Editorials
‘The Nightmare Before Christmas’ and the Pioneering Stop-Motion Animation Work of Director Henry Selick
Jack Skellington famously sings “What’s this?” when first discovering snow in the seminal stop-motion animated feature The Nightmare Before Christmas, and it’s a question that audiences likely asked upon initial release in October 1993. The strange animated feature that embraces German Expressionism and macabre character designs feels atypical of family-friendly fare yet spends the bulk of its narrative exploring the Christmas holiday as an outsider. Disney understandably felt nervous about releasing the feature, one so removed from their usual output, but misfits everywhere ensured that The Nightmare Before Christmas would eventually become not only a widely embraced classic but one of the most marketable films ever for the brand. It also happened to be the masterful feature debut of filmmaker Henry Selick.
The Nightmare Before Christmas originated from a poem penned by Tim Burton, and, thanks to the success of Burton’s short film “Vincent,” was acquired by Disney for development as a series, then as a special. But it fell into limbo for a stretch. Eventually, the project was revived as a feature film, with Burton collaborating with Disney animator Henry Selick. With Burton preoccupied with Batman Returns, Selick took the directorial reins on the painstaking stop-motion animated feature. But releasing the film under Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas meant that audiences attributed the film solely to Burton for years, overshadowing Selick’s impressive work that catapulted the film into a Disney classic.
Stop-motion animation, arguably one of the most painstaking, excruciatingly intricate art forms, involves manipulating puppets via frame-by-frame photographs to create movement when played back. Toss in facial expressions on top of character movement, and you have an obscene number of pictures required to create a single scene. That’s just to paint a brief portrait of the intense labor required to make a stop-motion animated movie. But Selick wanted to push the medium even further by forgoing the familiar flat surface employed in stop-motion to instead build full-blown set pieces for the characters so the camera could track them in a more immersive way, giving texture and dimension to this unique cinematic world.
Henry Selick and Tim Burton. Photo Credit: Disney
While Selick also made tweaks on the character design to ensure they popped on screen, like giving Jack Skellington’s suit its iconic pinstripes, the director worked closely with the performers, and occasionally composer and singer Danny Elfman, to ensure the music integrated with the imagery in ways that reinforced the movie’s themes and the stark contrast between Halloween Town and Christmas Town. The concept, character designs, and ideas are largely Burton’s, but the technique, form, and emotional center owe much to Selick’s direction.
Selick’s work in stop-motion animation didn’t end with The Nightmare Before Christmas. The director reteamed with producer Tim Burton a few years later on a stop-motion animated adaptation of Roald Dahl’s James and the Giant Peach. Selick’s Monkeybone integrated stop-motion into live-action, though its peculiar tone didn’t strike with audiences upon release. That’s okay because his follow-up, Coraline for LAIKA (the studio’s first feature), earned Selick an Academy Award nomination and, thanks to a rather nightmarish Other World run by The Beldam, created stunning gateway horror for a new generation.
Last year brought Selick’s collaboration with Jordan Peele on Wendell & Wild, making this the third decade in a row that the artist/director has delivered solid gateway horror to audiences through stunning, masterful stop-motion animation. In the current digital age, where everything moves at a rapid pace, creating more reliance on VFX and computer animation, Selick’s dedication to such a meticulous art form is refreshing, and it yields breathtaking results.
The Nightmare Before Christmas turns 30 this month, and much about this holiday classic has already been explored in the three decades since its release. The music, the affecting performances by the voice cast, the peculiar world, and its quirky, horror-embracing denizens. All of it provides a comforting holiday film for those, like Lydia Deetz, at home with the strange and unusual. Strangely, though, its director remains one of the more undersung aspects of The Nightmare Before Christmas. Selick pushed the art form forward right out of the gate for his feature debut and understood Burton’s vision in a way that’s difficult to imagine anyone else could.
The most exciting question, three decades later, isn’t whether The Nightmare Before Christmas classifies as Halloween or Christmas holiday viewing. It’s what young, impressionable mind Selick’s work inspires enough to become a future stop-motion animator great to carry the medium forward in the way Selick has, himself inspired by the innovative, ground-breaking animator Ray Harryhausen as a child. Jack Skellington’s sense of wonder at discovering new textures and culture remains timeless, and The Nightmare Before Christmas still evokes a feeling of awe. There’s so much depth, visually, that you can still pick out details upon new watches even today. Much like its director, it’s a pioneer in stop-motion animation.
Editorials
‘Bloodstone: Subspecies II’ Revisited: A Bigger, Bolder Follow-Up to Full Moon’s Vampire Cult Classic
Horror sequels are a peculiar thing. In most cases, follow-ups to scary movies tend to retread the same formula with different victims and more over-the-top scares. This is because audiences tend to be more interested in the antagonists of these pictures than anything else, with even main characters becoming disposable when the time comes to produce a sequel.
That’s why some of the most memorable horror sequels are the ones that actually manage to hold onto interesting survivors from previous films while also pushing the story forward instead of having the same thing happen again to a different group of people. From Scream 2 to Dream Warriors (and arguably even The Exorcist III: Legion), there are quite a few of these innovative sequels to go around.
However, if there’s one franchise that deserves more attention when discussing bigger and better continuations that make the most of episodic filmmaking, it has to be Ted Nicolaou’s Subspecies.
The Full Moon classic spawned an indie horror icon, but bizarre sequel Bloodstone: Subspecies II is even more beloved than its predecessor.
Building a Bigger Vampire Saga
While the film itself takes place almost immediately after the events of the first movie, Bloodstone only entered production a couple of years after the release of the original as both Charles Band and Nicolaou weighed the pros and cons of returning to Romania to continue the series. In an effort to maximize efficiency, the team decided to invest in a trilogy where parts II and III, now fully written by Nicolaou, would be filmed simultaneously over the course of a single grueling shoot.
Much like the first Subspecies, Bloodstone’s low budget meant that the filmmakers once again had to cut corners and re-use as many of their resources as possible. Thankfully, the process was much easier this time around as Nicolaou, with the help of Romanian cinematographer Vlad Paunescu and his wife Oana, became more acquainted with local customs and made new friends. Shooting abroad still came with its own unique set of challenges due to a lack of translators and the occasional safety concerns, but the crew managed to make things work by filming things guerrilla-style and setting up shop in abandoned caves and real medieval ruins.
The director’s newfound contacts, coupled with the relative success of the first movie, meant that he was basically given free rein over an assortment of shooting locations usually considered off-limits for indie horror. That’s why Bloodstone features insanely ambitious lighting and effects work even during scenes shot in the middle of a bustling Bucharest. The filmmakers went so far as to project Radu’s Nosferatu-like shadows over local monuments as if he were a Romanian boogeyman, an idea that was actually encouraged by local cinephiles.
In fact, many of the more elaborate scenes here had originally been planned for the first movie before being discarded due to the lack of available resources. It was only with the support of Romanian fans and filmmakers that Bloodstone was able to give Radu a chance to be even more menacing the second time around.
Michelle’s Transformation Takes Center Stage
However, when it came to the American part of the crew, not everyone was able or willing to return for another round of Romanian adventuring. That’s why Radu’s human-loving half-brother Stefan (Michael Watson) is unceremoniously killed off at the beginning of the film while the role of Michelle had to be recast. Denice Duff took over for Laura Mae Tate, with the character now being joined by her sister, Rebecca, played by Melanie Shatner (yes, that Shatner).
In the finished film, we follow Michelle as she awakens to her new life as a vampire and discovers that Radu has murdered her lover. Struggling with grief and her newfound bloodlust, Michelle contacts her sister overseas, with Rebecca soon travelling to Romania on an ill-advised rescue mission. Meanwhile, Radu (Anders Hove) reaches out to his undead Mummy (Pamela Gordon, underneath heavy layers of impressive makeup effects) and promises to deliver her the coveted Bloodstone artifact while also making Michelle his eternal consort.
Revisiting the movie, I was impressed with how introspective this story is when compared to the original. The sequel assumes that you’re already familiar with the previously established characters, so the story wastes no time in exploring the immediate aftermath of the previous film’s events. From Michelle’s reluctant transformation into a creature of the night to Radu’s obvious mommy issues, Nicolaou is way more interested in pushing these characters into new and uncharted territory rather than recycling existing plot points.
Practical Effects and Gothic Atmosphere Still Impress
Yet, much like the first film, it’s Romania itself that makes the movie worth watching. The ruins of Castle Vladislav are even more majestic now, and visiting the moody streets of Bucharest with its surprisingly punk-rock nightlife made for a nice change of pace when compared to the original film’s quiet village setting. Once again, the abundance of interesting locations makes the movie feel much more expensive than it really is, with the filmmakers surrounding our characters with a living, breathing environment that would be impossible to recreate in a studio.
The increased freedom also allowed Nicolaou to flex his filmmaking muscles and tackle more ambitious blocking/composition in the sequel. The low budget and tropey script mean that the visuals don’t always work, but it’s consistently clear that this neo-expressionist style could only come from a passionate team attempting to pay homage to the shadowy horror classics of yesteryear. If the retro atmosphere isn’t enough for you, there’s enough practical gore here to satisfy even the most demanding of horror hounds!
Radu himself is also far more interesting now that Hove is more comfortable working alongside an international crew, with the actor having gone on record explaining that, while he spent more time drinking vodka than working while shooting the first movie, the sequel was a much more creatively satisfying experience for everyone involved. The character’s relationship with his abusive Mummy is also a highlight of the expanded mythology, especially since the practical effects that bring her to life are just as freaky now as they were back in ’93.
My only real gripe with the horror elements of the picture comes from the glaring absence of the diminutive stop-motion minions from the first film, though I guess the surprisingly entertaining addition of Professor Popescu (Michael Denish) and his archeological antics mostly make up for that.
Bloodstone: Subspecies II is obviously the middle chapter of a trilogy, with the ending feeling a lot less definitive than its predecessor as several plot threads are left to dangle in the wind, but I appreciate how the flick explores new ground while remaining faithful to nearly all the ideas that made the original such a good time. While I don’t think it’s as big of an improvement over the first movie as some fans make it out to be, Bloodstone is definitely worth revisiting if you’re a fan of old-fashioned vampire yarns.
Tune in next time for the thrilling conclusion to this initial trilogy, Bloodlust: Subspecies III!
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