The Case of the Corpse Bride (2005)

Everyone knows that Tim Burton is one of the spookiest men in Hollywood (in the best way). His films are known for their signature mix of offbeat comedy and creepy visuals. Even when he makes a film that isn’t necessarily frightening, he still finds a way for it to match his strange aesthetic. 

While Tim Burton is well-known for his live-action films, it’s no secret that he’s also a fan of stop-motion animation. Every year the Halloween and Christmas seasons are filled with his classic Nightmare Before Christmas, directed by Henry Selick. Last year on this podcast we discussed Frankenweenie, a Burton animated adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. This week, we’re focusing on another marvelously morbid Burton film: The Corpse Bride. 

Loosely based on a folktale with Jewish and Russian elements, The Corpse Bride is a melancholic fairytale, a tragic story with delightfully upbeat undead characters against a living world so bleak and muted, it might as well be in black and white. This film is just the thing to get you into the Halloween holiday spirit. So, hold onto your rings and don’t make any vows that you don’t intend to keep, it’s time to fall in love with The Corpse Bride!

Summary

  • Victor and Victoria are one day away from the arranged marriage that their parents have set up for them. As they practice their vows, Victor becomes increasingly nervous even though he appears to like Victoria. That night, as Victor practices his vows in the woods, he places the ring on an apparent tree branch. He soon discovers that the branch was in fact the finger of a corpse bride, buried in a shallow grave. Thrilled that a man has seemingly vowed to be her husband, the Corpse Bride drags Victor to the land of the dead, where he is stuck between life and death. Meanwhile in the land of the living, Victoria’s parents have arranged for her to marry another man, the nefarious Barkis Bittern. Victor must find a way to admit his mistake and stop Victoria and Bakis’ wedding, or he will spend eternity with his undead bride. 

Making of

  • According to Tim Burton, the idea for The Corpse Bride came from a pre-existing story that was only a few paragraphs long. Joe Ranft, a good friend of Burton’s and one of the minds that helped launch PIXAR, was the person that passed the story along to Burton. Ranft was a storyboard supervisor on Nightmare Before Christmas and might have given Burton the idea for Corpse Bride while the two worked on the film. 

    • Several sources claim that the original tale was a Russian folktale, while others believe that it was based on The Finger, a story with Jewish roots. Because Burton himself doesn’t remember the name of the story or where Ranft found it, it’s tough to pinpoint exactly which folktale inspired the film. 

    • In the film, Emily (the corpse bride) was buried in a shallow grave in her wedding gown. Many have pointed out that this detail reflects a horrific time in Russian history, when anti-Jewish riots ended countless lives, especially in the early 20th century. There were instances of Jewish brides being murdered and buried in their wedding gowns. However, in The Corpse Bride, Emily is not targeted for being Jewish. 

    • The seemingly most likely source material for The Corpse Bride is The Finger. Besides both stories revolving around a man unwittingly marrying an undead bride, there are some major differences. The folktale may be of Russian and Jewish origin, but the film takes place in Victorian England. The characters are wed by a Christian minister instead of a rabbi, reflecting western european fairy tale influences instead of eastern. 

  • By the time Tim Burton began directing The Corpse Bride, the film had been 10 years in the making. He was set on making another stop-motion film, and wanted to make sure he found the right people to make the project. Allison Abbate, who was a producer on Nightmare Before Christmas, helped make Burton’s ideas a reality. Director Mike Johnson oversaw the production on a day-to-day basis as the assistant director when Burton was also shooting Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. He had worked on James and the Giant Peach and some projects for Will Vinton Studios.  

    • They filmed The Corpse Bride over the course of a year in 3 Mills Studios in the east end of London. Most of the animators working on the project were British, some even had ties to Aardman Studios. Some American animators from Will Vinton Studios joined the project as well (and if you can remember from our LAIKA episode, you know what happened to Will Vinton Studios around this time)

    • According to an article by the Animation World Network, almost 40 model-makers and builders were recruited from the Harry Potter and Star Wars films to make the intricate sets. 

  • The production used a 35mm digital still camera to capture the movement of puppets over the course of 55 weeks. The upgrade from film to digital was huge, because it allowed the animators to look back at previous shots and perfect the animation. 

  • McKinnon and Saunders, one of the world’s leading puppet companies, made the characters for the film. 

    • Merrick Chaney and Tom St. Aman built their signature steel armatures that made each puppet a moveable character. On each of the puppets’ heads was a mechanical gear mechanism that allowed subtle movement in the faces. This was a groundbreaking addition to the art of stop-motion, and allowed for a greater range of emotion, and sped up the process because animators no longer had to remove faces as often. 

    • There were about 200 puppets total used in the production, 14 of them were Victor, 14 were Emily (the Corpse Bride) and 13 were Victoria. Each character was designed by Tim Burton and character designer Carlos Grangel. Burton tends to design characters with very small legs, making them disproportionate and difficult to animate. The three main characters have a classic Burton design in that they are all very tall and thin with tiny feet.

    • When an animator spends nearly a year animating a character, they grow attached to the puppet, which helps with the individual performances. When many people think about actors in animation, they think about the people providing the vocal performances. But, animators are actors too. They make decisions about the movement and reaction of the characters. Having great actors as animators elevated the performances of the film, but it also makes it difficult to have matching performances when another animator takes over. 

  • All of the designs and storyboards for Corpse Bride went through Tim Burton. He had a very specific vision for the film in that it needed to be whimsical and charming, but also morbid. So, the movie couldn’t go too dark with the plot. 

    • The film deals with the concept of being stuck between two worlds, the land of the living and the land of the dead. In this universe, the land of the living looks far more bleak and unalive than the colorful and joyous land of the dead. Because of this, when the film touches on darker subject matter, like death, murder, and betrayal, the characters and settings are bright and colorful. 

    • The living world is set in Victorian times, with rigid styles that represent repression. For the colors and shades of the living world, the character designers took inspiration from daguerreotype photography. Rather than desaturate the characters in post production, they truly were painted in dull, muted colors. 

      • We recently referenced the daguerreotype in our Practical Magic episode! It was the first publicly available photographic process, which means your oldest family photos might be daguerreotypes. It was common for family members to take daguerreotype photos of dead loved ones before burial. In this sense, the living characters in The Corpse Bride appear more dead than the dead characters. 

    • The land of the dead is far more open, with characters that don’t have to follow any kind of rules now that they are deceased. There were two teams of artists, one for the living characters and one for the dead. The dead characters were stylized and colorful, while the artists working on the living characters had to make them look uniform. 

  • Although the film was fairly low-budget, Tim Burton was able to bring in a talented group of voice actors to play the characters. Each of the actors recorded their lines separately, but Burton was there to direct them during each recording. One of the actors was his partner and the mother of his son (they would have another child together in 2007) Helena Bonham Carter. 

    • Before filming began, one of the biggest concerns was that children watching the film might be afraid of the corpse bride character. But, Helena Bonham Carter made the character seem sympathetic and charming, instead of a scorned spirit hell-bent on destroying a happy marriage. Bonham Carter has appeared in several of Tim Burton’s projects, like Big Fish and Sweeny Todd. 

    • Johnny Depp took on the lead role of Victor while also playing Willy Wonka in Burton’s adaptation of the Roald Dahl novel. Both men would travel between the two studios and sets while filming. Depp and Burton have had a long-time professional relationship, ever since Depp appeared in Edward Scissorhands in 1990. 

    • British actor Emily Watson voiced the reserved Victoria, Victor’s bride to be. Watson has appeared in many TV shows and films since the mid-90s, including the critically acclaimed series Chernobyl. 

    • Richard E Grant played the villainous Barkis Bittern. He’s a critically acclaimed actor that has appeared in several popular TV shows and films like Loki and Star Wars Episode IX. 

    • The legendary Christopher Lee lent his voice to Pastor Galswells, the minister that oversees the wedding between the main characters. Lee was a powerhouse talent that was in hundreds of productions over the course of his nearly 70-year career, including The Lord of the Rings. 

Music

  • Composer Danny Elfman brought his signature style to The Corpse Bride’s soundtrack. 

  • He and Tim Burton first worked together in 1985 on Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure. The two instantly clicked due to their similar roots. Both were born in California and raised up as “horror movie kids.” When talking about his experience working with Burton for this film he said “Working with Tim now is not that different than it was 20 years ago. Our process is still pretty much the same.” To date they’ve done over 16 movies together. 

  • When creating the music for the Corpse Bride, Elfman used a lot of harpsichords and organs. 

    • Elfman would often record these percussion pieces, and as he puts it, the “odd stuff,” by himself. He would then bring these recordings with him to the Orchestra sessions. He does this because when he records the orchestra, he wants all his focus on the orchestra and its recording. 

  • The first song in the film, According to Plan, introduces us with key exposition so that we know exactly what is going on. 

    • This song is performed by the ensemble cast and follows Victor and Victoria’s families as they prepare for their upcoming nuptials. The song is not particularly upbeat, and has a serious tone.  

  • Even though it is not the first song in the movie, Elfman began with writing Victor’s Piano Solo. This was the first thing Elfman wrote because it had to match Victor’s fingers actually playing a piano. Not only did it become Victor’s leitmotif, it also became a sort of theme for the whole film. It appears again when Victor has the duet with the Corpse Bride, Emily. 

    • This song is hauntingly beautiful and draws inspiration from classical music. 

  • Probably the most fun song of the film is Remains of the Day. In this song we are given the details of the Corpse Bride’s gruesome and tragic death. It’s the most information-heavy of all the songs, but has an upbeat tempo and great vocals. 

    • Tim Burton decided early on that the land of the dead should be an upbeat jazzy place. So for this song sung by the dead, Danny Elfman took inspiration from 1930s Cab Calloway. 

    • The character that sings the song is named Bone Jangles (clearly a play on BoJangles). Elfman also calls it the Bone Jangles song. 

    • Elfman intended for the singer to have a gruffer voice. They auditioned close to thirty people, but none were quite right. In the end Burton called Elfman up and asked if he would do the song, just as he had provided the singing vocals to Jack Pumpkinhead in Nightmare Before Christmas. 

      • Unfortunately it was really brutal on his vocal chords. Everytime he recorded, he was hoarse for the rest of the day.

Reception 

  • The Corpse Bride grossed about $53 million in North America and about $65 million in other territories, for a total of over $118 million worldwide.

  • Currently has a 7.3 on IMDB, 84% on Rotten Tomatoes, and 3.8 on Letterboxd. The critical consensus is that the film, as expected from a Tim Burton movie, is whimsically macabre, visually imaginative, and emotionally bittersweet.

  • The film was nominated for over 30 awards and won 9 of them.

    • These include many best-animated feature awards from around the world, especially at the Saturn Awards. The film also received an Ub Iwerks Award for Technical Achievement. 

  • The Corpse Bride was released on DVD and HD DVD on January 16, 2006. It was later released on Blu-ray in September of the same year. As of November 2020, the total gross for domestic video sales is over $42 million.

Fun Facts

  • At one point during production, the world-famous animator and one of the pioneers of modern stop motion animation, Ray Harryhausen, paid a visit to the set of The Corpse Bride. Production ground to a halt for the day and he received a hero’s welcome. The crew decided to give their idol an on-screen shout-out in the film. When Victor plays the piano right before he first meets Victoria, you can see Harryhausen’s name engraved on the instrument.

  • Initially, Burton planned to shoot on 35mm film, but The Corpse Bride would actually end up being the first stop motion movie to be shot digitally, which made it easier to do many effects. 

  • Allegedly Jim Carrey and Angelina Jolie were considered for the two lead roles, but of course, Tim Burton would end up getting Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter.

  • The Corpse Bride was nominated for Best Animated Feature at the Oscars but lost to Wallace and Gromit and the Curse of the Were-Rabbit, which coincidentally also starred Helena Bonham Carter.

  • The film was dedicated to the late Joe Ranft, who was killed in a car accident the year The Corpse Bride was released. The PIXAR film Cars was also dedicated to Ranft. 

There’s something strangely beautiful about stop-motion animation. Mix that art form with the morbid and macabre imaginings of Tim Burton, and we have a match made in heaven. The Corpse Bride is a fascinating film that showcases a colorful and whimsical idea of death, with upbeat and lovable characters, even less frightening than those that live in Burton’s Halloweentown. With stand-out moments (like a skeleton gleefully reminding the audience that they too have an expiration date) and groundbreaking techniques that enhanced stop-motion, The Corpse Bride is certainly something special. So if you’re looking for a melancholy film about love, loss, friendship, and death, check this movie out; you just might love it to death. 

Black C. Diaries