Henry Selick – ‘A Nightmare Before Christmas’
You’d be forgiven for believing that the American director and lover of luscious gothic tales, Tim Burton, directed the 1993 stop-motion classic A Nightmare Before Christmas, but such might be one of the most common misconceptions in modern cinema. Sure, the film feels like the direct product of Burton’s twisted imagination, and indeed it is, with the creative having developed the original story whilst Henry Selick helmed the project.
Quite where the credit for the animated masterpiece should, therefore, lie is a little murky, with Selick believing he deserves more credit for the project despite Burton having developed the concept with extensive storyboards. Originally a poem partly inspired by Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Burton fleshed out the film with a proper structure, even creating character models, only for Disney to deem it “too weird” when he got around to pitching it.
Following success with such Oscar-winning movies as Beetlejuice and Batman, Disney saw the potential in the idea and A Nightmare Before Christmas was born, with Selick being put in charge of bringing Burton’s project to life. Finally hitting screens in 1993, the result of Burton’s years of development blossomed into glorious life, with the feature-length effort being a contemporary musical masterpiece that made the most of modern technological innovations.
A unique gothic vision truly unlike anything cinema had ever seen before, the tale takes place in a bleak town that exists under the permanent night sky, where a layer of mud covers the surfaces, and colour may as well be forbidden. Halloween town is the kind of place where all the monsters of your childhood nightmares congregate to bicker before slinking off to their own raucous residences.
Indeed, despite being marketed as a children’s movie, Burton’s vision is a pretty dark one, yet it is only really an ode to his own gorgeously creative world that you can’t help but love exploring. The writer and creative team behind the project know this too, filling each frame with neat surprises, from snarling imps hiding in the bracken to the landscape itself, which morphs and unfurls with a life of its own.
You’d think such a town of terrifying chaos would never have any order, yet you’d be wrong, with Jack Skellington, a tall, dapper gentleman with a pinstripe suit and a skinless skull, being the king of the town. A lover of Halloween and all its tricks and surprises, Jack’s view of life changes when he stumbles down a rabbit hole that leads him to Christmas town, a cute kingdom dedicated to the joys of the festive period. So different from the land he knows so well, Jack attempts to bring this Christmas spirit home, only for chaos to ensue.
The result is a frenetic carnival of stop-motion cinema that takes the form of filmmaking to ambitious new heights. Each character model, no matter how superfluous to the story at hand, is carefully considered, with Selick and Burton creating a land that festers with gruesome activity from the terrifying mischievousness of villain Oogie Boogie to Dr. Finkelstein, a snarling scientist who looks like the product of one of his own experiments.
It all creates such a rich tapestry of childlike wonder that is a genuine charm to interact with, especially when the town breaks out in regular song, delivering such iconic numbers as ‘This is Halloween’ and ‘Making Christmas’ inspired by the thrill of the Grand Guignol as well as such gothic cult flicks as 1975’s Rocky Horror Picture Show.
Pushing the boundaries of animation and, indeed, of cinema itself, A Nightmare Before Christmas is one of Disney’s finest-ever efforts, illustrating the company’s strength to embrace cinematic magic, no matter how “weird” the content. A horrifically humorous classic, Burton’s film, brought to life by Selick, is an ode to everything creepy, icky and downright terrifying that lurks in the restricted sections of our own minds.
