Get to Know Your Rabbit

This is one of those notorious films in which Orson Welles agreed to play a part because he needed money badly, and here he submits himself to maybe the silliest plot in his life. He is the manager of a queer school for stepping magicians, and could you possibly imagine anything more silly than a stepping magician? Nevertheless, this is a comedy and it constantly grows more hilarious. John Astin is the personal manager of Tommy Smothers, and his character is very similar to that of Gomez in the Addams family of the 60s - you recognize him immediately. What saves the film though is Katherine Ross, always a joy to behold on the screen, and here she enters just in time for the comical climax of the film. It's very unusual to encounter a comedy by Brian de Palma, but you recognize his special cinematographic style immediately. The comedy is absurd, but it definitely succeeds in making you laugh and heartily, for the silliness of the intrigue and its complications transcends all limits of reason while at the same time it consistently remains realistic, as Tommy Smothers actually succeeds in remaining dead serious all through in his absurd mission. It's a kind of Buster Keaton sort of comedy, all dreadfully laughable without the main character ever losing his face.

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.

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!

A guilty -- but perhaps not all that guilty -- pleasure. A small comedic indie made by Brian De Palma way back in his Greetings and Hi, Mom! days, it still retains a charming, if somewhat adolescent, absurdism. Tommy Smothers plays a corporate dropout in a loveless relationship who yearns to become a tap-dancing magician, taught by none other than Orson Welles's Mr. Delasandro in full pretentious mentoring mode. Add Katherine Ross as the adoring new girlfriend, Allan Garfield as a brassiere maker in search of his perfect woman, and especially the wonderful John Astin as a laid off executive-turned-derelict-turned-executive and you have the sort of bizarre, off-kilter type of fun movie you would have seen as a college student at some midnight showing in theaters during the late 60's/early 70's. Innocently subversive.

And can any movie that bills (correctly) an early Katherine Ross as "Terrific-Looking Girl" be all that bad?