Watch Tim Burton’s earliest animated short movie
For even casual fans, it’s no surprise that Tim Burton began his cinematic journey immersed in animation. After Beetlejuice and his stints in the Batman universe, Burton would return again to the freedom of animation with the likes of The Nightmare Before Christmas and Corpse Bride, where the medium would allow his most demented and imaginative creations to come to life.
However, Burton was honing his craft and flexing his storytelling muscles with animation as far back as the 1970s. From little DIY stop-motion shorts to slightly more advanced technical tests, it was in these early doodles and frames that Burton sowed the seeds of a style that would eventually blossom into his unmistakable signature. His distinct sensibilities, particularly an obsession with the macabre, were evident even in his formative years.
Almost all of these early works have been lost to history, but one invaluable relic remains: a less than two-minute short animation test called Stalk of the Celery Monster from 1979. Watching the project reveals how Burton’s fascination with eerie stories was deeply ingrained from the outset. This piece, in particular, showcased a Frankenstein-esque mad scientist, a character trope that would consistently reappear in Burton’s future projects.
In fact, Stalk of the Celery Monster feels like a precursor to every unusual and darkly whimsical world that would populate Burton’s cinematic universe. There’s the fusion of childlike fantasy with gothic horror, the playful prod at middle-class suburbia, and a relentless commitment to emphasising atmosphere over actual, concrete plot. To loosely summarise, this short features a demented scientist and his Igor-like assistant. Is the assistant the Celery Monster? One can only assume, although it doesn’t resemble a stalk of celery, and it certainly isn’t the antagonist of the short like the title would suggest.
After performing what seems like a hideous and immoral experiment on a poor, helpless subject, the mad doctor opens the door to reveal a waiting room. The twist is that he’s actually a family dentist – and these terrifying operations have, presumably, been simple dental procedures. It’s a witty subversion of our expectations, and the blending of everyday normal life with some sort of fantastical horror is something Burton would revisit with the cult favourite, Edward Scissorhands, just over ten years later.
His talent with Stalk of the Celery Monster quickly caught Disney’s attention, leading to his hiring as an animator. But when he began working on the feature-length film, 1981’s The Fox and the Hound, Burton felt somewhat misaligned with Disney’s jollier narratives. Reflecting on his early days at Disney, Burton remarked in a 1992 Chicago Tribune interview, “At first, I thought, ‘Wow, this is incredible.’ But I realised I wasn’t cut out for it. I didn’t have the patience and didn’t like what they [Disney] was doing.”
Nevertheless, Disney, acknowledging Burton’s distinctive flair, allowed him to craft his own shorts while with him. Among these was the standout Frankenweenie, which later evolved into a 2012 feature film, and 1984’s Vincent, a stop-motion tale of a young boy who dreams he is the iconic Vincent Price. They would all embody Burton’s penchant for blending childlike wonder with shadowy themes – but Stalk of the Celery Monster remains unique for being our earliest glimpse into the mind of a genius.
