The Daily Stream: Wrap Your Leftover Pumpkins In Tinsel And Garland With The Nightmare Before Christmas
(Welcome to The Daily Stream, an ongoing series in which the /Film team shares what they've been watching, why it's worth checking out, and where you can stream it.)
The Movie: "The Nightmare Before Christmas"
Where You Can Stream It: Disney+
The Pitch: For decades, we have debated when it's okay to fill the store with Christmas decorations. Halloween lovers hate it when tinsel shows up in Target before the trick-or-treat candy is even gone from the shelves. Christmas elves would be happy to deck the halls as soon as sweater weather hits. In my head, I imagine a sentient pumpkin spice latte wrestling with a carton of eggnog.
As someone who has always been right in the middle, loving both holidays, "The Nightmare Before Christmas" is a delight. The 1993 film was directed by Henry Selick (not Tim Burton, who produced it), and if you've missed it all these years, it's time to remedy that. This is the stop-motion animation flick of your dreams and nightmares.
Jack Skellington, aka The Pumpkin King (speaking voice of Chris Sarandon and singing voice of score composer Danny Elfman), rules Halloween Town, a place full of spooky creatures like a quartet of singing vampires, a mad scientist, and a mayor with changeable face plates that conceal his honest thoughts. They've got boxes of spiders and scary dolls ready to go each year, and they love their work. Jack, however, is bored. He wants excitement and something new to create. He journeys to Christmas Town and sees a whole new world ... and he wants it for himself.
Why it's essential viewing
Jack tries to get all of Halloween Town on board, but the creatures there are very confused about how it all works. They have a whole frightening thing going and covering it all with bells, bows, and holly isn't quite the same as actual Christmas. To complete Jack's plan, they have to kidnap Santa Claus (voice of Ed Ivory), who they call Sandy Claws. Meanwhile, a ragdoll named Sally (voice of Catherine O'Hara) continually poisons her maker so she can escape to be with Jack, the man (skeleton?) she loves. Sally is psychic and sees this is doomed to failure, but Jack will not be dissuaded.
The film is full of the most earworm-y songs you've ever heard around holiday time, and the animation is some of the coolest out there, even all these decades later. It sounds bizarre, and it absolutely is, but it's also full of so much heart. That might sound like a strange thing to say about a film with kidnappings, poison, and a character named Oogie Boogie (voice of Ken Page), who is a sentient sack full of bugs, but it's true.
'There's children throwing snowballs, instead of throwing heads'
This film is so weird. I mean, that sentient sack of bugs tortures Santa Claus on a roulette wheel while spiders and snakes crawl out of his body. A demon creates a "most delightful hat" out of a dead rat, and a mummy guillotines a doll before wrapping it up. It's so odd, and yet I promise you that you'll have the warm fuzzies by the end, with Halloween living where it belongs in the fall and Christmas in the winter. Perhaps we should have store clerks watch this before they decide to start unloading the wrapping paper and putting it on the show floor in September?
Maybe this isn't great for your youngest kids, but if they're okay with watching an animated kid pull a head out of a box, they should be fine. I'm not a parent, so I'm not sure how one would know when their little one is okay with, say, a duck toy full of bullet holes. Still, I'm sure you know your kids well enough for that.
Give it a watch or a re-watch this holiday season. It may inspire you to dunk your leftover pumpkin spice biscotti in peppermint hot chocolate or something. Merry spooky Christmoween!
"The Nightmare Before Christmas," as well as the sing-a-long version, are currently streaming on Disney+.