Nightmare Before Christmas (The)

An original puppet head used in the production of The Nightmare Before Christmas, the 1993 stop motion animation favourite directed by Henry Selick and produced by Tim Burton.

One of the most memorable characters in the movie is the Mayor of Halloween town, a short plump man with a cone shaped head and impossibly large top hat, he was voiced in the movie by Glenn Shadix who had previously collaborated with Tim Burton on Beetlejuice. The Mayor's most distinguishing feature is undoubtedly his split personality and his two differing faces, one peach skinned, rosy cheeked and smiling while the other is pale and angry with pointed teeth, these faces alternate throughout the film to represent the characters mood. It has been reported that this split personality was inspired by Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and is Burton's literal interpretation of being two faced.

This puppet head was used during the production whilst bringing the characters to life using stop motion animation, in this instance the replacement method, where the Mayor's eyes and mouth are individual appliances which can be removed from the head and changed to reflect the various expressions required on screen. Each eye and mouth appliance is attached to the puppet head using magnets allowing them to be easily interchanged during filming, while there were a number of differing appliances used to convey varying expressions on screen the puppet heads were constructed in much lower numbers.

The puppet head is constructed from high quality resin and is complete with a set of both the happy and sad expression appliances which feature hand inscribed letters and numbers to the rear, to the base of the head is a square mounting point where it was attached to the puppet body. The head stands approximately 3" high and remains in excellent production used condition with some minor paint wear from use, age and handling, overall very fine.

An incredibly rare example of an original puppet head and a highly displayable artefact from this Academy Award nominated stop motion animation classic.