What’s this? What’s this? Halloween movie #23 is The Nightmare Before Christmas (AKA the movie keeping the doors open at every mall Hot Topic in America).
The semi-never-ending echo chamber debate of “Is it a Christmas movie or is it a Halloween movie?” can be put to rest right now — it’s whatever you want it to be. It’s a glorious double dip.
You know the movie. I won’t recap the plot, Wikipedia will: “It tells the story of Jack Skellington, a resident as well as The King of “Halloween Town” who stumbles through a portal to “Christmas Town” and decides to celebrate the holiday, with some dastardly and comical consequences”
The town is called Halloween Town. Jack is a singing skeleton. Santa/Christmas imagery a’plenty. Ghouls and goblins a’plenty. A goddamn clown with a tear-away face.
Scary enough for kids. Cool enough for goth teens. Songs for people age 8 to 80.
The songs are all incredibly catchy. The visuals are great. The picture holds up.
The pre-CG commitment to handcrafted stop motion animation is another strange landmark of awesomeness that a creatively bankrupt system never would support.
Ah, to recapture a time when weirdos were given strange freedom to make problematic, strange, dangerous, beautiful art.
It’s one of the best animated/stop motion animated pictures ever made.
To hell with Pixar. This is the real deal. Fun, engaging, exciting, catchy, thematically and visually dark.
Goth/alt kids unite.
Perhaps my favorite musical?
Despite carrying Tim Burton’s name — he did not direct it. Henry Selick did.
Based (loosely) on a poem Tim Burton wrote in the 80s when he was employed by the Mouse House.
A masterpiece from an artistic standpoint, from a musical standpoint, from a character design standpoint.
Put it in a museum.
Merit badges for all the scouts that worked on this one!
Currently streaming on Hulu as part of Huluween.
Recommendations for alternate/further viewing: None. Go watch this.