The Reanimator

Tim Burton previews his stop-motion feature 'Frankenweenie'

Nearly 30 years ago, a young animator and artist working at Disney on projects like "The Fox and the Hound" and "The Black Cauldron" made a short live-action film, using the company's resources, about a little boy whose dog, Sparky, is hit by a car and dies. Learning about electrical impulses at school, young Victor reanimates his beloved pet -- only to terrify the people of his small town in the process, turning them into an angry mob.

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That 30-minute film was called "Frankenweenie," and its director was Tim Burton, who was fired from Disney for his efforts and whose short was shelved by the company for being too scary. That didn't stop Burton, however, who went on to become one of the most successful directors of the past quarter-century, with films like "Batman," "Edward Scissorhands," "Ed Wood," "Sleepy Hollow," "Planet of the Apes," "Sweeney Todd" and "Alice in Wonderland" on his résumé.

Related: 'Frankenweenie' trailer arrives

Yet "Frankenweenie" (which was inspired by his own loss of a beloved dog as a child in Burbank, Calif.) has seemingly haunted him for his entire career, and now Burton has returned to that story, this time as a full-length film done in stop-motion animation (for Disney, no less). Having produced "The Nightmare Before Christmas" and co-directed "The Corpse Bride," two earlier stop-motion movies, Burton has taken solo directorial reins for "Frankenweenie," which is without a doubt one of the director's most personal projects.

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The Reanimator

"I just recalled that sort of first relationship, you know, with a pet usually," says Burton about the story's origins. "The kind where it's unconditional -- you know, you walk out the door and you walk back in, and it's like you've been away for three years. And then also, because animals usually don't live as long, it's the first death that you experience, or that I experienced. So that was like a very powerful combination of the two. I think that's where the story came from, the idea of never forgetting that emotion and the trauma of losing that kind of relationship, but easily relating it to the Frankenstein story. It's easy to kind of marry the two things without it seeming like a stretch."

Burton is speaking to a small group of journalists who have been brought to a Santa Monica screening room to watch 26 minutes of "Frankenweenie." The footage more or less condenses much of the movie's plot -- ironically bringing it back to its short-film roots -- which has been naturally expanded from Burton's original live-action version (that film, by the way, is available as an extra on the "Nightmare Before Christmas" DVD). This sneak preview of the film affords us two immediate insights: This is very much a Burton love letter to the old Universal horror movies, with "Frankenstein" the most obvious one, while also paying homage to American and Japanese monster movies and further exploring Burton's fascination with suburbia and outcasts.

The second thing is the beauty of the animation, which is done in black and white (it will also be in 3-D). Despite all the impressive visual delights afforded to us by modern-day computer animation, there is something deeply intimate about stop-motion. It's the hand-crafted texture, the reality of the physical puppets and sets, and the small quirks and imperfections that give stop-motion a continuing resonance even despite its retro qualities. If the 26 minutes screened is any indication, "Frankenweenie" could be destined to sit proudly alongside other modern stop-motion classics like "The Nightmare Before Christmas" and "Coraline."

"It hasn't really changed," says Burton about the stop-motion technique when we sit down with him after the screening. "It hasn't really changed since the beginning of film. You know, that's the great thing about it. There are a few little tools that help, but I think the great thing about this medium is that it really doesn't change. And I think that the people who like doing it, that's what they like about it.

"Technology can blur the lines," he continues. "We had such good puppets on 'Corpse Bride' that a lot of people thought that was done on computer ... each form has its great element. There's great computer animation, great drawn animation, you know, great every kind of animation. I think what you hope for is that what you actually like about a certain form, you don't want to lose that. We tried to let our budget limitations work for us, so a lot of (what we shot) is kind of rough, but that's what we love about it."

Providing voices in the film are Charlie Tahan as little Victor, Martin Short and Catherine O'Hara as his parents, and Martin Landau as the creepy scientist teacher Mr. Rzykruski, who indirectly mentors Victor's experiments with reanimation. The film is set in the fictional town of New Holland, which executive producer Don Hahn describes as "Transylvania meets Burbank." Sounds kind of like where Tim Burton grew up: "Well, that's the way it was," says Burton. "That's why I always related the Frankenstein story to my own upbringing, because it was so easy to see your neighbors as the angry villagers -- because there was that kind of mentality. There was a kind of angry-mob mentality that every now and then would kind of rear up. So it was all stuff that seemed, even though it's in a Frankenstein movie, seemed like real life too. What was real and not real is quite a blurry line in some ways."

Which sounds about as close to a definition of a Tim Burton film as one can get. Rooted in real emotions and personal experiences, filtered through an imagination filled with scary monsters and fantastical, odd landscapes, the full-length "Frankenweenie" looks set to fulfill the promise of that short film made three decades ago by that young, introverted artist.

"I'm kind of grateful that (the original short) was live-action because if it had been animation, I probably wouldn't have gotten into live-action features," reflects Burton about returning to his story. "So it was a very sort of kind of lucky break, in a way, in that now the animated version makes sense. I think there are enough new elements, it feels like something that's personal, and it definitely feels like something new. I didn't feel like I was just treading over old territory. This is a different way to explore it."

"Frankenweenie" will give a theater near you a jolt on Oct. 5.

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