The Christmas movie countdown is our way of sharing the movies that get us in the festive mood, every day until xmas (kinda like an advent calender, minus the chocolate, sorry)

Everyone loves Tim Burton, right? So what better way to spend your christmas than getting down with the ghouls and losing your self in his 1993 masterpiece, and possibly one of his best films, The Nightmare Before Christmas. I have a tradition of watching this film every xmas eve before I go to sleep, and despite its dark themes it always gets me in the festive spirit.

The Nightmare Before Christmas is a stop motion classic and also a musical (does it get any better than singing monsters?? I think not) that follows the story of Jack Skellington, the Pumpkin King of Halloween town. Jack is bored of his celebrity lifestyle and goes of in search of something more, stumbling across Christmasland. He takes to the place immediately, the twinkling lights, the presents and of course, Santa Claus. It then becomes Jack’s misson to bring Christmas to Halloweentown, with the help of Sally and other members of the town, but they don’t quite get it right.

The Nightmare Before Christmas originated as a poem Tim Burton wrote whilst working as an animator for Disney in 1982 and was left in development for a large number of years due to the idea being ‘too weird’ for a feature length. In 1991 the film went into production with Henry Selick in the directors chair because Burton was too committed to Batman Returns.

DOES IT PASS THE BECHDEL TEST??

Unfortunately, The Nightmare Before Christmas does not pass the test. Sally and Shock are the only speaking female characters in the film and they never meet (although they were voiced by the same person!).

By Chloe