The MONTY PYTHON Rabbit Was Scarier Than This

[bloodyrosemccoy]

Okay, so, I knew Night of the Lepus was a notoriously bad B-movie, but I expected the bad effects to be something along the lines of quick and heavily edited and shadowed shots of lame puppets made to look something like the horrible nightmare-induced dust bunny from Ursula Vernon's Irrational fears.

I was not expecting a bunch of shots of fluffy doe-eyed domestic bunnies with daubs of red paint on their mouths gnawing on models.

Come on, man! This is the 70s! Can I even get a process shot of human and supersized bunny? The 50s were all over sizing up tarantulas, iguanas, crickets, etc. and sticking humans on the other side of the screen! The Monty Python rabbit was scarier than this. This is just sad. Adorable, but sad. They're probably not even going to eat this family of vacationers, god dammit.

Hell, give me the small friendly dogs wearing carpet trimmings that were supposed to pass for The Killer Shrews over this mess.

There is one saving grace, though: the extremely groovy 70s-edition DeForest Kelley, replete with sideburns and sleazy mustache. You rock that hideous fashion, Bones.

(Spookier things even as I watch this: Outside my window, there are emocat noises, suggesting that either the elusive Emocat is doing another poetry slam, or our own cat Charlie is singing her mouse-killin' song. Either way, it's a pretty eerie sound.)

Comments

[wendyzski.livejournal.com]

Oh yes - the collies-with-dentures in Killer Shrews were hilarious. All waggy-tails!

My favorite thing about Night Of The Lepus is the utter lack of consistency of scale with the models - thus the "monster" rabbits varied from knee-high to the size of a VW bug, seemingly at random.

I know rabbit body language now and most of those rabbits look scared - they were probably in a small space and being poked from behind to make them run.\

But yeah, no matter how much ominous music and slo-mo you use, bunnies just aren't scary.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Man, I'm so used to the scale problems with monster movies like this that I figured the inconsistent size of the monster rabbits was a given. Although I did enjoy the scene where ... damn, I didn't bother remembering names, uh, Greasy Hairpile Dude #1? ... peers into the destroyed general store, and they cut to an "interior" shot of a bunch of elephant-sized rabbits sitting inside, and then they cut back to a shot of the front of the store where you can clearly see through the blown-out doors and windows that there are NO RABBITS ANYWHERE IN THERE.

And for sure, those were not happy bunnies in most scenes. I mostly just wound up feeling bad for them.

I have seen scary rabbits that worked reasonably well ... but they are usually distorted to look scary. Just plain ol' rabbits are only really scary in a Watership Down sense--to other rabbits.

(I need a bunny icon!)

[viizou.livejournal.com]

I haven't seen this, but it seems to me that the very concept of making a horror film with bunnies as the object of terror was doomed from the start.

Lots of initially un-scary things can be distorted and turned into frightening, creepy entities: dolls, clowns, houseplants, cats... But bunnies? Bunnies can be made to look badass AT BEST, IMO.

[willowistari.livejournal.com]

That was one of my favorite B horror movies when I was little. *weird* I have the DVD. :D

[lycheetwist.livejournal.com]

Hey, while these are all awesome posts and all, I have got to know, have you watched the new Futurama episodes yet? There were two brand-new episodes on Comedy Central at 10PM last Thursday.

I'm kind of disappointed you haven't written about them. They were... okay. It'd be better if I got to watch them with you again :)

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

I most surely did! I didn't post yet because I don't feel I've got much to say on it yet.

I liked the first one a lot--the first sequence especially had me laughing uproariously. ("Thanks to my shield, I surblibed the crash with minimal brain damblage!") The second one not so much--it felt like a rehash of "A Bicyclops Built For Two." But they still managed to make some solid sci-fi jokes and references (the V'GER reference had me cracking up), so I'm just waiting to see how the season manages to establish itself.

(Also, is it sad that I'm already excited as all hell for the DVD commentaries?)

[narnian-dreamer.livejournal.com]

They should have used hares. They look crazed and demonic all the time. I -would even say they're scarier than cymbal-playing monkeys.