Dr. Finkelstein is a character from the Nightmare Before Christmas who appears in Haunted Mansion Holiday and Haunted Mansion Holiday Nightmare.
Description[]
Origins[]
Dr. Finkelstein is a resident of Halloween Town in-which he is an archetypal mad-scientist. He is bone-white and wheelchair-bound with a metal scalp that can flip up to reveal his exposed brain, which he can manipulate without causing harm to himself. He is most notable in the film for being the creator and father-figure of Sally, the deuteragonist of the film.
In the movie he and his hunchbacked assistant Igor assist Jack in studying and replicating Christmas by lending him lab-equipment and also using mad-science to create the Skeletal Reindeer. By the end of the movie, he replaces Sally with a new creation made from half of his brain who he names Jewel.
Appearances[]
Haunted Mansion Holiday[]
While not directly appearing on the attraction, Doctor Finkelstein's likeness can be seen twice. First, he can be seen in the load area as one of the characters in the Scary Christmas card. He is shown holding Jewel's skull in this display and the hatch on his head flips open to reveal his exposed brain. Crevices in in brain subsequently light up to spell ,"Noel", the French name for Christmas.
Within the Séance Chamber, Finkelstein appears on one of Madame Leota's tarot cards for the 13 days of Christmas. His likeness represents the 12th day, "Twelve Signs of the Zodiac" in-which he is shown studying 12 items, each resembling a different horoscope sign. This includes a black scorpion, a scale made of bones, a demented crab, miniature conjoined twins, a vase filled with tentacles, the skull of a maiden with a crown of flowers, a jarred ram's corpse, a jar with skeletal fish, the skull of a lion, the skull of a goat, and the skull of a bull.
Haunted Mansion Holiday Nightmare[]
Finkelstein makes an additional appearance in Haunted Mansion Holiday Nightmare in the hallway usually reserved for the Sinister 11. Here a portrait shows him holding a scientific vial with smoke coming from it in the shape of a Christmas tree. His portrait occupies the space typically taken up by the Count Dracula portrait.
Live Events[]
In 2003 during a musical show outside of Haunted Mansion Holiday hosted by Ken Page, Doctor Finkelstein sang a musical rendition of, "If I only had a brain" from the Wizard of Oz alongside Sally.
Trivia[]
- Finkelstein is an obvious pastiche of the character Victor Frankenstein from Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein: The Modern Prometheus and its subsequent adaptations.
- Frankenstein's monster was once planned to be a resident of the Haunted Mansion in a draft by imagineer Ken Anderson.