The Happy Mutant's Filmgoer's and Video Viewer's Companion

From the most sadistic revival theater ever:

“Now showing!!!

Come and See and Grave of the Fireflies!!

The WWII double feature which will WRECK YOU UTTERLY!!!”

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Shocked Meagan Good GIF by Harlem

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Honestly, the most sadistic double feature ever was the original way they marketed Grave of the Fireflies.

I kid you not, they double-featured it with My Neighbor Totoro.

No, no, seriously. And as a result, our family watched that double feature (at home) when the kids were still quite little. We kept watching, because we couldn’t believe Grave of the Fireflies would be played with Totoro unless it were a child-friendly choice. It wasn’t.

We still shudder when we talk about it.

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That almost makes sense for the parents. After the horror of Fireflies, Totoro would be a happy breather. “A mental sorbet”

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I heard it once described as that Totoro came second so that people didn’t walk out of Fireflies directly into heavy traffic.

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Same here. I know we’ll watch it again – it’s too good not to – but the realism and dramatic depictions pull you in and drains you… but you can’t stop watching due to the emotional investment you’ve made and your concern for the characters. The only other anti-war films that rank up there with Come and See is Masaki Kobayashi’s 1959 three-film series The Human Condition, which we’ve also watched once… but will again at some point.

BTW: Other Kobayashi films I highly recommend: Samurai Rebellion and Harakiri. In both films, the swordplay takes a backseat to the human drama and to Kobayashi’s seeming mission to destroy the “myth” of samurais.

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Apparently the animators would switch between the two movies during production, working on Totoro acting as a level of relief when Grave became too much for them

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That one was great.

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snl season 44 GIF by Saturday Night Live

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oh my god omg GIF

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If they managed to get both Jennifer Anniston and Warwick Davis to make cameos… :thinking:

Nah…

tired season 2 GIF by American Gods

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Hundreds of vampires discovered in mass grave | Boing Boing

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Worst movie tie in promotion ever!

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Good call with The Addiction and Martin. I would have included Thirst.

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I was retroactively impressed by Innocent Blood once when I went looking for still images of the characters with their fangs, eventually realizing there weren’t any

The actors didn’t use prosthetic teeth at all

They just acted :woman_vampire:

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Just saw this in Sight and Sound:

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I really enjoyed Glenda Jackson’s performance in Elizabeth is Missing, too:

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Thanks for the tip! I’ll go looking.

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Going to have to watch Marat/Sade again!

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