Animated legend has it that mop-top Batman helmer Burton penned the poem from which this picture is taken way back as when he was a pen-for-hire on the saccharine-cute Disney confection The Fox and The Hound. As it pans out, his was not the name on the director's chair (come on down, the forgotten Henry Selick) but it's Burton's characteristic vision that dominates, owing more than a tad to his little-seen short Vincent. (That wonderful black and white film accompanied Nightmare's theatrical outing.)

In Halloweentown, Jack Skellington is king, masterminding gruesome frights for the world. But Jack's one bored Goth and stumbling into the neighbouring Christmastown is intoxicated by the snowy, over-lit holiday. This year a little of October 31st is coming to December 25th. But upon dispatching the wicked Lock, Shock and Barrel to kidnap Sandy Claws (an initial attempt snatches a petrified Easter Bunny) the best laid plans of the Pumpkin King begin to go badly awry.

Peddled here a year late by the shocking Disney, Nightmare proves itself a pleasing antidote to the sweet and frankly objectionable values usually promoted by Uncle Walt's marketing men. Painstaking stop-frame work breathes life into some gloriously grisly creations - the grotesque, wheelchair-bound Frankensteinian evil scientist with a flip-top head; a baying, razor-toothed wolfman; a one-eyed mummy; a trio of charming vampires. Against them Christmastown seems positively anodyne, the obese, bombastic Father Christmas even a little scary.

For all Nightmare is a Christmas film it's one clearly in love with Halloween - much the same cocktail of seasonal sentiment and shadowy Gothic that worked so brilliantly in Burton's best film, Edward Scissorhands. Standout moments come with the terrifying presents Jack delivers (a tree-eating snake, a shrunken head) and the genuinely creepy maggoty-bag Ooogie Boogie, fashioned for the late Cab Calloway. Regular collaborator Danny Elfman scores (and sings for Jack) a gratifyingly lurid, very un-Disney selection indeed.

Burton and Selick, like Nic Roeg with The Witches, appreciate a childish audience's love of the unpleasant, summoning a feast guaranteed to make some parents blanche, while moments like the homage to Murnau's Nosferatu show an extra degree of sophistication. While there's occasionally a little too much of Burton's free-fall plotting, wrapped in a concise 76 minutes it would be hard to imagine a much better, more grimly humorous festive diversion for kids or adults alike.