Through the years, Tim Burton has built his own cinematographic empire, a kingdom of darkness and strange things, each one more fascinating than the other. For his 14th film (the third one as producer), he explored two of the greatest celebrations: Halloween and Christmas. So here, in CelebMix, for our 10th day of the Christmas Film Advent we bring you “The Nightmare before Christmas”.
(We are sure almost 98% of our readers have watched this one tho).
There are some trees in the Holiday Woods, each tree contains a door that leads to different holidays worlds: Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day, Easter, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and, Halloween. When the film starts, the residents of Halloween Town celebrate another successful Halloween night, praising their king and protagonist of this story: Jack Skellington.
However, even though the whole town continues celebrating, Jack feels empty, there is something missing in his -after- life and he does not know what it is. Therefore, he walks and walks, until he arrives these woods, and he falls into Christmas Town.
The happiness and joy of Christmas amazes Jack, he loves the decorations, the presents, all the love and people sharing. He also meets Santa Claus, and decides he wants this for his town.
When he goes back to Halloween Town all he wants is to share what he found with his people, so he gather them all to show them some things he brought, presents, socks and more stuff. But not knowing anything else than Halloween, they don’t get it, they think Christmas is also scary and “Sandy Claws” is an evil being. They start to plan their Christmas, in their own dark way.
Jack gets obsessed with Christmas, the only person who seems to understand him is Sally, a kind of rag doll in love with him who has a bad feeling about this Christmas in Halloween Town, meanwhile three kids (named Lock, Shock and Barrel) plan to kidnap “Sandy Claws” and take him to Oogie Boogie, our main villain.
With Santa Claus trapped in a bogeyman’s cave, and a skeleton bringing toys (made in Halloween Town) to all the kids on Earth, how could anything go wrong?
Made on stop motion animation, with wonderful songs that many artists had covered, The Nightmare Before Christmas let us fly into a world where Christmas and Halloween collide, mixed with music from the great Danny Elfman and an unforgettable visual aesthetic. Not only a Disney classic, but a film that every generation could love, full of elements we see now every day as a part of our pop culture. It definitely couldn’t be missing in our list.
Title: The Nightmare before Christmas (or Tim Burton’s The Nightmare before Christmas)
Year: 1993.
Direction: Henry Selick
Production: Tim Burton, Denise Di Novi.
Starring: Chris Sarandon, Catherine O’Hara, William Hickey, Glenn Shadix, Ken Page.
Music by: Danny Elfman.
Tweet us at @CelebMix or leave a comment on our Facebook to let us know what you think of this film, also don’t forget to check out next days of our Christmas Film Advent!