PUMPKIN POWER

By Allan Hunter

From Scotland on Sunday, 12.04.1994

December can be the dullest month for new cinema releases. Adults are assumed to be preoccupied with the guerrilla warfare of Christmas shopping or the ritualistic embarrassment of the work festivities. The distributors automatically concentrate on the juvenile audience, praying for a repeat of the 1990 blockbuster Home Alone or hoping that something with a seasonal sprinkling will tide them over until normal service resumes on Boxing Day.

This year, however, a ghoulish blast of originality is wafting its way to a cinema near you. A long cherished project of Batman director Tim Burton, The Nightmare Before Christmas is a jaunty animated delight brimming with tricks and treats. Burton began his career as an apprentice animator for Disney, working on such pre-renaissance fare as The Fox And The Hound and The Black Cauldron. Stifled by the creative conservatism of the studio, he dreamed of an animated film that would fly in the face of the genre's conventions of cute animals and cheery tunes.

Directed by his erstwhile art class confederate, Henry Selick, The Nightmare Before Christmas is the result of his wildest fantasies; a stop-motion musical cartoon which combines the clever wit of a Stephen Sondheim lyric with the macabre humour of a Charles Addams drawing.

The ingenious story line asks the viewer to imagine a place where every holiday season has a land of its own. There the good citizens spend 364 days preparing for the festivities associated with their particular shining hour.

In Hallowe'entown, Jack Skellington is the Pumpkin King who masterminds every bubble, toil and trouble that is expected from that event. Jack however has grown rather bored with the old mischievous routine of pumpkin lanterns, cracked nuts and jangling skeletons.

When Jack stumbles through the entry to Christmastown, he is enchanted by the twinkling lights, the brightly decorated trees, the snowy scenes and the sheer joy of their day. He decides, with the best of intentions, that this could be exactly the kind of change he needs.

Kidnapping Santa Claus, Jack launches a take-over bid for Christmas.

Somehow, a coffin-shaped sleigh, a stick-man in a baggy red suit and severed heads for presents just isn't the same thing.

One of the delights of this film is the way that Burton is able to convey the magic of Christmas without recourse to excessive sentiment.

Like Batman and Edward Scissorhands, The Nightmare Before Christmas also shares Burton's fascination with split personalities and the eccentric outsider who is drawn towards conformity but ultimately rejects it because it allows him no sense of truly belonging.

In many respects, its roots go right back to Burton's first animated short, Vincent, a six minute, black-and-white film made whilst Burton was at Disney. It follows a young boy who rejects all-American pastimes and spends his days reading Edgar Allan Poe and idolising Vincent Price.

Nightmare is more of a romp than the autobiographical Vincent but the latter's influence is strongly felt. The sensibility is definitely not Disney, but it's more off-grey than black.

Packed with animation that's a visual feast, Nightmare also boasts a notable score and vocals from Danny Elfman, who confidently strays among a diversity of influences that range from Kurt Weill to boogie woogie.

The film may provoke a modest outburst of lip trembling from the tiniest tots, but otherwise Tim Burton has given everyone a reason to go to the cinema this Christmas.