Get to Know Your Rabbit

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 It's actually an historical reference.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.

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!

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.

Ironically, Brian De Palma's GET TO KNOW YOUR RABBIT... an anti-corporate, counter-culture comedy... is a lot like the previous decade's I'LL NEVER FORGET WHAT'S'ISNAME, and both feature Orson Welles, first as a boss who doesn't want to lose his top young employee and here a magic instructor that this film's star, Tom Smothers of Smothers Brothers fame, takes lessons from after quitting his job as executive John Astin's problem-solving underling...

Welles has a total of ten-minutes screen-time, and upon graduation asks Smothers' Donald Beeman if he had been like a father to him, wherein Tommy's expression... the signature dimwitted naiveté more of an irked, stonewall glib... shakes his head, "No" which is one of several problems since this offbeat character, played by an offbeat comic actor on his own, doesn't seem game for this particularly strange and completely random road comedy...

Replete with episodic beyond plot-driven scenarios, especially from Smothers (turned into a sex symbol here) bedding various hot girlfriends, from moody nymph Susanne Zenor to perfect magician's assistant Katharine Ross... and yet no matter who or what passes through... from quirky character-actors Allen Garfield to M. Emmett Walsh but mostly the corporate-comeback-seeking Astin... RABBIT gets weirder for the sake of not being typical...

Which it's obviously fighting against as director De Palma was still in 1960's hippie-dropout GREETINGS to HI, MOM mode before resurrecting Hitchcock-horror beginning with SISTERS the next year... plus there's a relaxing quality to Smothers, a pretty good pawn if lazy leading man, going from location to location... but since everything's so extremely surreal, it all winds up feeling rather ordinary and mundane somehow.