Say his name three times and he shall appear! The number one spot goes to the pinstripe-clad, potty mouthed, whorehouse-loving, “bio-exorcist” himself. It’s so good that Walt Disney Records released Nightmare Revisited in 2008 - an album of eighteen cover tracks by alternative artists like Korn, Amy Lee, and Flyleaf. Danny Elfman’s yearning, mischievous soundtrack has become the stuff of alternative culture legend. TNBC is clearly a labour of love - it’s intricately detailed and masterfully shot, with dynamic camera movements, tactile textures, and classic musical framing, all painstakingly created frame-by-frame over three years through the medium of stop motion. It’s a simple story, which makes it easy to get behind. The stop-motion musical about the Pumpkin King of Halloween stealing Christmas is a ‘Grinchian’ story with the added twist of the main character being good-hearted but having misguided, harmful aspirations. It would be criminal to rank Burton’s films without this in the line-up. It’s become a runaway hit in the years since it was released and is now virtually inescapable around both Halloween and Christmas. But Burton designed the characters and wrote the story while working at Disney in the early ‘80s. Okay, okay, so Tim Burton didn’t direct this one - celebrated stop-motion director Henry Selick did. With Addams Family spin-off Wednesday slated to hit Netflix on November 23rd and Beetlejuice 2 in early development, we’re donning our eyeliner and backcombing our hair to definitively rank all 20 of Burton’s films from worst to best. Abuse allegations between Depp and his ex-wife Amber Heard have impacted the discourse on Burton’s films in recent months, but we’re choosing to focus on the director and his creativity for this list. Although he’s known for regularly casting actors like Helena Bonham Carter, Eva Green, and Danny DeVito, it’s Johnny Depp who stands above them all as Burton’s creative muse. Over the years, Burton’s cast of favourites have come to typify his style almost as much as the striking aesthetics and Danny Elfman soundtracks. They allowed us to explore and express our morbid, macabre identities in a world full of pastel-coloured ‘normal’ people. For many of us, Burton’s dark fantasy worlds were the gateway to alternative culture. It’s a visionary style perfectly suited to the kinds of stories he loves to tell - tales of the oddball outsider who’s unable to connect with the world. Burton’s unmistakable blend of German Expressionism and pastel Americana was a cinematic revelation that captured the audience’s imagination.
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