My movie watch on 11 October 2023 (I couldn't wait until 31 October, a more suitable date for watching a Halloween-relevant film like this one) was actually a rewatch – of one of my all-time favourite animated musical films. Namely, Tim Burton's supremely spooky stop-motion masterpiece The Nightmare Before Christmas (or Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas, to give it its full official title).
Directed by Henry Selick, conceived and co-produced by Tim Burton from his original 1980s story-poem, and released in 1993 by Walt Disney Studio's Buena Vista Pictures (followed by a 2006 re-release in 3D by Walt Disney Pictures), The Nightmare Before Christmas has as its central character the charismatic, enigmatic, Gothic-garbed, and eponymously-skeletal Jack Skellington (voiced when speaking by Chris Sarandon).
Jack is the Pumpkin King, the perennially popular Leader of the perpetually phantasmal, ghoulish realm of Halloween Town (cue this film musical's first song, 'This is Halloween'). Lately, however, he has become bored of his realm's annual Halloween festival (cue the poignant, melancholic song 'Jack's Lament'), and seeks something new, something different. So Fate duly if unexpectedly obliges him, when Jack accidentally enters the perpetually festive, joyful realm of Christmas Town and becomes enraptured by what he sees, hears, and senses there (cue the movie's most famous song, 'What's This?', sung in amazement by Jack when he encounters and explores the wonders of Christmas Town – click here to listen to and view it as it appears in the film).
Inspired immeasurably with unconscionable cheer, Jack decides to bring Christmas – and Santa Claus (voiced by Ed Ivory after first choice Vincent Price had to drop out through ill health) – to Halloween Town. Like so many good intentions, however, Jack's don't go according to plan, and although they don't lead to Hell, they do lead to Halloween Town's dreaded bogeyman, Oogie Boogie (voiced and sung by Ken Page) when this evil entity (an animate sack filled with hundreds of creepy-crawly bugs!) captures poor Santa and threatens to do bad things to him – very bad things!! Moreover, like so many of the most memorable Disney villains, Oogie Boogie has one of the best songs in the movie – namely, the self-explanatory 'Oogie Boogie's Song' (and here it is), staged in a dazzlingly psychedelic setting.
Meanwhile, it's up to Jack, assisted by Frankensteinian rag doll and love interest Sally (Catherine O'Hara), created from spare parts by the sinister, hyper-controlling mad scientist Doctor Finkelstein (William Hickey) to be his compliant daughter but who only has eyes for Jack (cue 'Sally's Song'), together with all of the other Halloween Town inhabitants (including Jack's ghostly but seriously cute glowing-nosed pet dog Zero), to rescue Santa Claus (or Sandy Claws, as Jack and co all mistakenly call him!) and restore him as well as everything else to how it all used to be and needs once more to be in both Towns – no easy task!
The Nightmare Before Christmas is painstakingly detailed, immensely inventive, and visually spectacular, but this incredible dark fantasy-themed movie is enhanced still further by the suitably eerie music and almost a dozen songs composed for it by Danny Elfman – who also provides the singing voice of Jack.
I'm not a massive Burton fan – quite frankly, I find his obsessive pre-occupation with darkness and death somewhat morbid and not a little disturbing and depressing at times – but this movie is truly amazing to watch and listen to, a perfect example of the very special cinematic magic that no other medium can even begin to conjure forth.
Indeed, The Nightmare Before Christmas was actually nominated for an Academy Award for Best Visual Effects (losing out to Jurassic Park); and was accorded the coveted #1 position by voters for a 2008 listing by the film review website Rotten Tomatoes of the Top 25 Best Christmas Movies (click here to access the entire listing and check through its 25 ranked entries, film by film).
Although there have been thoughts by Disney ever since 2001 about producing a sequel to this movie, but in either CGI animation or live–action format rather than stop-motion again, nothing has materialized; ditto re a recently-expressed wish by its original director, Henry Selick, to produce a prequel, revealing how Jack became the Pumpkin King. Moreover, earlier this present month, November 2023, Burton was quoted in an Empire magazine interview article (click here to read it) as saying that he has no wish to revisit the movie, either via sequels or reboots.
So with the exception of its appearances in certain video games, it looks as if we shall have to content ourselves with re-experiencing the one and only visit to Halloween Town and Jack Skellington that is currently (and may well ever be) available – The Nightmare Before Christmas. But as this is such an eminently rewatchable movie, one that reveals new delights each and every time that we return to it, this is not so terrible a hardship as might otherwise be the case.
And if you would like to pay a visit to Halloween Town right now, be sure to click here to watch an official trailer on YouTube for The Nightmare Before Christmas.
Finally: to view a complete chronological listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE, and please click HERE to view a complete fully-clickable alphabetical listing of them.
No comments:
Post a Comment