The Nightmare Before Christmas

Review by Guido Henkel
Cover

The Nightmare Before Christmas    (1993)                       Buena Vista Home Entertainment

Length:         76 mins.                                              Rated:           PG                                                               Languages: English, French                                       Subtitles:     English, Spanish                                                Format:       Letterboxed                                                          

Jack

When I saw the first pictures from “The Nightmare Before Christmas” a few years ago, I knew this would be one of the greatest Tim Burton movies ever. Time proved me right. In his radical visual style, Burton pulls out all the stops. The world of “The Nightmare Before Christmas” is odd, yet beautiful; haunting, yet mesmerizing, filled with visual surprises and eye candy. As an animated movie, it’s a total departure from other Disney animated features partly because of Burton’s style, and partly because of the stop-motion - as opposed to painted cel - animation Burton uses. It takes you to a realm few filmmakers have dared.

The movie tells the story of the Pumpkin King, Jack Skellington, a spindly, lovable skeleton. He’s the ruler of  a strange place called Halloweentown. This city is devoted to preparing Halloween every year for its presentation to mankind. This year finds Jack bored of the same routine year-in and year-out. While pondering  how to change  his kingdom, he stumbles into another world, called Christmastown. He is intrigued by the beauty of this world and the happiness and joyfulness of its inhabitants. Returning home he tries to explain the idea of Christmas to Halloweentown’s citizens   a bunch of ghosts, ghouls, witches, vampires, werewolves and other ghastly creatures and pronounces proudly, “This year Christmas will be ours!”
Santa Jack

They kidnap Santa Claus - to whom Jack mistakenly refers as “Sandy Claws” - and go to work to prepare Christmas in his stead. Unfortunately, the well-meaning Jack and his buddies don’t quite get the meaning of Christmas; when Jack is riding through the skies in a coffin-shaped sleigh pulled by skeletal reindeer, he delivers presents to the children of this world that are wildly inappropriate. 

This is a present

Though Burton was the creative mind behind “Nightmare”, a lot of credit has to go to director Henry Selick, who, like Burton himself, is a veteran stop-motion animator, and who actually brought this movie to life. While Burton thought up the world, the story, its inhabitants, and worked on the production design, it was Selick and his team who spent endless hours building and animating all those puppets, shooting them frame by frame. The result is outstanding, making “Nightmare” one of the best looking and most fluid stop-motion animation movies ever made.
Sally

“The Nightmare Before Christmas” is a rich, stunning DVD that comes in its proper 1.66:1 widescreen aspect ratio. As with other Disney DVDs, this one does not have a Pan&Scan version. The transfer is exemplary with not the slightest of noise or artifacts and an amount of detail that leaves you speechless. Although it is not enhanced for anamorphic widescreen displays, it shows  many more details than other version of the movie, and simply appears to be a lot crispier.
Sleigh

Another highlight of the movie is Danny Elfman’s brilliant orchestral score and musical pieces. He  lends his singing voice to Jack Skellington, while Chris Sarandon does the talking. The songs are clever with funny lyrics, and have a lot more potential than the usual Disney sing-alongs. His score is well-arranged, with unexpected depths. His trademark basses come across to good effect on this 5.1 channel Dolby Digital encoded disc. My absolute favorite, however, is the attempt of Halloweentown’s musicians to do “Jingle Bells”, where Elfman subtly transfers the theme into a minor key to add a sad mood to it. Great work - I am sure it will bring a smile on your face, too.
My name is...

If you do not have a favorite Christmas movie for this year, get “The Nightmare Before Christmas” and let the inhabitants of Halloweentown run wild in your living room. It is a hilarious modern classic, and has received a terrific transfer to DVD. Remember, however, the movie is rated PG, mostly as a result of the bizarre puppets and its Halloweeny ghoulish content.
Christmastown
 
 

November 1997
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