Some Halloween Christmas Cards?

One of my favorite holiday films is actually a double genre film fitting in both Halloween and Christmas, a wonderful and loveable animated Tim Burton film that came out in October 1993, Nightmare Before Christmas.

 

But as beloved as the film is, it remains a cult film and therefore has just a small footprint in the cardboard world. In 1993 Skybox released a small set in conjunction with the movie release. It is a basic set but it did include a cool insert called Spectra, which is kind of a foil with a texture type coating.

 

In 2001 NECA released both a base set and a TCG set. The base set had inserts like cel cards and autographs, which includes signatures from Tim Burton, Danny Elfman, and America’s favorite mother Catherine O’Hara. A couple of years later Disney released a couple of different Disney Treasure sets which also included cel cards.

 

My most recent Nightmare Before Christmas pick up is this Glenn Shadix autograph, he voiced the mayor of Halloween Town. Shadix got his big start in another Tim Burton film when he played Otho in Beetljuice opposite of Catherine O’Hara. Towards the end of his life he did a lot of voice work for animated shows, movies and video games. I have been on a hunt for Chris Saranndon autograph from the set, he did the voice for Jack Skellington, but they are not very common and the only one that I have seen recently is one that has the end of the autograph smudged and I will not pay what the seller is asking for a card I consider damaged.

 

Another card in my Nightmare Before Christmas collection is one of the film cel cards from 2004 Disney Treasures.

 

Here is a better view of the cels, which are sequential. I know it is difficult to get a perfect view of a cel so I pulled up the scene in the movie where this takes place. It is when Sally is in the tower and singing “Sally’s Song”, while singing she picks up the black cat which then turns to jump out of her arms.

Custom Cards- Movie Edition: Dead Man

After an exhausting few weeks I have finally found some quite time to relax and I got the chance the other day to watch Dead Man, an independent Western film made in 1995 featuring Johnny Depp and Gary Farmer. You will also see Robert Mitchum in one of his final films, Crispin Glover playing a creepy guy (besides Back To the Future, does he know any of the type of character?), Iggy Pop as a cross-dresser and Billy Bob Thornton as one strange-ass trapper who loves beans.

The movie is not your standard western but if you appreciate a well written, although strange movie, this is definitely well worth the time to watch it if you have the chance. I just felt the need to build a set off of the film, the grainy black & white visuals and historical connection just seemed right to see the major character on cardboard.

There was never a time reference so I did not have a date to build off of but the 1887 Old Judge set seemed to be a nice fit. There were no real printing standards at the time and if you view the cards from the era you will see a lot of variety even within the same set and I love the sepia coloring. This will allow me to change things up.

I started with the 2 main characters, William Blake (Depp) and Nobody (Farmer) and then I will build on to the set. I also have a Train Fireman card (Glover) because he is one of the first characters you meet in to the movie. Up next will probably be John Scholfield (Hurt) and John Dickinson (Mitchum) when I get the chance.