DAVE ITZKOFFIt would be a tremendous disappointment if Tim Burton's inner sanctum turned out to be a sterile environment, barren except for a telephone on its cold white floor; or a cubicle with a "World's Greatest Dad" coffee mug. Instead, the workplace of the filmmaker behind grim delights like "Beetlejuice" and "Edward Scissorhands" is a definitive Burtonesque experience: On a hill here in north London, in a Victorian residence that once belonged to children's book illustrator Arthur Rackham, it lies at the top of a winding staircase guarded by the imposing portraits of Boris Karloff and Christopher Lee. Its decor is best characterized as modern nonconformist, and when the master of the house greets you, his drinking glass will bear a poster image for "The Curse of Frankenstein."

Burton, 54, has accumulated in a directorial career that spans 16 features and nearly 30 years. His style is strongly visual, darkly comic and morbidly fixated, but it is rooted just as much in his affection for monsters and misfits (which in his movies often turn out to be the same thing).

He all but invented the vocabulary of the modern superhero movie (with "Batman"), brought new vitality to stop-motion animation (with "Corpse Bride" and "The Nightmare Before Christmas") and has come to be associated, for better or worse, with anything that is ghoulish or ghastly without being inaccessible.

His success has also transported him from sleepy, suburban Southern California, where he grew up and graduated from the California Institute of the Arts, to London, where he lives with his partner, actress Helena Bonham Carter, and their two young children, and where he has come to embrace the sensation of being perpetually out of place.

"I just feel like a foreigner," Burton said in his cheerful, elliptical manner. "Feeling that weird foreign quality just makes you feel more, strangely, at home". On a recent morning Burton, dressed entirely in black, was talking about his new animated feature, "Frankenweenie," which tells the charming story of a young boy (named Victor Frankenstein) who reanimates the corpse of his dead pet dog. These are excerpts from this conversation.

___Not only does "Frankenweenie" hark back to the start of your career, it seems to refer to many of the features you've made since the original short. Is that by design?

If I really thought about it, that's something I would probably not do. (Laughs). I don't consciously make those points of: I did this. Things that I grew up with stay with me. You start a certain way, and then you spend your whole life trying to find a certain simplicity that you had. It's less about staying in childhood than keeping a certain spirit of seeing things in a different way.

___How much of your childhood are we seeing in Victor's isolation?

I felt like an outcast. At the same time I felt quite normal. I think a lot of kids feel alone and slightly isolated and in their own world. I don't believe the feelings I had were unique. You can sit in a classroom and feel like no one understands you, and you're Vincent Price in "House of Usher." I would imagine, if you talk to every single kid, most of them probably felt similarly. But I felt very tortured as a teenager. That's where "Edward Scissorhands" came from. I was probably clinically depressed and didn't know it.

___Were you encouraged to try sports?

My dad was a professional baseball player. He got injured early in his career, so he didn't fulfill that dream of his. He ended up working for the sports department of the city of Burbank. I did some sports. It was a bit frustrating. I wasn't the greatest sports person.

___That can be deeply disheartening at that age, to learn that you're bad at something.

It's the same with drawing. If you look at children's drawings, they're all great. And then at a certain point, even when they're about 7 or 8 or 9, they go, "Oh, I can't draw." Well, yes, you can. I went through that same thing… and a couple of teachers said: "Don't worry about it. If you like to draw, just draw." And that just liberated me. My mother wasn't an artist, but she made these weird owls out of pine cones . There's an outlet for everyone, you know?

___Were horror films and B movies easily accessible when you were growing up?

They'd show monster movies on regular TV then, which they wouldn't show now. Some of them were pretty hard core, like "The Brain That Wouldn't Die," or something where a guy gets his arm ripped off and is bleeding down the wall. My parents were a bit freaked out . (Laughs). But better that I'm watching TV than them having to watch me or deal with me.

___Do you find poetic justice in the fact that, after all that, Disney is the studio that's releasing "Frankenweenie"?

I feel like I've been through a revolving door over the years, and from my first time there as an animator to "Frankenweenie" to "Nightmare" and "Ed Wood," it's always been the same reaction: "Come back," and then "Hmmm, I don't know." After I stopped trying to be a Disney animator - which was useless - they gave me the opportunity, for a year or two, to draw whatever I wanted. I felt quite grateful for it. At the same time I felt like Rapunzel, a princess trapped in a tower. I had everything I needed except the light of day. I felt they didn't really want me, and luckily Warner Brothers and Paul Reubens gave me a chance.

___When you see, 23 years after "Batman", the extent to which superhero movies have become the backbone of Hollywood, do you feel a sense of pride or ownership ?

No, not ownership. At the time it felt like the first attempt at a darker version of a comic book. Now it looks like a lighthearted romp If I recall correctly, it wasn't the greatest-received critical movie. So I do feel strange for getting such a bad rap on some level, and nobody mentions, oh, maybe it helped start something.

___When you worked with Johnny Depp for the first time, on "Edward Scissorhands," what was it that connected you to him?

Here was a guy who was perceived as this thing - this teen idol. But just meeting him, I could tell, without knowing the guy, he wasn't that as a person. Very simply, he fit the profile of the character. We were in Florida in 90-degree heat, and he couldn't use his hands, and he was wearing a leather outfit and covered head to toe with makeup. I was impressed by his strength and stamina. I remember Jack Nicholson showed me this book about mask acting and how it unleashes something else in a person. I've always been impressed by anybody that was willing to do that. Because a lot of actors don't want to cover ((theatrical voice)) "the instrument."

___Having a life with Helena Bonham Carter, do you have to be more careful about how you use her in your films?

The great thing about her is that, long before I met her, she had a full career. She's also willing to do things that aren't necessarily glamorous or attractive, and I admire her for that. We've learned how to leave things at home, make it more of a sanctuary.