The Dis­ney Chan­nel aired Tim Bur­ton’s Hansel and Gre­tel only once, on Hal­loween night in 1983, but it must have giv­en those few who saw the broad­cast much to pon­der over the fol­low­ing three decades. For all that time, the 35-minute adap­ta­tion of that old Ger­man folk­tale stood as per­haps the hard­est-to-see item in the Edward Scis­sorhands and The Night­mare Before Christ­mas auteur’s cat­a­log. Of course, back in 1983, the 25-year-old Bur­ton had­n’t yet made either of those movies, nor any of the oth­er beloved­ly askew fea­tures for which we know him today. He had to his name only a cou­ple of ani­mat­ed shorts made at CalArts and a stop-motion homage to his hero Vin­cent Price. Still, that added up to enough to land him this project, his first live-action film made as an adult, which he used as an out­let for his fas­ci­na­tion with Japan.

Using an all-Japan­ese cast, shoot­ing with the 16-mil­lime­ter aes­thet­ic of old mar­tial arts movies, and tak­ing a spe­cial-effects tech­nique or two from the Godzil­la man­u­al, Bur­ton’s Hansel and Gre­tel looks (and sounds) like no ver­sion of the sto­ry you’ve seen before, or will like­ly ever see again. But at least you can now watch it as often as you like, owing to its recent sud­den appear­ance on Youtube after that long absence from pub­lic viewa­bil­i­ty, bro­ken only by screen­ings at the Muse­um of Mod­ern Art and the Ciné­math­èque Française. In it we expere­ince the inter­sec­tion of the grotesque as rep­re­sent­ed by Grim­m’s Fairy Tales, the grotesque as rep­re­sent­ed by the Bur­ton­ian sen­si­bil­i­ty, the new and strange free­dom of ear­ly cable tele­vi­sion, and the sheer audac­i­ty of a young film­mak­er — not to men­tion a heck of a hand-to-hand com­bat ses­sion between Hansel, Gre­tel, and the Witch who would make them din­ner. Her din­ner, that is.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Tim Bur­ton’s Ear­ly Stu­dent Films

Vin­cent, Tim Bur­ton’s Ear­ly Ani­mat­ed Film

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

“Near­ly sev­en­teen min­utes into an episode of The Dick Cavett Show,” writes the New York­er’s Elon Green, “the host, who had walked off and then returned to the set, asked his guests — John Cas­savetes, Peter Falk, and Ben Gaz­zara — ‘Are you guys all smashed?’ The Sep­tem­ber 18, 1970 appear­ance by the Hus­bands direc­tor and his two actors — who had, in fact, been drinking—was excru­ci­at­ing. They were on hand to pro­mote their new movie, but for thir­ty-five min­utes they smoked, flopped around on the floor, and gen­er­al­ly tor­ment­ed Cavett, whose ques­tions they’d planned to ignore.” You can watch the infa­mous broad­cast at the top of the post and judge for your­self: embar­rass­ing tele­vi­sion talk-show deba­cle for the ages, or bril­liant piece of pro­mo­tion­al per­for­mance art by three of the bright­est dra­mat­ic lights of their gen­er­a­tion? If you’ve nev­er seen Hus­bands — or if you’ve seen and dis­liked it — you’ll lean toward the for­mer. But if, like many enthu­si­asts of Amer­i­can inde­pen­dent cin­e­ma, you hold the film and the rest of Cas­savetes’ direc­to­r­i­al oeu­vre in high regard, you may well find the lat­ter self-evi­dent.

Hus­bands tells the tale, in Cas­savetes’ harsh­ly real­is­tic and per­son­al fash­ion, of three men behav­ing quite bad­ly. The direc­tor stars along­side Falk and Gaz­zara as a trio of mid­dle-aged pro­fes­sion­al sub­ur­ban­ites shak­en by the sud­den death of their coterie’s for­mer fourth mem­ber. Plunged into a drunk­en lost week­end of irre­spon­si­bil­i­ty and self-destruc­tion, seri­ous even by the stan­dard of the clas­sic frus­trat­ed mid­cen­tu­ry male, they all three even­tu­al­ly find them­selves in Lon­don, try­ing hap­less­ly to bed down with girls they’ve picked up at a casi­no. This unre­lent­ing film still divides audi­ences and crit­ics alike: Pauline Kael thought it “infan­tile and offen­sive” and Roger Ebert said it “shows an impor­tant direc­tor not mere­ly fail­ing, but not even under­stand­ing why,” but Richard Brody now finds it a “for­mal­ly rad­i­cal, deeply per­son­al work [that] still packs plen­ty of sur­pris­es.” Cas­savetes, he writes, “built these char­ac­ters around the real-life ways of the actors who played them, filled the sto­ry with inci­dents from his own life, and wrote the dia­logue after impro­vis­ing with Gaz­zara and Falk.” You can learn more about this method in the BBC doc­u­men­tary on the mak­ing of Hus­bands just above. If I had to guess, I’d say the impro­vi­sa­tion did­n’t stop when pro­duc­tion wrapped.

via The New York­er

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Hair­cut: A Stu­dent Film Star­ring the Great John Cas­savetes (1982)

David Bowie Talks and Sings on The Dick Cavett Show (1974)

Watch John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s Two Appear­ances on The Dick Cavett Show in 1971 and 72

4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.