“The Nightmare Before Christmas” runs 76 minutes, and not one of them is wasted. Henry Selick directed the 1993 stop-motion animated musical fantasy film from a script by Caroline Thompson, working from Tim Burton’s story. It premiered at the New York Film Festival on October 9, 1993, got a limited release on October 13, and went wide on October 29 through Buena Vista Pictures Distribution. It holds at 8.2/10.
Trailer, via Disney Plus.
Jack Skellington Is Tired of October 31
The premise is a kidnapping plot wrapped in a holiday swap. Jack Skellington, the Pumpkin King, leads Halloween Town through its annual celebration every October 31. This year he is weary of the same routine. He wants something new.
He finds it through trees containing doors to other holiday-themed worlds. Jack stumbles through the one leading to Christmas Town and is fascinated by what he sees. He comes home and tries to explain the holiday to his friends and neighbors. They cannot grasp it. They do relate to its ruler, Santa Claus, though Jack mistakenly dubs him “Sandy Claws.”
After several futile attempts to explain Christmas rationally, Jack decides to improve it instead. He announces that Halloween Town will take over Christmas this year. He assigns Christmas-themed jobs to residents: singing carols, making presents, building a sleigh pulled by skeletal reindeer. The film’s engine is that decision, and it never stalls.
Sally Sees the Disaster Coming
Sally is the feminine creation of local mad scientist Doctor Finkelstein. She experiences a vision predicting that the town’s efforts will end disastrously. She secretly loves Jack. He dismisses her warnings and instructs her to make a Santa Claus suit for him.
That is the emotional spine of the film, and it is built from very little screen time. Sally gets a vision, a warning and a sewing task. Catherine O’Hara voices her, and O’Hara also voices Shock. The film does not linger on Sally’s fear. It lets the plot run past her, which is exactly why her warnings land.
Jack tasks the trick-or-treating trio Lock, Shock and Barrel with abducting Santa. He orders them not to involve their superior Oogie Boogie, a bogeyman with a passion for gambling and Jack’s long-time rival. They disobey. They bring Santa to Oogie Boogie, who plots to play a game with him.
Danny Elfman Sings for Jack Skellington
Danny Elfman composed the score and the songs and provided Jack’s singing voice. Chris Sarandon handled Jack’s speaking voice. That split is the film’s smartest technical choice, and it is worth naming plainly.
Elfman’s singing carries the character’s restlessness in a way dialogue alone could not. Sarandon’s speaking voice gives Jack a register that sits apart from the musical numbers. The two performances do not fight each other. They divide the labor cleanly.
The rest of the principal voice cast is deep. Ken Page voices Oogie Boogie. Glenn Shadix voices the Mayor. William Hickey voices Doctor Finkelstein. Paul Reubens voices Lock. Ed Ivory voices Santa Claus. Elfman also voices Barrel and the Clown with the Tear away Face. O’Hara doubles as Shock.
A Poem From 1982, a Deal in 1990
The Nightmare Before Christmas started as a poem Tim Burton wrote in 1982 while he was working as an animator at Walt Disney Productions. That same year, Vincent found critical success, and Burton began to consider developing the story as either a short film or a half-hour television special. Nothing came of it.
Burton’s thoughts returned to the project over the years. In 1990 he made a development deal with the Walt Disney Studios. Production, under Burton and Denise Di Novi, started in July 1991.
Disney released the film through the Touchstone Pictures label. The studio believed the film’s Gothic tone would be too dark and scary for kids. That judgment looks cautious now. It also explains why the film arrived with a distribution strategy that treated it as something other than a children’s picture.
The Five Best Things in 76 Minutes
Ranking the film’s assets is not hard. The order matters because the top two carry everything else.
- Danny Elfman’s score and songs, which give the film its momentum and its emotional range.
- The stop-motion design of Halloween Town, a fantasy world populated by monsters and supernatural beings tied to the holiday.
- Catherine O’Hara’s Sally, whose vision and warnings give the plot a conscience.
- Ken Page’s Oogie Boogie, a rival with a gambling habit and a game to play.
- The 76-minute runtime, which refuses to pad a story that does not need padding.
That last item is not a joke. A film with this many characters, this many musical numbers and this much plot could easily run two hours. This one does not. It ends when it is done.
What the Touchstone Label Got Right
Disney’s worry about the Gothic tone was not wrong about the material. It was wrong about the audience. The film’s imagery is genuinely dark. Oogie Boogie is a bogeyman. Doctor Finkelstein is a mad scientist. Jack plans to deliver shrunken heads and other ghoulish gifts to children on Christmas morning.
None of that scared off the people who found it. The film commits to its own logic, and that is what has held up since 1993. Jack is not evil. He is bored, and then he is wrong, and then he has to fix it. Sally is not a love interest who waits. She sees the disaster coming and tries to stop it.
The film’s tagline promised “an extraordinary world filled with wonder and magic.” That is marketing language, and it undersells the thing. The wonder here comes with shrunken heads attached.
The Verdict on The Nightmare Before Christmas
This is a 76-minute film with no dead weight, a score that does the heavy lifting, and a voice cast that treats the material seriously. The Nightmare Before Christmas earns its place as the rare holiday film that belongs to two holidays at once and belongs to neither entirely.
The one thing worth watching closely is the Sally problem. She is right about everything, and the film makes her watch her warning fail. That is a harder story than the kidnapping plot suggests, and it is the part that has kept audiences returning. The rest is craft. Craft is enough here.
Get the Notebook.
The day's best stories and every fresh verdict, in plain English, in your inbox by seven. One email a day, no more.
