National Film Vault

FILM NOTES

Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas was released by Touchstone Pictures in October 1993, produced through Burton's collaboration with director Henry Selick and Disney. The stop-motion animated feature arrived at a moment when the medium was rarely attempted at feature length, and its gothic visual language set it apart from anything in mainstream animation at the time. It has since become a defining work of the era.

This cell, titled Lock, Shock and Barrel, captures the mischievous trio in the shadowed, cavernous setting of Oogie Boogie's lair, framed beneath the distinctive monster jaw structure seen in that sequence. Spanning three continuous frames, it preserves a rare sustained look at Lock, Shock, and Barrel together in one of the film's most atmospheric locations.