A NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS

A NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS

I already know I did a post about the movie being a Christmas movie this year, but this also marks a special milestone for the film. It's 25 years old this year. To think, a film that at the time Disney was releasing singing mermaids and talking Genies, they decided to green light this new thing that had a lot of potential of frightening young children. It's no wonder that they released it under the Touchstone banner and had it basically stand 10 feet away from anything that could be considered Disney for a long while.

When you think about it, the fact that it took almost a decade later for Disney to do their own merchandising for the film and didn't just hand it off to companies like SEGA of Japan to make items, shows a lot. But little did they realize that the tail end of Gen X'ers and Mellinnials would fall in love with that movie and embrace it as they grew up with it being the bridge between Halloween and Christmas - I mean, who cares about Thanksgiving anyway? (raises hand)

It's hard to not see a wall of merch at any mall these days of NBC related stuff. At one point in the late 1990's, I had to buy my products from Japan. Apparently they were way ahead of the curve in wanting as much of this movie products as possible. Sega company would make a lot of things. I still have a really nice pocket watch from 1999 that was made in Japan and I can't find anything even close to the quality here - especially now that they're just cranking out the goods left and right.

Is it a terrible thing? I guess not. The old sort of "ugh, why are you ruining my obscure interest" would have had a fit. But then again, NBC did start with a limited engagement. I think it's a nice thing to see that there's Hollywood Bowl screenings with Danny Elfman performing. Prior to one of those performances, the last time he was on stage singing Oingo Boingo songs was almost two decades prior for their last Halloween show.

And yeah, I say it's a Christmas movie, but honestly, enjoy the hell out of it all throughout the month. It has spooks and frights but the heart of any Christmas season film and I have the decorations of this film out from October to November anyway.