Just the Ticket #138: Bunnyman

Article by Sean Wilkinson,

a.k.a The Ticketmaster.

Happy Easter, Ticketholders!

At least, it will be if you decide not to watch the Bunnyman movies. Well, maybe one or two are good.

There's also an urban legend from the Virginia/D.C./Maryland area about a guy (or his ghost) in a rabbit costume who kills people with various non-chainsaw weapons near the Colchester Overpass. But that has nothing to do with the movies besides the name, costume, and supposed "true story" inspirations.

If you are inspired by the true story that is my content creation hobby, please remember to Become A Ticketholder if you haven't already, fertilize the comments section at the bottom of this post because it needs to be resurrected, help out my ad revenue as you read, and hop over to follow me on Tumblr, Reddit, Facebook, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the freshest rabbit eggs of news on my content. 

Let's suit up and jump right in, shall we?

Bunnyman (marketed in the U.K. as Bunnyman Massacre because "based on true events" and chainsaws, even though there hadn't been a Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie in four years, and the United Kingdom is so good at alternative commercial titles) is a 2011 slasher movie written, directed, produced, and edited by Carl Lindbergh, who is also one of the five cast and crew members to wear the suit of the titular killer in various scenes, sort of like the early Jason and Michael films.

We open with an unconvincingly edited 8mm snuff film of a redneck repeatedly stabbing a woman, and after the title card (cheaply stylized as BUNN[off-center humanoid rabbit skull]MAN), we find out the quality of movie we're really in for as an unnamed woman (who will get ripped in half ten minutes later in the only really good-looking or creative kill in the entire hour-and-a-half runtime) who has seen Kingdom Of the Crystal Skull thinks that refrigerators can protect you from chainsaw-weilding killers as well as nuclear explosions. But as a literal woman in a refrigerator at the beginning of a horror movie, she decides that hiding in the back of the killer's truck is a good way to escape, and I already said what happens to her.

A full seven minutes go by before there is any dialogue, and we meet up with our cast of "no one cares" characters (fittingly, No One Cares is the name of the production company behind this) whose names I already forgot because there are six of them and they bicker, make stupid decisions (like following a trail of satanic crosses and hanging bone bags to a horny redneck's house in the middle of the woods, pissing off every stranger they come across, splitting up, not killing the killer on the multiple occasions when they are able to get ahold of the chainsaw, climbing trees when the killer has a chainsaw, and goading the killer into killing them like it's some badass moment when they are defenseless and backed into a corner), and get murdered. Speaking of bad movie references and bad decisions, the killer drives a panel truck with red on the bumper that is definitely not paint or rust, which would be intimidating if it didn't honk like the Creeper Wagon and roar like the shark from Jaws: The Revenge. The bunny suit is barely intimidating, the kills are one-note and unconvincing (hold blood-spurting prop chainsaw against convulsing actor's stomach from obscuring angle, lather, rinse, repeat; the lack of tingle means it's not working...), every scene goes on way too long (the driving, the walking, the chasing; by the time we get to the movie's attempt at a torture porn scene, it feels like I'm watching Bunnyman do his taxes, and by that time, I've already seen five nobodies (because one of them got run over while fixing their car) be stupid in the woods for an hour), and what dialogue there is makes so little congruent sense that I'd think it was written by an artificial intelligence. But Bunnyman came out over ten years before A.I. was a thing, and I've seen A.I. write smarter.

F

(I'm sparing the minus because of the one good kill, the Bunnyman's face under his mask, and the okay ending)

In 2019, Lindbergh released a Grindhouse Edition of the original film. In place of the silent snuff piece, we get a new, narrated intro with what I assume are clips from the sequels, intercut with new footage, showing the Bunnyman (revealed to be named Michael because, of course) as a figure hunted and ostracized for his deformity, and twisted by the resulting trauma and a fire that burned his face, into the suit-wearing cannibal that he is.

The credits and title are much improved, using a stylized retro font, projector filter, freeze-frames, and unsettling score to evoke the desired Grindhouse aesthetic. In just the first twenty minutes, this cut has elevated Bunnyman from unbearably bad to endearingly bad. The frenetic editing, the faux Grindhouse film flaws and splices, the "missing reels," the obviously incongruous stock footage, the badly-leveled ADR and dubbing, the paradoxically funky music choices, and the omission of some of the stupider dialogue and drawn out scenes make this the superior cut in terms of fun. Even the mundane, overlong torture sequence has better editing here.

There were parts where I felt like a horn blast or two were missing, the original bisection kill was better, the sound mixing for almost the entire third act wiped out most of the dialogue, and the Grindhouse filter just kind of disappears at one point. But the absurd stock footage and intentionally bad ADR continue to pop up as clear indicators that Lindbergh has no problem taking the piss out of his own work. We even get an intermission break with retro concession stand commercials like it's running at an actual drive-in theater.

While by no means perfect, the Bunnyman Grindhouse Edition is a meta masterpiece of comedy gold that I was not expecting to be as fun as it was. I am so glad I decided to give it a chance.

B+

The saga of the burned, chainsaw-weilding cannibal in a goofy rabbit suit continues in Bunnyman 2, known in the U.K. as Bunnyman Resurrection, and on Tubi as...Bunnyman Massacre? That's confusing!

Anyway, just like the first movie, it is A No One Cares Production with Lindbergh writing, directing, producing, and editing. Josh Lang also returns as the Bunnyman (not sharing the suit with four other people this time), as does David Scott as Joe (the aforementioned satanic, horny redneck). Of the larger cast of new characters, the sole standout (even though he makes plot-convenient stupid decisions like everyone else) is Marshall Hilton as the local sheriff.

This is clearly a step up in quality from the original in terms of dialogue, production value, and edge (the opening scene has Bunnyman saw his way through a school bus full of children), and the franchise's homage/parody roots are on full display in the following scene (a mix of recreated kills from the Friday the 13th films, complete with Bunnyman using a machete) and later music choices (the iconic Texas Chainsaw Massacre notes are just straight up used like it's public domain or something).

But then it turns into a focus group pander, like a bunch of people said they really liked Joe, and Bunnyman 2 is pretty much "The Joe Show Featuring Bunnyman." Which, yeah; David Scott does his "dollar store David Koechner" act really well as Joe, who has opened a general store in the "Audie Murphy Hotel" to sell the victims of Bunnyman's...massacre...as home made jerky. But there's only so much "capture, humiliate, and assault women, let them go, send Bunnyman to kill or recapture them" that can go into an almost two hour movie before the pacing becomes its most tragic victim. Add in all of the stupid decisions (not nearly as glaring as in the first one) and there being so many disposable female characters that a final girl becomes impossible to identify (plus, the one who does make it to the end is so traumatized by watching Bunnyman kill her sister--the last living member of her family--that when she has a gun with two bullets in it, she doesn't even bother to put one in Bunnyman's head before shooting herself, which is not just stupid, but fucking stupid). I mostly backgrounded this to play solitaire.

D-

I have no idea what's going on with Bunnyman Vengeance. The opening sequence (which shows 8mm footage of a black soldier urinating fire on a child like he's a dog bringing Freddy Krueger's skeleton back to life; I think this is meant to be Michael/Bunnyman's origin story for his burned face?) is followed by a shot of the same tortoise from the beginning of the last movie (because the Bunnyman movies need Aesop’s Fables and Looney Tunes references to class them up a bit) as a fleet of police cars drive by, led by Marshall Hilton's sheriff character (who died onscreen from a gunshot at the end of the last movie). This injects some based, "good old boy cops are racist against black suspects" commentary, which is undercut shortly thereafter when the sheriff encounters Bunnyman setting up a dead child at a bus stop so he can do the opening scene from the last movie, and the black driver he let go with a warning runs him over, revealing that he is in league with Bunnyman. So, since the sheriff is dead, this means Vengeance is not a prequel to Bunnyman 2/Resurrection/The Bunnyman Massacre. But the sheriff died at the end of the second movie, too, so what does that even mean?

What comes next is the revelation that the man who ran down the sheriff is a member of Michael's original family (as opposed to the white sister, father, brother, and accomplice he had in the first two movies? I'm not being intentionally racist, just pointing out how little this short franchise cares about continuity). There is barely a Wikipedia page for Bunnyman 2, and none for Vengeance or the Grindhouse Edition, so I haven't committed the three men's names to memory, nor do I care to. But in terms of personality traits, they're basically Black Joe (because sniper who shoots innocent people), Black Male Melissa (because crazy, tortures people, and curses a lot, which also describes Joe), and Black Pops (because the mentally challenged other one). The plot once the four "main characters" come together is pretty much the second movie again: [supporting villain(s)] use [insert business here] as a front to feed their homicidal urges. The business this time is a haunted house attraction, but the character dynamics are made marginally more interesting by the "family" ridiculing Bunnyman with footage of his childhood burning, and later plotting to kill him after he goes on a rampage in their haunted house. There's some awful ADR delivery in one scene (like, the kind that would make the flower shop scene from The Room tear off its own ears with rusty pliers) that is clearly something Lindbergh had to settle for, as opposed to making it bad on purpose for fun like in the Grindhouse Edition five years later. The pacing can be slow at times, as well. But thankfully, though there doesn't seem to be much of a coherent plot structure where the victims are concerned, there are a good number of them for Bunnyman and the boys to rack up a superficially significant body count. The gore effects may not be consistently convincing, but the kills themselves are surprisingly varied for this series, and incredibly creative (including one where all subtlety goes out the window and he beats a man to death with the kitchen sink). I don't think Bunnyman even touches a chainsaw until after the halfway point.

And I would be remiss if I didn't mention the scene where one of the group's female victims stabs Bunnyman with a huge hypodermic needle, and he starts tripping his hyper-fertile little rabbit-balls off to the tune of Die Krupps' "The Machinist Of Joy." It is strange enough to defy all words other than "fun."

The movie wraps up with Black Joe killing Black Pops for helping Bunnyman escape, followed by a prolonged stalking/car chase sequence with about as much tension and atmosphere as the original movie's torture scene (which is to say, almost none) wherein Bunnyman takes his titular Vengeance for the death of his friend via the aforementioned kitchen sink kill, as well as burning the final man to death with some almost-convincing-for-the-budget CGI fire because thematically symbolic closure.

We then get more 8mm of the real Joe, Melissa, and Pops finding the young, burnt-up Michael before the present Bunnyman leaves his huge, dead-eyed, grinning bunny head behind and walks off into the sunset. Also, in a post credits scene, the tortoise is still chugging along.

Presentation is everything in a movie (that's why theaters call them presentations, after all...), and though Vengeance is the better Bunnyman entry (not counting alternate cuts, of course), it is still rife with overlong, bare bones sequences, aimless writing, unconvincing kills, characters you mostly don't care about, and centering it all around a slasher villain who is uninteresting and too goofy-looking to be taken as seriously as we are supposed to receive him.

As with Joe (and to a lesser extent, Melissa and Pops in the original), the three brothers here are more interesting than the titular killer, and could have carried a torture porn slasher just fine on their own without "the legendary Bunnyman" fucking things up for them.

But because Vengeance wasn't just another "Leatherface in a bunny costume" entry, that music video fever dream sequence was so fun, and the ending had thematic purpose, let's go with water over spiders.

C-

If you enjoy my content, please remember to Become A Ticketholder if you haven't already, fertilize the comments section at the bottom of this post because it needs to be resurrected, help out my ad revenue as you read, and hop over to follow me on Tumblr, Reddit, Facebook, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the freshest eggs of news on my content.

Happy Easter, and

Ticketmaster,

Out!