It seems like an increasing number of the movies I review here have some connection to Bob. Previously, he brought us the fantastic Karate Warriors, and the not-really-fantastic-at-all, in-fact-pretty-fucking-stupid Invasion of the Bee Girls.
Tonight’s movie, which is without question the cutest horror movie ever made, was a birthday present from the ubiquitous Bob. Witness the terror, the unspeakable devastation, the inconceivable fuzziness, the warm, twitching noses, of a herd of elephant-sized bunnies! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!
Cole Hillman is a rancher in the American southwest, which is under attack by a plague of rabbits, eating everything in their path. Wanting a solution to the problem that doesn’t involve pulling all his cattle off the range and drenching his lands in poison, he and Elgin “Deforest ‘Bones’ Kelley” Clark (“Dammit, Cole, I’m a veterinarian, not Elmer Fudd!”) contact Roy and Gerry Bennett, a young (described as such by Elgin, regardless of the fact that Janet Leigh looks about 70) couple of research scientists investigating ways to use Rory Calhoun’s giant eyebrows to genetically alter plague animals so they won’t breed as fast. What they should have done was train the presumable army of mites that must live in those fur bushes on his forehead to attack the plague animals and eat them. Of course, then you’d have to fight off an army of Rory Calhoun’s eyebrow mites. Yeesh.
Taking a cue from Tarantula, their genetic fumbling causes a rapid increase in growth instead of the desired effect of decreased population. Taking a cue from children everywhere who do really stupid things their parents told them not to, the Bennetts’ precocious daughter frees one of the giant bunnies, which sets off a breeding explosion of rabbits the size of Buicks.
That’s a funny phrase, isn’t it? “The size of a Buick.” Because Buick makes not-giant cars now. It was probably funnier in the 70’s when there wasn’t a car to be had that weighed less than 12 tons, and Buick was the king of them all. I think that in this day and age of compact cars, we are forced to find a new automotive metaphor for huge things. So a breeding explosion of rabbits the size of soccer mom SUV’s, then.
Before long, the giant rabbits get hungry and leave their burrows, feasting on everything in sight, including human flesh. Well, actually they don’t really feast on it, they just chew it up some. For being a plague of starving beasts eating everything in sight, they don’t really do a very good job of eating everything in sight. Their victims mostly just look like Jason Voorhees used them for chopping rehearsal. And thinking of Jason, this movie is actually surprisingly gory. For a PG-rated (yes, fuckface, I know there was no such thing as a PG-13 in 1972) horror flick, there’s a helluva lot of blood splattered about. We see multiple dismembered corpses of rabbit victims (I dare you to say that without giggling), as well as multiple gooey rabbit gunshot casualties (I had no idea the force of being shot by a Winchester was enough to explode a three-foot hole in a 400-pound animal, and to launch said animal completely off its feet).
Guns don’t work; for every rabbit that gets shot down, ten more take its place. Dynamite won’t work; bury them in their burrows, they just dig their way out. Finally, a plan is hatched to electrify some nearby railroad tracks and guide the giant killer rabbits (I dare you to say that to yourself without giggling, too) there using the headlights from the 6,000 cars parked at the local drive-in theater.
Seriously, the cops round up everyone at the drive-in to help, and the resulting line of cars is easily a mile long. Forgetting that the 70’s was better days when people gave a rat’s ass about their theater experience and didn’t just plunk their butts down in the seats of a 50-screen corporate googolplex which only shows big-budget Hollywood fare, crushing the hopes of many a talented independent filmmaker to get their movie seen in a theater, and which sells candy at around 300% markup, and has driven the drive-in to near extinction so generations to come will never know the bliss of watching a movie outdoors on a screen the size of the Hoover dam - forgetting all that, was there ever a drive-in that could host this many cars?
And speaking of questions this movie raises, how did they get every single bunny to touch the electrified tracks? There’s what, about three feet between rails? And these bunnies are about ten feet long. What stopped a single one of them from just stepping over the trap? Plot convenience, that’s what. This is one of those movies where, the second you ask a question, you hear yourself saying, “Why am I questioning anything, I’m watching a movie about GIANT KILLER BUNNIES! AAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Awwww, bunnies.”
And then there’s the bunny suit. Oh, the bunny suit. Because there aren’t actually any ten-foot rabbits, all the shots of human/lepus interaction (and one shot of horse/lepus interaction) are realized using a guy in a rabbit suit that makes the guy in the bear suit from Hercules In New York look like a real bear. All other lepus action is, of course, brought to cuddly-wuddly life by actual bunnies hopping adorably through miniature streets and houses with stage blood smeared on their whiskers.
The movie plays as seriously as any other 70’s monster flick. I can’t believe during the planning stages, no one told the writer, “Dude, bunnies are cute. They don’t make good monsters. Why don’t we make this movie about giant snakes or something?” Of course, that very well could have happened, but the writer said, “Fuck you, it’s bunnies or I walk!” And then that young, dissenting, snake obsessed production assistant grew up to work for the Sci-Fi Channel.
Brother Fistula tells me that not only are bunnies cuddly and cute, but that they’re actually terrified by the mere scent of blood. They find meat to be threatening, and will cower at the sight or smell of anything dead. It is therefore unlikely that, even should bunnies grow to be ten feet long, they would turn carnivorous. And they sure don’t stop being cute. Really, take away the blood, and this movie is cuter than anything Disney made during their peak.
It’s movies like this that remind me why I’m a b-movie fan. It’s movies like this that re-affirm not only my love of crap cinema, but pretty much of life in general. The idea that at some point in human history, a group of people banded together to make a serious horror movie about bunnies and got away with it, only to flop spectacularly and make one of the most unintentionally funny and unquestioningly adorable flicks ever produced, makes you realize that the universe has a sense of humor and wants you to have a good time and not take stuff so seriously.
The Moral of the Story: Bunnies are not scary. Rory Calhoun’s eyebrows, however, are terrifying.
FEEDBACK
All materials found within this review are the intellectual properties and opinions of the original writer. The Tomb of Anubis claims no responsibility for the views expressed in this review, but we do lay a copyright claim on it beeyotch, so don't steal from this shit or we'll have to go all Farmer Vincent on your silly asses. © March 5th 2006 and beyond, not to be reproduced in any way without the express written consent of the reviewer and the Tomb of Anubis or pain of a physical and legal nature will follow. Touch not lest ye be touched.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
