Bunny O'Hare

Excellent movie, I just wish it was available on any format. The above summary is a line in the movie that I remember the most. Spoken by Bunny herself. I can't wait to see this movie again. If you like Bette, you'll like this movie.

As a lifelong Bette Davis fan, I have been curious to see this for a long time. In the book 'Mother Goddam', the author states that in response to Borgnine's question 'What about your family'?, Bette says 'f--k them'! So hearing her say THAT word was another reason to want to see this movie.

Well Showtime aired it yesterday morning and I was glad to have my chance to see this, but boy is it lame. There is nothing to enjoy really, not a single thing. Davis is extremely subdued and SHE DOESN'T EVEN SMOKE or scream or use any of her famous mannerisms, and this movie could've used a little something to make it less painful. Borgnine tries hard but the odds were against him from the start.

And to top it, the line I was waiting to hear was dubbed (badly, I might add)! She says 'screw them' instead..somehow fitting, but boy was I disappointed.

An aging widow in New Mexico is left homeless after the bank forecloses on her property and tears down the house; she chances to meet a retired bank robber still on the lam and asks him to teach her to rob the bank which took her to the cleaners. Still-relevant sociological observations (occasionally cutting quite deep) played for TV-type yuks, a mixture which had professional critics groaning in 1971. Indeed, the outré bits of business involving the hold-ups are sloppy, and Jack Cassidy gives a grueling performance as a sleazy police lieutenant. Still, Bette Davis is very fine in the lead; natural, unglamorous and earthy, she's not a tough cookie nor a weeping willow--and when she chit-chats with Ernest Borgnine and her famous voice breaks mid-sentence, she's also endearing. Borgnine looks a bit incredulous at being caught in this scenario, but he doesn't embarrass himself and works well with Bette (their second picture together after 1956's "The Catered Affair"). In fact, most of the film is entertaining on a minor level, with something to say about oldsters and their financial plight. **1/2 from ****

I'm not sure if this was a feature or a TV movie. It came off like a TV movie.

It's cute. Davis plays Bunny O'Hare, a woman whose house is not only foreclosed on, but demolished. She hooks up with Bill (Borgnine) who goes around collecting toilets and sells them in Mexico. She finds out he was a bank robber, and he's wanted, so she asks him to teach her the robbing ropes.

The two deck themselves out as hippies and motorcycle around robbing banks. The only reason Bunny is robbing banks is to help her kids - her daughter's husband is an ex-butcher trying to get back into the meat business, but he doesn't want to cut liver - he needs intensive therapy.

Her son (John Astin) is a playboy who tells her he has business plans but in reality is a gambler in constant trouble with loan sharks. This is what she's wasting her time on.

Jack Cassidy has a cartoony role as a police lieutenant who would be brought up on charges in the #metoo movement. He speaks for the adults - he hates, hates hippies Nixon, another lover of my generation, adorns his walls - with Agnew.

This film had potential but really misses the mark. Davis and Borgnine are very good - she's quite subdued in the role. Borgnine is very sweet as her partner in crime. I did like the ending. However, if this wasn't a TV movie, it should have been.

Bunny O'Hara (1971)

** (out of 4)

Embarrassing AIP film has Bette Davis thrown out of her house by a bank so she and a former robber (Ernest Borgnine) start hitting banks so that she can support her deadbeat children. The only catch is that the elderly pair rob them while dressed as hippies, which throws off the main cop on the case. This is an extremely embarrassing film which certainly has its two Oscar-winning stars just picking up a paycheck. The film contains zero laughs and gets tiresome by the thirty-minute mark and the extremely lazy writing just makes one shake their head. The biggest problem is the writing because there's not a single well-written joke to be found here. It really seems like the top AIP guys found out they could hire Davis and Borgnine and then just built a screenplay around them. Someone must have thought it would have been funny seeing the two legends dressed up as hippies. The first time you see them it will leave a smile on your face but the screenplay doesn't offer anything else. We get countless robberies, which gets very boring after a while considering nothing new really happens with any of them. To make matters worse is Jack Cassidy as a stupid Lieutenant who keeps thinking the robbers must be young people because he thinks all young people are up to no good. All the supporting characters are quite bland but that's to be expected considering the screenplay. As far as Davis and Borgnine are concerned, hopefully they were paid well. It's so obvious that neither are really into the film as both come across rather too laid back and boring. Even in some of their less successful films they at least give off some of their wonderful energy and charm but that's not the case here. This is certainly a major misstep for both but fans might still want to check this out just to see them dressed as the hippies. Sitting through the entire film is debatable.