The Nightmare Before Christmas

The Nightmare Before Christmas was released in October 1993 — a landmark of stop-motion animation, armature-and-puppet work photographed frame by painstaking frame (not claymation, as everyone misremembers). And the credit everyone misremembers: it was directed by Henry Selick. Tim Burton conceived the story and characters from his own poem and produced the film — the Burton DNA is real — but he was off directing Batman Returns and prepping Ed Wood, and by his own account wanted no part of the painstakingly slow stop-motion process. Disney, judging the finished film too dark and scary for the Disney name, released it under its Touchstone Pictures label.

The production numbers are astonishing: shooting began in July 1991 in San Francisco, 227 puppets were built, Jack Skellington alone had around 400 sculpted heads, and 109,440 frames were photographed. Danny Elfman wrote the songs and score — "This Is Halloween," "What's This?" — and provided Jack's singing voice himself, with Chris Sarandon speaking Jack's dialogue. In 1993 Burger King ran the big tie-in, selling four collectible Nightmare Before Christmas watches with value meals.

Then came the second life. Through the 2000s the film became a phenomenon all over again: Hot Topic filled malls with Jack-and-Sally merch until the skeleton grin was practically a uniform, Disneyland's Haunted Mansion Holiday overlay (from 2001) made it a theme-park tradition, and Disney — no longer shy — reclaimed the film under the Walt Disney Pictures banner with a Disney Digital 3-D reissue in 2006. Lifetime, it has grossed about $109 million including those re-releases, and it now sits permanently in both the Halloween and Christmas canons.