By Bethany Mattocks
November is a prime time to watch this movie because of the is it a Halloween film or Christmas film debate. Therefore, if you watch it in-between the two then you can’t go wrong!
Tim Burton brings yet another creepy, yet cool, film through the story follows Jack Skellington, [Danny Elfman] the King of Halloween Town who is tired of Halloween being the same every year, unlike his town who still loves the celebrations. Sally the ragdoll girl [Catherine O’Hara] is the only one who notices and their relationship develops from there through bonding over people misunderstanding them, she just wants to escape her house and Dr Finkelstein and he wants to escape his duties. He finds Christmas Town and forms a plan to bring Christmas to Halloween Town but the people don’t really understand and kidnap “Sandy Claws” and it all goes downhill from there!
I love how this is a Christmas and Halloween movie as it’s the worst when you feel you can’t watch a film more than one time of year and feel like there’s some sort of bad luck involved if you watch it at the wrong time. With this film, I feel it can be watched any time of year with the combination of seasons involved. It even involves Easter when they kidnap the Easter bunny by accident! Truly a whole year-round film!
One of the best features of this film is the use of music, ‘What’s This’ and ‘This Halloween’ is among the best, absolute classics for Halloween lovers and have had countless covers, for example, Fall Out Boy did an amazing cover of ‘What’s This’ in 2006 as did Panic! At The Disco of ‘This is Halloween’. ‘Jack’s Lament’ is another one of my favourite songs mostly because of the scene on the hill in front of the moon, it looks so pretty! Plus, the line where he takes off his head to pretend to be Shakespearean holding his head in his hand is hilarious!
The characters in this film are so cool! Not only because of the amazing Claymation but the sassiness of the Oogie Boogie man [Ken Page] and the mayor with the turning head depending on his emotions are great, there’s such a range of monsters in Halloween town it puts the classic going as a cat for Halloween to shame!
The film is a Claymation and so would’ve taken a very, very long time to film; it baffles me all the work that must have gone into it but it was very worth it becoming a classic to date! It took a group of around 100 people three years to make the movie and for one second of film up to 12 stop-motion moves had to be made!
So, see this film if you haven’t already but if you have, watch it again it’s prime time!
The Ruskin Journal 