Just the classics: Tim Burton does spooky with substance

It’s the spookiest night of the year. One where keen participants gleefully embrace their macabre sides and all but welcome the opportunity to be positively terrified, whether touring the eerie bowels of a haunted house or sitting in a darkened den peeking at the TV screen through interlaced fingers.

While nothing beats darting door to door with an empty pillowcase in hand, hopped up on the chance to see, for once, what goes on after dark combined with the implausible guarantee of free candy, curling up to watch a scary movie comes in as a close second.

And interested viewers can choose from slasher films, J-horror remakes, spooky classics, tongue-in-cheek terror romps – the list seems rather endless…to some.

For those who’ve never quite grasped the appeal of mass-marketed gore a la Friday the 13th or understood how torture-porn pinups spawn multiple sequels, traditional scary movies don’t always cut it.

Luckily, one man has been consistently reinventing the prototypical Halloween flick by combining ghoulish elements with moments of stark beauty, sly humour and goth chic.

Tim Burton, Mr. Gloom himself, has been exploring the fringe of freakiness since he helmed Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure in 1985, providing alternative viewing options for those who like a little substance with their scare. While his films aren’t likely to yield blood-curdling screams or white-knuckled fear, his aesthetic and themes are ripe for late-night viewing.

Here, then, are my recommendations for the best movies to ring in October 31, as seen through Tim Burton’s gloriously demented eyes.

Edward Scissorhands (1990)

Not only does this film mark the first collaboration between a visionary director and his gifted accomplice – Johnny Depp – it shows Burton’s finesse for taking outsider stories and reimagining them in cartoonish, and sometimes frightening, detail, while maintaining the feel of a fable. The cast is more than game to play to the back row in Burton’s freakish version of suburbia with Dianne Wiest as the well-meaning, uber-chipper Avon lady, Alan Arkin as the amicable father and 90s hipster babe Winona Ryder as the object of everyone’s affection. With an appropriately haunting cameo by gothic icon Vincent Price and the addition of an adult, and convincingly puerile, Anthony Michael Hall, not to mention Depp’s largely wordless, though no less poignant portrayal, Edward Scissorhands is a classic that has proven itself to be endlessly rewatchable, entertaining and affecting.

Beetlejuice (1988)

Remember Michael Keaton? It used to be movie-goers couldn’t escape this fast-talking funnyman, whom Burton would cast as the caped crusader a short time later – to initial fanboy outcry – and who dazzled as the horny bio-exorcist, Betelgeuse. Here again Burton manages to achieve a balance between the crudely funny and truly scary (see the “lost souls room” scene for reference of the latter) and even though the sandworm F/X have a laughable, neutered Playdoh vibe these days, most people who first saw the film as children can relate to the heart-jumping scenes. Keaton is a revelation as a sex-starved, foul-mouthed, scheming opportunist, Alec Baldwin, so far removed from his current post as blow-hard suit-types, is frankly, adorable, and Geena Davis and Winona Ryder – her, again? – provide the decade-specific eye candy. Need we say more?

The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)

Although Burton didn’t direct this stop-motion animation gem, his duties as a writer, producer and overall presenter of the film make its place in this list well deserved. This curious little story follows Jack Skellington, the Pumpkin King in charge of Halloweentown’s annual festivities, who stumbles onto the strikingly jolly Christmastown and decides to give the uplifting holiday a go, having grown bored with his macabre duties. When his version of Santa Claus proves horribly frightening to the townspeople, Jack navigates back towards something resembling a moral centre via emotive song and dance. Taking into account the character design – boasting a fully dimensional look –Danny Elfman’s thrilling score and the storyline, Nightmare is anything but a conventional Halloween flick.

Sleepy Hollow (1999)

Burton’s signature aesthetic and predisposition to all things morose and moody made his retelling of the classic “Legend of Sleepy Hollow” tale an ideal one. The incomparable Johnny Depp stars as spastic and squeamish constable Ichabod Crane, who visits the small town of Sleepy Hollow to investigate recent murder victims who are losing their heads at the hands of a mysterious ghostly figure. Perhaps the most conventionally scary of Burton’s films listed here, a sense of levity still permeates with the help of Depp’s pitch-perfect Crane coming across as the skeptical, and understandably frightened, audience stand-in. Watching in groups of two or more highly recommended.

(Dis)Honourable Mentions

Ok, so these films aren’t anywhere near scary movie territory but they’re frightening nonetheless, albeit for a vastly different reason.

For all of Burton’s undeniable vision and innovation, the man cannot master the remake.

Take Planet of the Apes (2001) – Mark Wahlberg, really? – an epically disastrous revisiting of the 1968 original despite high hopes for Burton to offer up something vital and new. Although he does his best to add visual flair, the film never finds a balance and swings from comedy to action to icky extra-species romance without ever engaging the viewer. Damn them, damn them all!

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005) seemed like the perfect, wacky, not-quite-kids’ movie that Burton could inject with even more bizarro elements, but alas, he turned Johnny Depp into a prissy man-boy without any of Gene Wilder’s wickedness or glee. And considering the size of his prosthetic chompers, Depp’s scenery-chewing ways were appropriately, and exhaustingly, excessive. This failed collaboration signalled the first miss for the solid duo who were dutifully mapping the landscape of commercially viable fringe films.

Here’s hoping they have more luck with the forthcoming Alice in Wonderland – but then again, how could they not? Better to stick with the classics for now.

Will these movies be on your must-see list come October 31? What’s the scariest movie of all time or a horror classic you’ve rewatched a hundred times?

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