From the mind of Tim Burton comes the classic movie – The Nightmare before Christmas. Often promoted as Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas, the movie is a 1993 American Stop Motion Musical Fantasy-thriller film directed by Henry Selick and produced/co-written by Tim Burton.
Synopsis
Set in Halloween town (a town in which Halloween is celebrated all year round), Jack Skellington, the Pumpkin King, is getting bored with Halloween and accidentally finds his way into Christmas Town. When he gets back he tells everyone about Christmas. The whole Halloween town decided that they want to rather host this joyous holiday. Eventually Lock, Stock and Barrel kidnaps Santa Clause and Jack attempts to become the new Santa Clause.
With wonderful stop-motion animation, amazing music by Danny Elfman and Tim Burton’s signature style all over the film, the Nightmare before Christmas is a must-see movie.
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15 Fun Facts about The Nightmare Before Christmas that you probably didn’t know:
# 1. The first incarnation of The Nightmare Before Christmas was a poem that Tim Burton wrote when he was an animator at Disney in the early 1980s. Here is a clip of Christopher Lee reading Tim Burton’s original poem.
#2. The character Behemoth was reportedly based on the Swedish B-movie actor and wrestler Tor Johnson – with a striking resemblance—down to the scars on his face. Whilst The Nightmare Before Christmas was being produced, Tim Burton was working on the film Ed Wood – a film based on the notoriously untalented director who brought us Plan 9 from Outer Space – which in turn starred Tor Johnson!
#3. Chris Sarandon (husband of Susan Sarandon) was the voice of Jack Skellington, but he did not do the singing. Instead, Danny Elfman, who wrote the music, sang all of Jack’s numbers. You might recognize Chris Sarandon in another iconic role, that of Prince Humperdinck in The Princess Bride.
#4. Sally was voiced by Catherine O’Hara. She also did voice work in Tim Burton’s Frankenweenie, playing Weird Girl/Mrs. Frankenstein. And who can forget her as Delia Deetz in Beetlejuice?
#5. If you look very closely, you’ll notice a head inside the upright bass — that figure is based on Danny Elfman.
#6. The Mayor of Halloween Town was voiced by Glenn Shadix. You might recognize him as Otho from Beetlejuice!
#7. Jack Skellington had several cameos in other movies such as: Beetlejuice, Coraline, James and Giant Peach, Sleepy Hollow, Alice in Wonderland, and Vincent.
#8. There are a couple of cameos that were put into The Nightmare Before Christmas. For example, a cat from Burton’s short Vincent is in the beginning knocking over a trash can, some believe that the snake in the film looks a lot like the Sandworms from Beetlejuice, and one of the toys that Jack Skellington has looks just like the Penguin’s vehicle in Batman Returns (which Tim Burton was directing).
.#9. Tim Burton did not direct The Nightmare Before Christmas. Burton was busy with Batman Returns and handed this hefty responsibility to his old Disney Animation colleague Henry Selick, who made his feature directorial debut here. Burton’s name goes above the title for serving as producer, creating the story, and coming up with the look and the characters for The Nightmare Before Christmas.
#10. Danny Elfman also provided the voices for Barrel and the Clown with the Tear-Away Face.
#11.The filmmakers constructed 227 puppets to represent the characters in the movie, with Jack Skellington having “around four hundred heads“, allowing the expression of every possible emotion.
#12. Sally’s mouth movements “were animated through the replacement method. During the animation process, […] only Sally’s face ‘mask’ was removed in order to preserve the order of her long, red hair. Sally had ten types of faces, each made with a series of eleven expressions (e.g. eyes open and closed, and various facial poses) and synchronised mouth movements.”
#13. Burton rejected a CGI sequel.
Though Disney has found success pumping out straight-to-DVD sequels of their animated hits, Burton has no interest in making The Nightmare Before Christmas 2. He told MTV:
“I was always very protective of [Nightmare Before Christmas], not to do sequels or things of that kind. You know, ‘Jack visits Thanksgiving world’ or other kinds of things, just because I felt the movie had a purity to it and the people that like it. Because it’s not a mass-market kind of thing, it was important to kind of keep that purity of it. I try to respect people and keep the purity of the project as much as possible.”
#14. One minute of the movie required an entire week of filming and the movie therefore took more than three years to complete.
#15. Fans wanting to visit Halloween Town can, as long as you’re O.K. with a trip to California or Tokyo. Every year, the Disney parks there transform their Haunted Mansion into Haunted Mansion Holiday — with Jack, Oogie Boogie, Zero and more! (source: toofab.com)
Watch the original trailer of the motion picture here:
