Well, now we know what taxidermy looks like through Tim Burton’s eyes… The quirky director’s latest, Frankenweenie, is what happens when Burton gives an Edward Scissorhands-reminiscient suburb the, naturally, spooky stop-motion animation treatment, and takes it to the 1950s drive-in for some old-fashioned black-and-white horror cinema action.

One suspecting that a flick about A Boy & His Dog could be anything but jarring, especially when Disney has a helping hand, needs to put away all doubt. Once loner Victor Frankenstein (Charlie Tahan) resurrects his beloved pup back from that big bone yard in the sky for a science fair project, the retro-Gothic town of New Holland experiences a spooky awakening of sorts that provokes paranoia, competitiveness, and a host of mutated experiments gone wrong that may or may not be former inhabitants of the Nightmare Before Christmas’s cutting room floor.

What may be most refreshing about Frankenweenie is how Tim Burton’s movie really is at heart. Gone are the influences of novels or soap operas, and here to stay for every frame of the film is Burton’s deliciously disturbed mind. From the obvious personal connection in Victor’s fledgling directorial talents, to the film’s obliviousness to what is considered to be “too scary” for a kindergarten audience, Burton has created a labor of love while being refreshingly edgy, his signature concoction.

We may be torn whether to flinch in disgust over such demented events in an animated film, or to grimly giggle at the sight of a cuddly critter going through a hyperbolic, vampiric transformation, but because of the film being an instant classic in a misfitted menagerie, there’s no shame in admitting Frankenweenie is fierce and freakish fun.  A