The Nightmare Before Christmas Recap

***Throughout this Christmas season, we will be eating and drinking our faces. We will also be posting recaps of the shows that are on as well as Best in Comments articles and Christmas recap reprints!! Enjoy this BlueCanary classic!! 

With December 25th fast approaching, what better time to get into the Halloween spirit? Seriously, Christmas is great and all, especially when you’re young, but it’s a total pain in the ass once you’re an adult, trying to juggle decorating, shopping, hosting, menu planning, end of season stuff at work, with Bing Crosby and Rosemary Clooney screaming in the background every time you set foot in the grocery store.

And yes, I can see the draw if you’re a Christian and into the nativity scene and the baby Jesus, true meaning, blah blah blah, but from a secular standpoint, wouldn’t you all agree that Halloween is much more fun, with much less stress? I thought so.

Lucky for us, there’s this little movie that came out back in 1993, and it addresses the best of both holidays: The Nightmare Before Christmas. It’s a stop-motion work of art, introducing us to Halloween Town, the source of the holiday where we get to meet child-friendly folks like this guy:

And this guy:

Oh, and this dude lives under your bed.

Say what?!?

And the whole production is led by one Jack Skellington: The Pumpkin King, head honcho of Halloween Town. Halloween Town and its residents literally make Halloween what it is! It has a mayor with a head that spins like Man-E-Faces from He-Man. It has skeletons and bats and non-sparkly vampires. It has a clown with a tear-away face, a little boy corpse, and a villain composed entirely of bugs, and every last one of them has the ability to break into song when the mood strikes. What more could you ask? It even have a mad scientist in a wheelchair. Granted, he appears to be a perverted lech, who creates Frankenstein-doll women to serve at his pleasure. He’s just as charming as one might expect, and Sally, his current unwilling servant, has been resorting to drugging him in order to sneak out and socialize and literally detaching her own limbs to escape his clutches.

Totally understandable.

All in all, the residents are pretty cool cats, scary because they have to be, but mostly sweet and very enthusiastic about delivering the fright on their holiday.

As the movie opens, everyone is celebrating yet another successful and terrifying Halloween, but someone isn’t happy.I guess it wouldn’t be Halloween without an emo skeleton. Jack is unsatisfied being the king of Halloween. He’s sick of scaring the shit out of people, and disgruntled that he barely has to make an effort to do so. Sally, who stumbles upon him while gathering deadly nightshade, listens as he sings his lament, an unspecified longing to find something new, something fresh to focus his energies on. He wanders out of the cemetery and takes a long walk. Sally, who clearly has the world’s most disturbing taste in men, sighs at his heartbreak and vows to herself to help him.

Nothing like a man with good bone structure.