GEE Movie Club: The Nutcracker Fantasy
Added 2021-12-03 20:50:30 +0000 UTCMay your holiday season be colorful and weird.
Yes, we will still be doing Mannequin in the not-too-distant future, but December selection for GEE Movie Club is the bonkers 1979 stop motion film Nutcracker Fantasy, a strange experiment by Sanrio that answers the question "What if The Nutcracker were surreal and terrifying?"
This one is of special significance to me (Drew), who insisted we do it for December, because it's something I was allowed to watch while very young, by a well-meaning adult who thought this would be a typical Christmas-season Nutcracker ballet, when in fact it's a terrifying experience that's more Dario Argento than Rankin/Bass. Not joking: the opening sequence gave me nightmares for years.
This movie might be forgotten completely if it weren't for the fact that Sanrio put out a remastered edition in 2014. You can watch that version if you'd prefer — the colors are brighter, the details clearer, and it's rentable on Amazon — but I'm also offering the rip of my personal vintage VHS copy, which is the superior western edit of the film and which looks darker and somewhat distorted in a way that makes it feel like something you're not supposed to be watching. Because maybe it's not.
Watch that here or on the Vimeo app on your TV.
PW: clara
Post any questions and comments on this post, and we'll respond to them when we do our Movie Club episode at the end of the month.
Comments
…..I figured it out
Sean Jeffrey Jones
2021-12-08 20:44:03 +0000 UTCMy shit is stuck on Spanish now and I can’t unstick it
Sean Jeffrey Jones
2021-12-08 20:13:41 +0000 UTCAnyway, if my rambling got you interested in my take on The Nutcracker, I summed it up in a Medium article: https://medium.com/@youtuber86/fourteen-things-you-didnt-know-about-the-nutcracker-addf05ff0faa And then there was my deep dive on my blog: http://jadavisofmo.blogspot.com/2018/12/the-nutcracker-index-and-my-top-five.html
Jay
2021-12-06 07:47:52 +0000 UTC
