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What Were They Thinking? Part One in a Continuing Series
posted Wednesday, 8 March 2006
I’ve always felt that there are two kinds of bad movie—those that had the chance to succeed, but that failed due to any one of a dozen possible mistakes made during their production and those that simply never had the chance to succeed in the first place. There are certain films that were so flawed and misbegotten in their conception that the very sanity of their producers must come into question. As you watch these films you find yourself constantly wondering, “How the hell could anyone think that this would ever work?”
I love these movies. Anyone can take a good concept and fuck it up, but it takes real balls to take a truly horrible concept and run with it. That’s why my DVD collection is filled with several fine examples of these wonderful fiascoes, and since the primary purpose of this blog is to educate I’ve decided to write about one each week until I either run out of subjects or become bored with the idea (whichever comes first).
This week’s movie is by far the most wrong-headedly bizarre of the 1970s animal revenge movies. For those of you not familiar with the genre, it combined elements from 1950s radioactive monster flicks (which often featured insects mutated to giant proportions) along with the social consciousness of the 1960s back to nature movement. In these films someone with either good or bad intentions would tamper with the environment around them and the result would be a whole lotta death once the environment decided it wasn’t going to take any more shit. Most of these films were very bad (ie. Frogs, The Swarm, Day of the Animals, Prophecy), but only one of them can truly be considered a “What the Hell Were They Thinking?” disaster. It is a film whose concept is not only antithetical to the creation of tension, but is also undone by a tragic unwillingness to even offer the smallest morsel of acknowledgement of its own absurdity. It is a film that sounds like it has to be satirical, but it is not. It is completely and unabashedly sincere and that is why—despite the absence of a single joke during its entire 88 minutes—it is one of the funniest movies I have ever seen.
I am, of course, talking about:
Yes, this is a movie about killer bunny rabbits.
No, seriously, it is.
As the film begins, a newscaster (who we will never see again) informs us—over stock footage of people hunting rabbits—that the famously adorable animal can be quite the pest if its population is allowed to go unchecked. Able to breed at a tremendous speed (within hours, if events in this film are to be believed), a few small rabbits (a species whose Latin name—we are informed at least twice during the film—is lepus, a detail that suggests at least someone responsible for this film understood that it would be a grave mistake to call the film Night of the Rabbit) could quickly grow so numerous that they could easily devastate miles and miles of land.
After this important expository introduction, the credits roll and we are then introduced to Cole Hillman (Rory Calhoun) a cattle rancher whose grazing land has been destroyed by the ever-growing population of rabbits that has infested his property. Desperate for a solution to his problem he calls on his friend, Elgin Clark (DeForest Kelly) for help.
Insert "I'm a doctor, damn it!" joke here.
Elgin is big time muckity muck at the local university who has helped Cole deal with similar problems in the past. He suggests that they use the same guy who had dealt with last year’s coyote problem, but Cole shoots down this idea, reminding Elgin that that guy's methods managed to wipe out ALL of the coyotes, which resulted in there being no predators around to take care of the rabbits. Cole is a very environmentally conscious fellow, who understands the delicate balance of the local eco-system. This is the reason he is loathe to do the one thing most of his fellow ranchers would do in his position—dump cyanide around his farm and poison the rabbits before they can spread any further. Elgin appreciates Cole’s reasoning and tells him that a “young couple” had just arrived at the university to do research on protecting crops from insects. Cole tells Elgin that rabbits aren’t insects, but Elgin believes the “young couple” can still help them out.
The family that performs experiments on animals together, stays together.
We are then introduced to the “young couple”, Roy and Gerry Bennett, who (as played by Stuart Whitman and Janet Leigh) are obviously in their mid-forties (methinks there were ego issues behind the fact that no one dared to change the screenplay so that they could be more accurately described as “middle-aged”). With them is their fucking adorable blond moppet of a daughter, Amanda (Melanie Fullerton), who is constantly around because the entire plot of the movie would crumble to dust if she wasn’t.
They agree to help Cole with his problem and spend days trying to figure out a way to—as Gerry explains to Amanda—turn the “Jacks so they’re a little more like Jill and the Jills so they’re a little more like Jacks.” In other words, they’re trying to queer the little bunnies up. Unfortunately this solution requires more time for research than the situation allows, so Roy is forced to do what any truly stupid bad movie scientist would in this situation—inject the rabbits with a completely untested serum, without any idea what the results will be.
The sequence where the rabbit is injected with the serum is inadvertently hilarious due to an obvious mistake made while filming (or which was possibly the result of injudicious editing). As Gerry reaches into the cage to pull out a rabbit, we hear Amanda protest “Not that one, Mommy, that’s my favorite!” even though it is obvious that the young girl’s lips never move during the shot. The line was obviously added in later because it’s the only way to justify what happens next—while Roy and Gerry discuss their plan, little Amanda takes the injected bunny and switches it with one from the control group, which she then asks her parents to allow her to keep. Without that little bit of ADR, this sequence would make no sense whatsoever, but it has the added effect of suggesting that Bennett’s are more than willing to mindfuck their little daughter for their amusement—allowing her to keep a bunny only after cold-bloodily ignoring her pleas to spare her favorite.
Back at the ranch, little Amanda has the bunny wrenched from her arms by Jackie, Cole’s adolescent son, because he is enraged that she would keep one of the animals that killed his chickens as a pet. He throws the animal to the ground, where it runs into the nearest borough, ready to spread its serum-infected blood throughout the rabbit population.
Within what seems like only a few hours later, Jackie takes Amanda to visit an old prospector friend of his, only to discover the man’s trailer has been ransacked and abandoned. Amanda looks for the missing man in the nearby mineshaft and is confronted by the horrible sight of a giant rabbit with blood all over its teeth and mouth. She screams and faints and Jackie takes her back to the ranch, where she tells her parents and Cole what she saw.
As this is happening, more giant rabbits start attacking people, including a family of four and a trucker, who is torn apart by the beasts. The local sheriff is confounded by these murders, especially when a forensic expert tells him that, in his opinion, the only creature that could be responsible for these attacks is “A saber-tooth tiger,” before adding, “A lot of them.”
Did I mention this move was rated PG? God bless the 1970s.
The Bennetts, not yet having heard about the murders, aren’t sure if they can believe what Amanda told them. Along with Elgin, they ask the crippled (and hairstyle challenged) doctor who created the serum if it could possibly result in giant bunny rabbits. He confirms that it is extremely possible.
Seriously, would you trust anyone with hair like that?
Based on this confirmation, they all agree to go to the mineshaft and dynamite it shut—a move that would hopefully trap the creature before it can hurt anyone else. As Elgin and one of Cole’s farmhands set the explosives, Cole and Roy go into the mine so Roy can at least get a picture of the creature, but instead of just finding one, they discover dozens of the large animals (which are described as being “The size of wolves” despite the fact that appear to be at least as big as any of the men in the film).
Behold the power of my rabbit teeth!
The mutant rabbits start chasing the two men and one of them manages to knock Cole to the ground. Luckily for him, Roy is able to beat the animal off of him and the two of them run towards the mineshaft’s exit.
"Be careful with that suit, Rory, we don't want to lose our deposit."
It's hard to tell here, but on a tv screen, this totally screams out "Try and find my eggs kids!"
Outside the shaft’s entrance, Gerry is waiting with another one of Cole’s farmhands, unaware that one of the giant rabbits has poked its head from out of the ground. The animal attacks the farmhand, who is chased off by Gerry before it can kill the man.
Cue scary music here.
Cole and Roy finally escape the mine and the dynamite is set off, sealing the entrance shut. Despite the fact that one of the rabbits has just dug it’s way out of the ground, a skill two zoologists should count the animals as having, Roy concludes that the matter is settled and that everything is safe once more.
He is wrong.
That night the rabbits dig their way out of the mine and kill everyone who crosses their path.
Imagine them running in slow motion, accompanied by the sound of thunderous footsteps, to get the full effect.
The sheriff, who has been away at the crime lab in Phoenix, isn’t surprised when he hears that giant rabbits were responsible for the string of bizarre murders—since that is the same conclusion the experts reached at the lab. Thanks to Cole they are able to locate the rabbits and, along with the local army, enact Roy’s plan to take the critters out.
Not quite as scary as The Birds now, is it?
Easily the most unintentionally funny moment in the movie occurs when one of the sheriff’s deputies informs the customers at the local drive-in, through a bull-horn, that “A group of giant rabbits is heading this way and the sheriff needs your help to stop them.” Instead of laughing at him—an entirely reasonable response—all of the cars start up and enthusiastically follow his lead.
Meanwhile, Gerry and Amanda, who Roy sent out of the area for their own safety, become endangered when their trailer becomes hopelessly stuck in some sand. As nightfall hits, the horde of rabbits descend upon the two of them and Gerry bravely fights them off with a handy set of road flares. Luckily for the two of them, they are spotted by the sheriff’s helicopter before they are killed.
I was in Psycho, The Manchurian Candidate and Touch of Evil, so you can totally blow me Mr. Snarkity Snark.
With his family safe, Roy then sets his plan in motion, electrifying a railroad track and forcing the rabbits to fry themselves on it, as the sheriff and the army unload every bit of ammunition they have to take the bunnies down. It’s hard work, but in the end they are successful and kill every single one of the mutant rabbits.
Who's the cutest little killing machine? You are! Oh yes, you are!
Time passes and Cole visits the Bennetts at the university campus. He invites them over to the ranch to see how different it looks now that the grass has grown back. Roy accepts the invitation and the land is indeed lush with life, but—as the final shot suggests—it may not stay that way for long.
Dun-dun-dah!
Perhaps the strangest thing about Night of the Lepus is the fact that it was actually based on a book entitled Year of the Angry Rabbit by Russell Braddon. Not having read the book, I don’t know how faithful the movie is to the original text, but I still find it difficult to accept that anyone could really believe it could be turned into a suspenseful horror movie. While I can imagine a comedic take on this material working, the idea of making a serious film about giant killer rabbits was doomed before a single foot of film was shot on the picture. But as bad as the concept is, the execution only makes it that much worse. In a desperate attempt to make the rabbits seem frightening, they are shot either in extreme close-ups, or running in slow motion through miniature sets. For the scenes where they have to appear in shots with the actors, they are either badly matted in or replaced by a stuntman in a disturbingly obvious Easter Bunny suit. The results are invariably laughable and painful to behold.
Equally bizarre is the film’s implied message, which runs counter to the theme of virtually every other film in the genre. Rather than being created by foul polluters who care nothing about the environment, the giant rabbits are created by folks looking for a non-toxic way to reduce the rabbit population. The film seems to be suggesting that Cole would have been better off destroying his land with cyanide rather than seek help from environmentally conscious scientists. I’m guessing that this wasn’t what the filmmakers intended, but its hard to look at it any other way.
So, that’s it for this week’s look at a film that had no hope of ever being successful. Next week we’ll take a look at one of my favorite awful musicals, Menahem Golan’s 1980 travesty, The Apple. Until then be prepared to read some more posts about my life in porn.
Commentary From the Masses (2)