The Nightmare Before Christmas

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This film has been preserved in the National Film Registry in 2023.

The Nightmare Before Christmas
"This is Halloween!"
Genre: Musical Dark fantasy Horror Black comedy Directed By: Henry Selick Produced By: Tim Burton Denise Di Novi Written By/Screenplay: Tim Burton Michael McDowell Caroline Thompson Based On: Poem by Tim Burton Starring: Danny Elfman Chris Sarandon Catherine O'Hara William Hickey Glenn Shadix Paul Reubens Ken Page Ed Ivory Release Date: October 13, 1993 (limited) October 29, 1993 (United States) Country: United States Budget: $24 million Box Office: $91.5 million

The Nightmare Before Christmas (also known as Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas) is a 1993 American stop-motion animated musical dark fantasy film directed by Henry Selick and produced and conceived by Tim Burton. The film premiered at the New York Film Festival on October 9, 1993, and was given a limited release on October 13, 1993, before its wide theatrical release on October 29, 1993.

Plot

The film follows the misadventures of Jack Skellington, Halloween Town's beloved pumpkin king, who has become bored with the same annual routine of frightening people in the "real world." When Jack accidentally stumbles on Christmas Town, all bright colors and warm spirits, he gets a new lease on life -- he plots to bring Christmas under his control by kidnapping Santa Claus and taking over the role. But Jack soon discovers even the best-laid plans of mice and skeleton men can go seriously awry.

Why It's Spook-tacular!

1. It was the very first full-length theatrically released Disney movie to be entirely stop-motion animated, which is the purest form of the stop-motion Disney animation as well as stop-motion film in general. This would start the most important trend of stop-motion animation that was also released in theaters.
2. Perfect musical score by Danny Elfman, who composed music for The Simpsons and season 11 of My Life.
3. The idea of a story about a group of horror stuff stealing Christmas is very interesting.
4. Catchy and memorable songs, such as "This is Halloween", "What's This?" and "I'm the Oogie Boogie Man!" (the latter of which is Oogie Boogie's villain song).
   • "Making Christmas" was the film's very silly song.
5. Brilliant stop-motion animation.
   • The hand-drawn animation for the ghosts is very smooth.
6. Very goofy-looking, memorable character designs.
7. Despite being originally released under Disney's Touchstone Pictures (as its only fully-animated film) banner in 1993, it was one of Disney's darker-toned family films due to the PG rating, the other one being Who Framed Roger Rabbit?.
8. Great humor, such as when Lock, Shock, and Barrel have mistaken the Easter Bunny for Santa Claus and Jack scares them away.
   • Also, the black comedy humor is hilarious.
9. Great, hilarious, magical mix between Halloween horror and Christmas jolliness, which is a creative idea for a movie, thanks to the magic of both Walt Disney studios and Tim Burton.
10. The 2006 3D re-release is very good.
11. Most of their dubs are extremely far superior and decent such as Latin Spanish (Jack, Sally, Mayor, Oogie Boogie, etc...) European Spanish (Jack, Sally, Dr. Finkelstein, Oogie Boogie, Santa Claus) Brazilian Portuguese [2003 version] (Jack, Sally, Mayor, Santa Claus, etc.) German (Jack, Sally, Mayor, Dr. Finkelstein, etc.) French, Russian, Italian, and Polish (Jack, Sally, Oogie Boogie, The Citizens of Halloween Town)
12. Excellent directing of Henry Selick.
13. Though there are no sequel or prequel films, it spawned a sequel book called Long Live the Pumpkin Queen, which features Sally as the protagonist and came out on August 2, 2022.

Bad Qualities

1. Lock, Shock, and Barrel can be a bit annoying at times.
2. While Oogie Boogie is an awesome twist villain, we never understand or even know his motives, unlike all of the other Disney villains.
3. The film is a bit too short when compared to later stop motion films, only clocking at a run time of 76 minutes which isn't a lot and is more acceptable for a Direct-to-DVD film. However, since this doesn't affect the film's quality overall, it can be understood if you look at the film's origins for production.

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