TW: graphic cartoon animal death, graphic violence of plenty (including neck snapping, disfigurement), a brief mention of cannibalism, a brutal paragraph about cartoon characters being enslaved, and disembowelment.
Back in late October 2021, when I knew half of what I do now (in terms of fandom, music and other, admittedly, more important things) my family and my friend's family took a trip to spend 3 days at a wooden cabin in Indiana.
Our tale takes place on the third night, the 31st, aka Halloween, we'd some trick or treating, ate some our candy stash, watched Hotel Transylvania (as per tradition) and went to bed. It was a big cabin, our parents slept upstairs, my brother and sister slept in the living room, and me and my friend slept in the basement.
This basement had an abundance of turtle statues, two couches where me and my friend slept, a bathroom, an air hockey table, a pool table, a door to the outside, a staircase which had a tub of toys, a table in front of the couch I slept on, a tv a foot away from the table, and near the tv two shelves filled with DVDs.
Me and my friend watched Disney channel until she fell asleep. What I can assume was an hour after my friend went to bed and the TV was turned off, I, in a state of boredom and insomnia got up and grabbed a flashlight from the edge of the pool table, set on browsing the DVD collection in hopes of finding something to watch.
I browsed the three levels of second shelf to the right of the TV, nothing of interest. I made my way over to the first shelf to the left of the tv, I browsed the first two levels, nothing. I browsed the bottom level with the assumption that I wouldn't find anything that would peak my interest until my flash light caught sight of...the Space Jam DVD.
Hmm, haven't seen that film since the pandemic, probably due for a rewatch. I thought. I popped it in and skipped to the main menu and hit play. The first 15 minutes or so played out as I remembered, at least what I think I remembered anyway, since despite watching it dozens of times a year prior I hadn't remembered the finer details like exact voices, lighting choices, or even lines in some cases, the picture quality was a bit poor but I got used to it after awhile and didn't really notice anything out of the ordinary up until I had to pause the film to go to the bathroom at the 1:20:38 mark, where I noticed there was 1:30:23 left.
How could there be an hour left? It's the climax. I thought as I used the bathroom. When I got out and resumed, I decided to check the DVD box to see if I had clicked on some bonus feature by mistake and I noticed a circular sticker (identical to the one in the "featuring Dante from The devil may cry series" meme) on the bottom right corner which read "direkter's kut" which was an obvious misspelling of "director's cut". Well, what could this supposed director's cut entail in order to justify adding an hour to the runtime at this point in the film? I asked myself...again.
(Note: this is the portion where the scary/really dark crap comes in so if you can't handle the above triggers, please click off now. For the rest of you left who can, continue reading)
That question would soon be answered when the main characters lost the game and Michael and Wayne Knight ran off into a spaceship, going back on Micheal's word that he'd take toons place in being enslaved if they lost the game. Bugs tries to get a rematch but the aliens don't listen and the gang is rounded up and sent off to space.
For the next hour, I endured witnessing everyone's beloved animated comedians getting starved, verbally and physically abused, tortured, left to stew in their own misery and the memories of their life of freedom (as much freedom as a studio contract and a constant audience watching their every move could provide), try and fail to escape twice with the first attempt of escape resulting in Porky starving to death due to whatever little food they were provided being taken away for the fallowing week and the next having both Roadrunner's neck snapped and Bugs' bucktooth being removed (both in graphic, gory detail).
