Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas: CE | DVD Review

The story of Jack Skellington, The Pumpkin King of Halloween Town, who’s grown bored and tired with the same old thing year after year before stumbling into Christmas Town and deciding to appropriate the happy holiday for himself, with dire consequences, is a wonderful film that acts as a stop-gap for children looking to fill the long November void between Halloween and Christmas.

While Tim Burton’s name is synonymous with The nighmare Before Christmas and Danny Elfman is sited with well deserved praise for the film’s music, the unsung hero of this film is director Henry Selick. Stop-motion animation is complex on the smallest scale, and Selick & co. go completely for broke with this film often times having to take a figure-it-out-as-we-go approach. When you consider that every movement of a character has to be done by hand for each frame at 24 frames per second, 60 seconds per minute with the film clocking in at 76 minutes, then add dozens of characters moving on screen at the same time with a moving camera as well. Then you can start to understand the mind boggling amount of work that it took for the film to be realized.

Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas is an unmitigated work of cinematic genius created one frame at a time.

However it’s one thing to master the technical artistry of a film, it’s a far different thing to mold it into a compelling and engrossing story. And that’s where this film really excels. The amount of creativity and imagination on display here is astounding. TNCB’s “companion films” James and the Giant Peach, also directed by Selick and produced by Burton (through sorely missing Elfman, with the woefully predictable and safe Randy Newman in his place) is a tedious affair and The Corpse Bride was (with both Elfman and Selick missing in action) just felt flat. TNBC is a resonate example of what happens when a group of talents collaborate at the hieght of their abilites.

Surprisingly, during its initial release, there was relatively little merchandising support for a film aimed at children (the Burger King Kid’s meal wrist watches notwithstanding). It wasn’t until TNBC was adopted by Goth and Asian cultures (a pairing that is just bizarre and yet apropos for this film in particular) that Jack Skellington started to appear on late-teen items like schoolbags, wallets and purses with a spattering of figurines for the more dedicated fan.

Though the film has a strong following it still hasn’t achieved the classic status of its inspirational holiday specials “It’s Halloween Charlie Brown” and the Rankin Bass stop motion Christmas specials. But all that is missing in order to get there is a little more time and perhaps a few annual broadcast airings with York Peppermint Patties commercials.


What’s This? Jack’s Haunted Mansion Holiday Tour
filmed tour of the Disney ride that has a little too much of a “Macy’s Parade” feel to it and doesn’t make it seem at all enjoyable to anyone over the age of 4.

Tim Burton’s Original poem narrated by Christopher Lee
This is the gem of the special features on this set, and is worth the double dip if you already own the previously released version. Using still-image motion-mapping with drawings based on Tim’s designs, the original poem that TNBC was based on is beautifully brought to life with Christopher Lee providing the read. Lee does a very good job, though some stanzas felt a little rushed and mumbled, and while still wonderful, will leave you wishing that Vincent Price was still available.

Film Commentary – commentary by producer and writer Tim Burton, director Henry
Selick and composer Danny Elfman.
With contributions from Burton, Elfman and Selick the commentary is robust and informative, but unfortunately they werem’t brought together to discuss it. Instead the commentary sounds a lot more like a long interview with each creative head and then interwoven throughout the film. A great deal of it is also recycled from the making of feature. On the upside, Burton, who usually sounds like he could use a strong cup of coffee on his commentaries, comes across as energetic and engaged.

Frankenweenie (1984)
An early Tim Burton short film made during his time at Disney featuring Shelly Duval and Daniel Stern and a cameo by a very young Sofia Coppola. The B&W short is a re-telling of Frankenstein with a boy and his dog standing in for the mad genious doctor and his monster. The film definitely has Burton’s signature on it with characters, set design and imagery that are premonitory to what we he would do 6 years later with Edward Scissorhands. Frankenwenie is charming and sports some really great visuals and is certainly worth repeat viewings, though it does suffer from some pacing issues and a score that is lacking. One of the several returning features from the previous DVD release, this iteration is accompanied by an introduction from Tim Burton who gives a brief anecdote about the film and announces that he is in production on a stop-motion feature length version of it, showing off a few sheets of concept art.

Vincent (1982)
Another B&W short film from his Disney days, Vincent is based on a brilliant poem by Burton about a boy who wants to be just like Vincent Price. And it was his first foray Into stop-motion production. The film also gave him an opportunity to work with his hero, Price, who provides the narration.

The Making of Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas
This is a must see for every fan of cinema and should be required viewing for animation students. This doc shows in loving detail the exhaustive amount of work, technical skill, artistry and, above all, patience that went into making this film. Of particular interest is the creation of the sets, puppets and the animation process. After you’re shown how it was done, you’ll be left reeling with the knowledge that they actually pulled it off.

The Worlds of Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas
A mixture of concept art and animation tests for the various characters and sets. The motion tests are interesting, but the concept art is so close to the final look of the film that it comes off as surprisingly uninteresting. Despite the wonderful amount of imagination on display. Perhaps they just got it too perfect for this feature to hold any interest past that comparison.

Deleted Scenes
Most of these are extensions of included scenes with one the exception of once that represented an alternate story line for one of the characters that was best left on the cutting room floor.

Storyboard to Film Comparison
This suffers from the same issue as the concept art, though might have been better served had the comparisons been side by side instead of stacked one above the other which made it difficult to see both at the same time.

I am a strongly agaist the all too common studio practice of double dipping on DVD releases. Its a crude money grabbing tactic that usually is aimed at and monetarily punishes, the film’s most ardent fans.

That being said this is a re-release that I can get behind. Because, while most of the features were already available on the previous release, the addition of the animated original poem and the beautifully remastered picture are certainly worth the additional investment.

Movie rating – 5

Disc Rating – 5