Bunnywood’s Rabbit Cinema Top-Ten.

(Originally published online late 2002).

What is it with Hollywood? You wait years for a good rabbit film and then three come along at once.

This season, your local multiplex will be invaded by a host of bushy-tailed bunny flicks. It may seem like an odd coincidence, but there is in fact a long relationship between the cinema and our floppy-eared friends. In order to explain their enduring mystique, I turned to the world of academia for answers. After ploughing through a number of back page blurbs, I began to see the light. This was around the point in time when the security guard told me I couldn’t ride my skateboard inside the library anymore. “Fascists! I am not a number, I am a free man!” I shouted. Once I got outside.

I discovered that the rabbit is a powerful folk icon. They have ambivalent symbolic power. Which means they’re a bit like Ant and Dec. Nobody really knows what they are there for.

Rabbits are associated with a number of versatile meanings. We have the rabbit as a symbol of luck, in the form of the rabbit’s foot charm (although technically not very lucky for the rabbit in question). We also have the rabbit as a symbol of sexual promiscuity (not something you’d have to explain at any length to Hugh Hefner).

According to some thinkers, the rabbit is a powerful icon because it straddles the structuralist divisions in our culture. We keep them as pets so they’re structurally domestic. We also eat them so they’re structurally dinner.

There are in fact so many notable bunny-flicks that some have come to regard them as part of a new genre- Rabbit Cinema. The rules of Rabbit Cinema are simple: Firstly, the ultimate demonstration of a person’s nature can be found in the way they treat the rabbit (see Fatal Attraction, below). Secondly, rabbits have a sound grasp of English. And, finally, rabbits are not only brave and humorous but are also quite capable of travelling between dimensions, killing armoured knights and desiccating cows (again, see below).

In honour of the growing public awareness of this new genre, I have decided to select my all time personal favourite Rabbit Cinema top-ten. So sit back, thump your novelty rabbit-slippers onto your feet and get ready to disagree vehemently with my selection.

10.
Fatal Attraction.
It’s official; “bunny boiler” is now in the Oxford English dictionary. As are a host of other phrases nobody has actually ever used apart from the very bored people who have to type up the new dictionary every few years. Other recently added phrases include “wedgie” and “rusty sheriff’s badge”.

As any good Home Economics student will tell you, Fatal Attraction features woman scorned Glen Close doing a Nigella on her former lover’s pet rabbit. Considering that her former lover was the obnoxious Michael Douglas, I personally think that she boiled the wrong mammal. This film is part of the sub-genre of Neo-Brutalist Rabbit Cinema. Also worth seeing is Polanski’s 1964 film Repulsion, in which Catherine Denueve leaves a skinned rabbit to rot on her living room table while she goes insane. The selfish bitch.

9.
Who Raped Roger Rabbit?
This has to come in at number 9 if only because I haven’t actually seen it. They don’t pay me that much. Some readers may remember the original. It featured Bob Hoskins murdering the American accent so badly that no Englishman has dared to mention the whole Dick van Dyke thing ever since.

8.
Oswald The Lucky Rabbit
Let’s hope he was luckier than Roger.

7.
Watership Down.
“Bright eyes, burning like fire. Bright eyes, da-da-da da da-da!” As Pop explains to Al’s new girlfriend down in Royston Vasey, “The little rabbits, they are so brave. There are so many obstacles for them to overcome… You see, Patricia, the magic lies in the fact that although they are rabbits, really... they talk and act like people.”

Something about John Hurt’s voiceover though, I keep expecting one of the rabbits to go down with a bad case of the chest-bursters (see new Oxford English Dictionary). The film’s popularity was ultimately crushed beneath the jackboots of the Animals of Farthing Wood.

6.
Night of the Lepus
Thinking that he had hung up his tricorder for the last time, Star Trek veteran DeForest Kelley decided to break out into more serious roles. The man best remembered by the unsuitably street-tough handle “Bones” had definite thespian ambitions. Unfortunately, the best his agent could do was the 1972 schlock-horror flick Night of the Lepus. We’re talking giant mutated rabbits snacking on cows in the Arizona desert. We’re talking extras in rented bunny suits. We’re not talking Lifetime Achievement Oscars.

Not being a vindictive man, I will refrain from asking “What’s up Doc?”

Other killer-bunny (or Lagomorpha Carnivora) films worth seeing include Monty Python’s Holy Grail, Sexy Beast (the dream sequence) and Attack of the Killer Dust Bunnies II: The Mutation.

5.
8 Mile
I got very excited when I read that Eminem’s new material featured him rapping from the perspective of a rabbit. I took it as a sign of great maturity in his songwriting. He had finally abandoned the fantasy of the ghetto lifestyle in favour of the hard reality of the warren. So imagine my dismay when I was informed that he would in fact merely be playing a character called ‘Rabbit’ in Curtis Hanson’s new movie, 8 Mile. This is the greatest loss to popular culture since CBeebies rejected my Dogme Tweenies proposal.

4.
Peter Rabbit and the Crucifix.
OK so it’s only 13 minutes long, but it does feature a glow-in-the-dark crucifix that teaches a five year old boy about the dangers of kicking your pet rabbit. The rabbit dies. Humanity continues unaffected and the little bastard probably goes on to drown the neighbour’s Shitzu.

3.
Raising Arizona.
A demon biker. A jack rabbit. A hand grenade. ‘Nuff said.

2.
Rabbit-Proof Fence
Based on true events, this film tells the story of three Aboriginal girls who are snatched from their families by the evil Australian state. The girls flee a government training camp and escape across the outback in search of the landmark fence of the title.

Speaking on Newsnight Review, Jeanette Winterson remarked “All of us inside have a rabbit-proof fence that would lead us home if we knew how to find it, but we don't… This is a real emotional journey, exactly what you don't get in porno.”

Of course I’m taking this quote somewhat out of context but you have to admit she really did have it coming. She concludes “This is somewhere for us to go as an audience,” not realising that her audience have gone somewhere else (without her) a considerable amount of time ago.

1.
Donnie Darko
You know you’re going to love this one. If you don’t already know why this has to be number 1, just check out some of the movie’s internet keywords- teenagers; air crashes; time warps; arson; axes; drugs; cocaine; rabbits; god; golf; hypnosis; insanity; religion; revenge; schizophrenia; dreams; suburbia. Donnie Darko’s got it going on.

The film stars Jake Gyllenhaal as Donnie, a nice kid whose best friend is called Frank. Frank is a giant mutant rabbit from another dimension. The only thing I can guarantee you about this film is that there will be no plastic Frank toys free in packs of Dairy Lee Lunchables.

Go and see it, its got Joy Division on the soundtrack. Go on. It’s got a dimension-hopping rabbit in it! Even Watership Down stopped short of that.

Donnie Darko is out October 25th 2002.
Rabbit-Proof Fence is out 8th November 2002.
8 Mile is out January 17th 2003.