In The Nightmare Before Christmas, we get to see the story of Jack Skellington (Chris Sarandon) and his friends in Halloween Town. Jack is the "King of Halloween". He is the best at scaring, the most popular, and the one that everyone looks to. But Jack has become blasé. Scaring people just doesn't make him happy anymore. Nothing really makes him happy; he just doesn't know what he is looking for in life. While walking his ghost dog, Zero, in the woods, he finds a bunch of doors in trees with odd pictures on them. We recognize them as symbols of other holidays, but Jack has no clue what they are.
Feeling adventurous, Jack chooses the door with a Christmas tree on it. This door leads him into Christmas Town. From here on out, Jack is fascinated. He is determined to understand why he feels so good in Christmas Town. He doesn't really know how to go about it, though. My favorite part is watching him try and explain Christmas with science. As he says, "There's got to be a logical way to explain this Christmas thing."
While he never can explain it, Jack figures out what he wants to do and recruits the whole town to help. The uniqueness and variety of the characters is simply amazing. There's Sally (Catherine O'Hara), who's a "rag doll". She can take herself apart and put herself back together any time she wants. There's also the Mayor, who is such a two-faced politician that he really has two faces that spin around depending on which one he needs. Halloween Town wouldn't be complete without a mad doctor. He made Sally from scratch, and can create plenty of other things. Then there's Lock, Shock & Barrel, Halloween's "finest trick-or-treaters." The song they sing is my personal favorite in the movie. They work for the bad guy in Halloween Town, Oogie Boogie. There's just so many other various creatures that I don't have room to mention, but you'll just have to see them all to believe it.
If the movie alone weren't enough, or if you already own it, there's now a full disc of special features to give you plenty of reasons to buy it again. You'll get everything from original artwork to deleted scenes to behind the scenes features, all of which are simply wonderful. So if you haven't been able to figure out by now, I highly recommend that you must own The Nightmare Before Christmas: Collector's Edition today!
