumpkin patch / Everyone hail to the Pumpkin King now
/ This is Halloween This is Halloween / Halloween, Halloween Halloween,
Halloween / In this town we call home / Everyone hail to the pumpkin
song.
The song introduced their locale just after their prime
celebration of the year - Halloween. As the song concluded,
a parade of important figures in the town appeared. The main character
- a bored, depressed, spindly, gaunt and spider-like, skeletal Jack
Skellington (Chris Sarandon with Elfman supplying his singing voice),
was known as the ruling 'Pumpkin King' of Halloween Town. The tall
and skinny Jack - with a baseball-shaped, round skeleton-head and
a stitched mouth - rose up in front of the town and was praised
by everyone (with cackling and applause) for another successful celebration
of the holiday of Halloween, including the literally two-faced Mayor
(Glenn Shadix) (his cone-shaped spinning head alternated between
'happy' and 'sad' faces) with his entourage. [Note: The Mayor's tie
was a black-widow spider.] He lauded Jack for his "brilliant
leadership," and Jack agreed with everyone's assessment:
I believe it was our most horrible yet.
Jack appeared as a debonair and graceful figure very
much like the skinny famed dancer Fred Astaire, wearing a
black pin-striped suit complete with a bat bow-tie and black dress
shoes. He had delivered another successful annual Halloween holiday
to the town - with tremendous adulation: ("You're a witch's
fondest dream....Ooh, Jack, you make wounds ooze and flesh crawl!").
Meanwhile, shy humanoid rag-doll Sally (Catherine O'Hara),
Jack's future understanding and loyal girlfriend, was watching from
afar, and was completely enamoured by Jack. She had been created
("fathered")
and stitched together (like Frankenstein or The Bride) by Halloween
Town's evil, duck-headed mad scientist Dr. Finkelstein (William Hickey),
who had a hinged skull that could open up and expose his brain,
and rode in a motor-driven wheelchair. With her knowledge of toxicology,
she was able to briefly evade being locked up as a captive by again
putting deadly nightshade into Finkelstein's soup to render him unconscious.
However, he revived, grabbed her by the arm and dragged her away.
She pulled one of the stitches holding her arm to her body, and its
release sent Finkelstein crashing to the ground, and then she quickly
fled.
Prizes were handed out by the Mayor:
- Our first award goes to the vampires for "most
blood drained in a single evening."
- Our second and honorable mention goes to the "fabulous
Dark Lagoon leeches."
Jack's Lament in the Cemetery:
Although Jack was aware of his prodigious talent in
scaring people, he snuck away from the award-proceedings. At the outskirts of town,
one of the town's three beggars congratulated Jack: "Nice work, Bone
Daddy," but he had grown weary and tired of his repetitive, annual
role as the Pumpkin King of Halloween Town's pagan holiday. Sally
also escaped to the town's nearby graveyard with creaking gates to
eavesdrop on Jack as he entered.
Jack proceeded through the cemetery with his ghostly,
spectral dog Zero floating along behind him. [Note: Zero's nose was
actually in the shape of a very tiny, glowing jack-o'-lantern.] As
he climbed to the top of a curlicue hill known as Spiral Hill and
was silhouetted by the full moon, he sang of his dissatisfaction
with his life, even though he conceitedly admitted:
"I have swept the very bravest off their feet." Feeling
a big "emptiness" that he was missing joy in his
life, Jack (with his talk-singing voice) performed an existential torch
song:
"Jack's
Lament"
:
There are few who deny at what I do I am the best
/ For my talents are renowned far and wide / When it comes to surprises
in the moonlit night / I excel without ever even trying / With
the slightest little effort of my ghost-like charms / I have seen
grown men give out a shriek / With a wave of my hand and a well-placed
moan / I have swept the very bravest off their feet / Yet,
year after year It's the same routine / And I grow so weary of the
sound of screams / And I, Jack, the Pumpkin King / Have grown so
tired of the same old thing
Oh, somewhere deep / Inside of these
bones / An emptiness / Began to grow / There's something out there
/ Far from my home / A longing that / I've never known.
I'm the master of fright and a demon of light / And
I'll scare you right out of your pants / (ghosts moaned) / To a guy
in Kentucky I'm Mr. Unlucky / And I'm known throughout England and
France / And since I am dead I can take off
my head / To recite Shakespearean quotations / No
animal nor man can scream like I can / With the fury of my recitations
Sally followed and hid as she watched Jack crying out
for help, when he implied that he was dead and he removed
his own head "to recite Shakespearean quotations." [Note: Jack was
referencing and alluding to Shakespeare's play
Hamlet
,
when the title character looked upon the skull of Yorick, his deceased
court jester.] She also heard him boast: "No
animal nor man can scream like I can."
But who here / Would ever understand /
That the Pumpkin King with the skeleton grin / Would tire of his
crown? / If they only understood / He'd give it all up / If he
only could / Oh, there's an empty place / in my bones / That calls
out for / Something unknown / The fame and praise / Come year after
year / Does nothing for / These empty tears
When his song came to an end, the concerned
Sally tenderly expressed her empathy for Jack: "I know how you feel."
In the graveyard, she gathered more 'Deadly Nightshade' and returned
to Dr. Finkelstein's laboratory (with a circular satellite top for
conducting electricity) to retrieve her separated right arm. The
mad scientist was angry at her for continuing to slip nightshade
into his tea and for disobediently running away, and reprimanded
her: "I made you with my own hands." He reattached her right arm
with a large needle and thread.
As Jack walked into the woods with Zero barking behind
him, Jack reached into his jacket, reluctantly broke off one of his
rib bones, and threw it for Zero to go fetch.
Jack's Discovery in the Woods (The Hinterlands)
of Tree Portals to Other Holiday Towns:
The next morning, the Mayor arrived at Jack's spooky
home. He entered through Jack's iron front gate with a pumpkin-shaped
entry. The two stone pillars on the sides of the gate were shaped
like screeching cats. The Mayor rang the dead spider-on-a-pulley
doorbell to the front door's left (to produce the sound of a woman's
scream), and observed the eyeball-peephole. He was enthusiastic
with plans for the next annual Halloween celebration, but discovered
that Jack had not returned home all night. When the Mayor became
agitated, he was frustrated: "I'm only an elected official
here. I can't make decisions by myself" - a scathing comment about
his own political ineptness.
Meanwhile,
in the woods at dawn, Jack had discovered an unfamiliar clearing of
seven trees set in a circle with different symbols on portal-doors
representing various holidays, ordered clockwide, with objects on
the ground in front of each one:
Symbol
|
Holiday
|
Object
|
Pinkish-Red Heart
|
Valentine's Day
|
Round Pink and White Gift Package with Red Ribbon Bow
|
Green Four-Leaf Clover
|
St. Patrick's Day
|
3 mushrooms
|
Colored Egg
|
Easter
|
3 colored eggs
|
Turkey
|
Thanksgiving
|
Black Puritan Hat with Buckle
|
Decorated Christmas Tree
|
Christmas
|
3 stacked red gift boxes tied with white ribbon
|
Jack O'Lantern
|
Halloween
|
|
Firecracker with White Stars on Red Background
|
Independence Day, July 4th
|
3 red firecrackers with fuses
|
[Note: During Jack's observation of the seven holidays
on the trees, the Turkey and Easter trees switched positions.] Through
one of many holiday portals-doors, the curious Jack was attracted
to the "Christmas" tree and chose to enter into the enchanting,
radically-different world of snowy, gleeful, fun-filled and sparkling
Christmas Town. He reached for and turned a gleaming, shiny, reflective
golden bulb decoration on the Christmas tree, and the portal opened.
A wind blew him into the opening and the swirling whirlwind of snowflakes
took him downward and he landed on a pile of snow.
|