National Film Vault

FILM NOTES

Produced by Tim Burton and directed by Henry Selick, The Nightmare Before Christmas arrived from Walt Disney Pictures and Touchstone in October 1993, representing a landmark achievement in stop-motion animation. The film brought a genuinely dark aesthetic to family filmmaking, blending Burton's gothic sensibility with Selick's precise technical craft. Its theatrical release established stop-motion as a viable feature format for a new generation, and its cultural footprint has only deepened in the decades since.

This cell, titled Santa Jack and Timmy, captures frames from a Halloween Town interior sequence. The purple-toned environment and visible Christmas lights suggest the story's central collision of holidays is underway. Jack Skellington appears alongside the small character identified as Timmy, one of the memorable trick-or-treat trio, set against the film's signature zigzag geometry.