Tis the Season for Nightmares….

I love fall for many reasons, but none more so than because it’s the perfect season to watch one of my favorite movie musicals The Nightmare Before Christmas.  Set in the mythical worlds of Halloween Town and Christmas Town, The Nightmare Before Christmas is the most unconventional Disney musical of all-time and yet it’s cleverly written, with spectacular visuals, wonderful music and the most unforgettable characters.

Every day the citizens of Halloween Team, led by the “Pumpkin King” Jack Skelton, focus on creating the scariest Halloween ever.  Yet after years of screams, Jack gets bored and laments that he longs for more.  One Halloween night, Jack takes a stroll through the cemetery and stumbles upon the world of Christmas Town, ruled by Santa Claus.  Enthralled by this new holiday, Jack plans for the citizens of Halloween Town to abandon Halloween and take up Christmas!

The Nightmare Before Christmas was the result of a partnership between Walt Disney Pictures and Tim Burton.  Originally developed as a television special, The Nightmare Before Christmas, soon evolved into a movie musical.  Burton commissioned his composer-friend Danny Elfman to write several songs for the movie before even finishing the script.

The score in The Nightmare Before Christmas is fantastic in the way that it mixes the ever familiar sounds of Halloween and Christmas while maintaining their distinct identities.  Completing the score are songs which enhance each characters emotional appeal, while always progressing the film forward.  My personal favorite, “Jack’s Lament” does a great job at making such a fictitious character’s emotions seem so real and human.  See the youtube link below for a clip of “Jack’s Lament,” the song starts at 57 seconds.

What adds to Nightmare’s charm is its design.  Unlike prior Disney musicals, the movie is shot using stop-motion animation.  This means that each scene in the movie is shot frame by frame, a painstaking process if ever there was one.  The Nightmare Before Christmas had a crew of 120 workers, using 20 sound stages and taking more than 109,440 frames for the movie.   It should also be noted that movie is only 75 minutes, short when compared to most musicals which are two hours in length.

I remember first seeing the movie in theaters when I was seven, and can recall the sense of awe with the film’s visuals.  These were not drawn-out cartoon characters with the breathtakingly beautiful princess’ and the ripped always-wins-in-the-end hunk.  No, The Nightmare Before Christmas characters were real to me, even if their origins were based in Halloween mythology.  It takes real genius to make characters who are often portrayed as scary to seem approachable and friendly.

Ironically when The Nightmare Before Christmas was released it was deemed ‘too scary for children,’ and Disney choose to have the movie distributed by Touchstone Pictures.  The movie has always been seen as Disney’s bastard-stepchild musical, even though it was big hit.  As the years have gone by The Nightmare Before Christmas has become more accepted by Disney, and even more beloved by its fans.  To this day, when the days grow shorter, and the temperature cooler, I know it’s time to relive the nightmare.

The Nightmare Before Christmas is available anywhere movies are sold.