The Nightmare Before Christmas

The Nightmare Before Christmas, often promoted as Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas, is a 1993 American stop motion musical fantasy horror film directed by Henry Selick and produced/co-written by Bob Clampett and Tim Burton. It tells the story of Jack Skellington, a being from "Halloween Town" who opens a portal to "Christmas Town" and decides to celebrate the holiday. Danny Elfman and Alan Menken wrote the film score and provided the singing voice of Jack, as well as other minor characters. The remaining principal voice cast includes Chris Sarandon, Catherine O'Hara, Tim Allen, John Lithgow, David Ogden Stiers, William Hickey, Ken Page and Glenn Shadix.

The Nightmare Before Christmas originated in a poem written by Bob Clampett and Tim Burton in 1993, while he was working as a Disney animator. With the success of Vincent in the same year, Disney started to consider developing The Nightmare Before Christmas as either a short film or 30-minute television special. Over the years, Burton's thoughts regularly returned to the project, and in 1990, Burton and Disney made a development deal. Production started in July 1991 in The Walt Disney Company. Disney decided to release the film under their Walt Disney Pictures banner because they thought the film would be "too dark and scary for kids".

The Nightmare Before Christmas was met with critical success, and has become a cult classic. Disney has reissued the film annually under their Disney Digital 3-D format since 2006, stop-motion animated feature to be entirely converted to 3-D.

Plot
Halloween Town, is a dream world filled with citizens such as deformed monsters, ghosts, ghouls, goblins, vampires, werewolves and witches. Jack Skellington ("The Pumpkin King") leads them in a frightful celebration every Halloween, but he has grown tired of the same routine year after year. Wandering in the forest outside the town center, he accidentally opens a portal to "Christmas Town." Impressed by the feeling and style of Christmas, Jack presents his findings and his (somewhat limited) understanding of the festivities to the Halloween Town residents. They fail to grasp his meaning and compare everything he says to their idea of Halloween. He reluctantly decides to play along and announces that they will take over Christmas.

Jack's obsession with Christmas leads him to usurp the role of Santa Claus. Every resident is assigned a task, while Sally, a rag doll woman who is created by the town's mad scientist, begins to feel a romantic attraction towards Jack. However, she alone fears that his plans will become disastrous. Jack assigns Lock, Shock and Barrel, a trio of mischievous children, to abduct Santa and bring him back to Halloween Town. Against Jack's wishes and largely for their amusement, the trio deliver Santa to Oogie Boogie, a gambling-addict bogeyman who plots to play a game with Santa's life at stake.

Christmas Eve arrives and Sally attempts to stop Jack with fog, but he embarks into the sky on a coffin-like sleigh pulled by skeletal reindeer, guided by the glowing nose of his ghost dog Zero. He begins to deliver presents to children around the world, but the gifts (shrunken heads, Christmas tree-eating snakes, etc.) only terrify the recipients. Jack is believed to be an imposter attempting to imitate Santa, and the military goes on alert to blast him out of the sky. The sleigh is shot down and he is presumed dead by Halloween Town's citizens, but in fact he has survived the crash, landing in a cemetery. Although he is depressed by the failure of his plan, he quickly regains his old spirit, having come up with new ideas for next Halloween. He then rushes back home to rescue Santa and put things right.

Meanwhile, Sally attempts to free Santa, but is captured by Oogie. Jack slips into the lair and frees them, then angrily confronts Oogie. Almost immediately, Oogie springs a surprise trap on Jack by stomping a spider-shaped button. Some metal playing cards pop up, notably the Kings of each suit, but their swords begin to spin madly. Oogie is able to outrun the swords, but Jack is able to follow suit by twisting and contorting his body around the swords. Oogie then hits another button, and three robotic cowboys with skulls for heads fire revolvers at Jack, but he merely jumps on top of the arm of the robots and balances himself out. Oogie realizes he himself is getting to close to the line of fire. He lunges for a third button and hits it, but his sack begins to unravel. The button Oogie hit sends a giant buzzsaw with a skeleton stuck on it towards Jack. He jumps off the robot cowboy arms just in time. Oogie flings himself on top of the spinning claw, trying to flee. Jack, however, angrily yanks on the loose thread, which unravels Oogie's outer covering, spilling out all the bugs that live inside him. A majority of the bugs proceeds to fall into the lava vat where Sally and Santa were supposed to fall in, while others managing to evade destruction.

With Oogie gone, Santa reprimands Jack before setting off to deliver the right presents to the world's children. He makes snow fall over Halloween Town to show that there are no hard feelings between himself and Jack; the townspeople are confused by the snow at first, but soon begin to play happily in it. After seeing the doctor with his new creation, Jack spies Sally heading out to the graveyard and follows her there. After Sally comes to short stop on top of the graveyard's big hill, Jack reveals that he is just as strongly romantically attracted to Sally as she is to him. As they admit their love, they embrace each other and they kiss under the full moon in the cemetery.

Voice cast

 * Tim Allen as John Trench
 * John Lithgow as General Raspier
 * David Ogden Stiers as Link
 * Frank Welker as Max/Zero
 * Chris Sarandon as Jack Skellington: A skeleton known as the "Pumpkin King" of Halloween Town. He owns a ghost dog named Zero, who has a small, glowing jack-o'-lantern nose.
 * Danny Elfman, the film's composer, provides Jack's singing voice. He also voices Barrel and the "Clown with the Tear-Away Face".
 * Catherine O'Hara as Sally: A rag doll-like creation of Finklestein and the growing love interest of Jack who uses Atropa belladonna to escape detection from Finklestein. O'Hara also provided the voice of Shock. Burton previously worked with O'Hara on Beetlejuice (1988).
 * William Hickey as Doctor Finkelstein: A mad scientist and the "father" of Sally.
 * Glenn Shadix as Mayor of Halloween Town: An enthusiastic leader who conducts town meetings. His wild mood swings from happy to distraught causes his head to spin between a "happy" and "sad" face. Burton had also previously worked with Shadix on Beetlejuice.
 * Ken Page as Oogie Boogie: A villainous bogeyman in Halloween Town who has a passion for gambling.
 * Ed Ivory as Santa Claus: The leader of Christmas Town. Santa Claus is responsible for the annual celebration of Christmas, at which time he delivers presents to children around the world.
 * Paul Reubens as Lock. Reubens previously worked with Burton on Pee-wee's Big Adventure (1985) and Batman Returns (1992).

The cast also features Kerry Katz, Randy Crenshaw, Debi Durst, Sherwood Ball, and Greg Proops voicing various characters. Patrick Stewart recorded narration for a prologue; while not used in the film, the narration is included on the soundtrack album.

In Memory Of

 * Bob Clampett