Prepare your sleigh, skidoo or alternative form of seasonal transport. Because while most of the UK’s cinemas have sadly been shuttered once more, the Uckfield Picturehouse is still opening its doors, and director Corin Hardy has prepared one heck of a mini season of movies for this weekend. “I wanted the four films to all have an alternative Christmas flavour,” Hardy tells Empire. While the likes of Rare Exports and Rocky IV were considered, the man behind The Nun, The Hallow and multiple episodes of Gangs Of London eventually settled on a quartet of stone-cold festive classics for his Nightmares Before Christmas, admittedly mostly with a bodycount a bit higher than that of It’s A Wonderful Life. Here, he talks us through his choices.
Die Hard
“When trying to define what the ultimate four Christmas films could be, I made a little list of criteria and they had to fulfil each one. It has to take place over Christmas. And it has to capture the spirit of Christmas within the movie. But that can also be physically capturing Christmas in the case of Nightmare Before Christmas, or even Die Hard, where a man dressed as Father Christmas is captured.
“I first saw it when I was 14 or something. It was an 18, and it was like the dangerous movie that you'd heard all about. Seeing it felt like a sort of adult step up in a way, in terms of the action and the swearing and the cool violence. It flows constantly from one scene to the next, and never lets up with the excitement. There’s a few people I know that are coming who I’ve never seen come out to the cinema before — but they’ll go out for Die Hard.”
Most anticipated scene: “The scene when McClane and Gruber are trying to suss each other out — and the Santa in the lift with Hans reading ‘Now I have a machine gun... Ho ho ho...’ Perfect. Violent. Exciting. Rollercoaster.”
Gremlins
"I've always wanted to see Gremlins in a cinema — I was too young when it came out — so this is like a personal fulfilment. It’s one of my favourite ever creature-features. The Mogwai kind of distracts from the darkness of the naughty Gremlins, that are actually pretty terrifying. I’m waiting to be able to show my daughters Gremlins, but we’re not there yet.”
“I try and involve puppets in anything I do, really. Because there’s still a real magic to them, especially using puppetry techniques within live action. Gremlins has an absolute commitment to pulling off a proper sort of monster movie, practically. And I love the anarchy. It inspired one of my music videos, actually — one I did for The Prodigy called Warriors Dance, which was sort of like that amazing Gremlins bar sequence involving flashers and fire and cigarettes and everything. I had this idea to have cigarette-packet people come to life. I thought they could wreak some anarchy in a bar as well.”
Most anticipated scene: “The bar scene and the cinema scene — pure puppet anarchy and so, so cool.”
The Nightmare Before Christmas
“The Nightmare Before Christmas was hugely influential for me in making my first stop-motion animated film, Butterfly. I got a book on the film and it had lots of pictures of the puppets and the making of it. So I sculpted 40 heads to put onto a character. What I love, especially now when everything is largely computer-enhanced or generated, is it was one of the last sort of ambitious feature films with pure puppetry. That’s still to me so much more charming and magic.
“I watched it the other day for Halloween with my daughters — you get to watch it twice — and it completely holds up. It’s got that cheeky sort of Tim Burton magic with anarchy and characters that are really out there. And the songs are fantastic. It’s the best musical I know.”
Most anticipated scene: “The opening Halloween song/ intro to all the characters. It's just such a ride to see these crazy denizens of Halloweentown and meet their Pumpkin King. That and Jack's flawed attempts to ‘make Christmas’ by putting shrunken heads and child-swallowing snakes in presents and laughing to the sky with his skeletal reindeer...”
Batman Returns
“To me, the design and look of Catwoman hasn’t been superseded in anything. It was when superheroes when they used to make their costumes and they didn't just magically appear on them. Back then it was like they had to hand-stitch them. I don’t know how she got in and out of it. And the Penguin is really kind of grim, suspect character. He has a mouldy dampness to him.”
“I’m quite excited because I haven’t watched it for some time. I love the out-thereness — the distilled purity of a Tim Burton fairy-tale horror superhero movie. With Batman, he set the tone for a dark superhero movie that we hadn’t seen on that scale. And then he was able to really run with it in Batman Returns and go completely Tim Burton.”
Most anticipated scene: “I love the opening with the birth of Penguin. It introduces the incredible Danny Elfman theme, with the organ, which I still love putting on on a cold dark night.”
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