Hilfe, ich habe Erfolg!

I think I first ran into this film on cable. Later, I paid over $18.00 for a VHS copy.

Tonight, in a fit of nostalgia I decided to search for a DVD copy and found, to my dismay, that there are none.

Guess I'll have to nurture my VHS copy until I can transfer it to a DVD for preservation along with HBO's 'Disco Beaver From Outer Space', 'The Traveling Executioner', 'Run For the Sun', 'On The Run', and 'Looping'.

Some excellent films are very, very hard to find.

The Smothers Brothers were a very popular comedy team on television in the 60's. This film and 'Pandemonium' in 1982 set Tommy apart as he performed alone with wonderful results.

Not great films...but a lot of fun to watch. And you'll watch them more than once!

One of Brian De Palma's least-known films - also one of his least-successful. The premise is actually relateable and plausible in its absurdity (corporate executive quits his job to pursue his dream of becoming a tap-dancing magician!), but the film does very little with it. It's also hopelessly unfunny. Occasional use of split-screen is just about the only indication of De Palma's later virtuosity. Orson Welles is at least enjoying himself performing magic tricks, while Katharine Ross is indeed "a terrific-looking girl". *1/2 out of 4.

Get to Know Your Rabbit remains to this day one of the hardest of Brian De Palma's films to track down on video (it was released in the 80s, never on DVD), but it may be understandable as to why. It has no real "name" stars save for Orson Welles and maybe Katharine Ross (Tom Smothers is a Smothers brother, so there's that, but they're not well known today), and it hasn't really found an audience for itself as a cult film like Hi, Mom or Phantom of Paradise (arguably still De Palma's best satires). It's an oddity of a find, and not just because of its title or cover art. This movie is just a big bag of weird, but there's enough that makes it work, and enough that's funny, to say that it's worth trying to find if you are one of those movie geeks that likes to track down every work, minor or otherwise, a particular director has made.

It's about, in the simplest of terms (as if in a pitch) a businessman played by Smothers decides to leave his mundane job to become a magician- and not just that, but a tap-dancing magician tutored by the great Delasandro. He breaks up with his kind of bi-polar girlfriend and gets his magician "license", traveling on the road - but then an old boss at his old job is broke and in trouble, and then gets to idea to market him... with insane results. Everything with Orson Welles is golden, pure awesome, and there's some really inspired camera tricks even for De Palma (of course we get split-screen but there's other stuff as well that will surprise you). But what works for the movie best is also it's biggest 'what-the-hell' factor: the script. This is such an original piece of work that one can see why De Palma, working from the material or creating and building on it more, got fired towards the end of production: one cannot imagine a studio like Warner Brothers bankrolled or OK'd what this movie is, which is an insane and kind of jolly satire on magicians and corporate interests.

But, for all its faults (and some of it is just the mind-boggling kind), it's very entertaining, maybe more than it has any right to be. It's not a "holy-grail" lost gem, and at the same time you wont hopefully feel too cheated if you already like De Palma's warped sense of humor, especially in his pre-Carrie days.

Business executive Donald Beeman (Tom Smothers) is tired of his job and quits. The bombing doesn't help. His boss Mr. Turnbull (John Astin) is desperate to get him back. Instead, he's more taken with being a magician. He learns from Mr. Delasandro (Orson Welles) to become a Tap Dancing Magician.

Brian De Palma is not known for comedies. It's four years before Carrie when he can put comedies behind him. This is more quirky than actually funny. It's a lowkey satire. Katharine Ross hits it over the head with a sledgehammer in her MPDG performance. It's strange that Tom Smothers becomes more the straight man. The plot is rambling. The story takes some weird turns. It would be fine but I'm getting lost. The jokes are scattered and weakly constructed. I have to put all that on De Palma. It's not his genre.

In this review I am going to mention recreational drugs, Please don't construe my mention as an endorsement. It's actually an historical reference.

I first heard of "Get to Know Your Rabbit" when it was released in 1972 (the year that I turned 20). The buzz on it was strong at the time. It played in some select theaters and college campuses for a limited time and POOF! Vanished. It was always the one that got away.

I waited for 50 years to see it when it finally aired on TCM. Were I to rate it from the vantage point of the 21st century I'd probably give it two stars. Had I rated it in 1972 it probably would have gotten (at least) 8 stars.

Once upon a time it was fun to get high with a group of friends and stumble into a movie theater. We'd sit there with saucer-like eyes as we marveled at "2001," "Fantasia" (which Disney re-released in that era), "Yellow Submarine" or other mind-blowing films. I remember a couple of guys that I knew sitting all day through repeated showings of "Patton" while high.

Under such circumstances the surreal non-sequiturs of "Get to Know Your Rabbit" would have been hailed as riveting. Now? Meh.

This movie is firmly rooted in the time and culture of its release. I would only suggest checking it out when you've mastered time travel.