Halloween and Rabbits - News - Mutilate - The Bunny Man

Halloween and Rabbits

With fall here in the Northern Hemisphere, and temperatures dropping and leaves falling we have Halloween fast approaching.

You hear tales of ghosts, witches, vampires, monsters, and other assorted scary icons, but none can be more terrifying than bunny rabbits!

Gargoyle Rabbit
We cover this in a previous episode, but it is worth a revisit.
This terrifying gargoyle is known as the Vampire Rabbit of Newcastle. He perches above a solicitor's office behind St. Nicholas' Cathedral in Newcastle, England. No one knows why he is there, or what makes him glare with such evil.
With its crazed bulging eyes, huge fangs and claws, The Vampire Rabbit of Newcastle is a mysterious grotesque that has perched above the ornate rear door of the historic Cathedral Buildings, facing the rear of St Nicholas Cathedral for over a hundred years but no one is quite sure why the blood-sucking Lepus was created.
Erected with the rest of the building in 1901, locals tell a tale of grave robbers who were running rampant in the area until one dark night the fanged beastie rose on the door opposite the graveyard as if to scare off future robbers. Less superstitiously, it has also been theorized that the vampire rabbit is in fact a hare whose ears were mistakenly put on backwards. If this were the case the bloody little creature could have been installed to reference Sir George Hare Phipson, a local doctor, Freemason, and friend of the cathedral’s architect. Most basically the rabbit could simply be meant to represent the coming of spring, invoking the same symbolic association that created the Easter Bunny.
While the vampire rabbit of Newcastle was originally the same sandy color of the surrounding stonework, in modern times it has been painted a menacing black with droplets of blood staining its teeth and claws.

http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/the-vampire-rabbit-of-newcastle

A decade ago the Vampire Rabbit enjoyed a brief moment in the limelight when it formed part of a light festival.
During a winter Glow event in 2006, the carving was illuminated in pink, making it look even more weird and wonderful, and there were projections of it across the city.
But the rabbit, which has had a few licks of paint over the years, including being turned black with its teeth, eyes and claws picked out in red, still retains its air of mystery.
http://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/stories-behind-newcastles-called-vampie-12455793

Swamp Rabbit

Not all killer rabbits are fictional. In April of 1979, president Jimmy Carter was fishing near his home in Plains, Georgia when he was attacked by a swamp rabbit! The rabbit swam toward the president's boat and tried to board. Carter had to fend it off with an oar. Press secretary Jody Powell is quoted from his 1986 book The Other Side of the Story:
The animal was clearly in distress, or perhaps berserk. The President confessed to having had limited experience with enraged rabbits. He was unable to reach a definite conclusion about its state of mind. What was obvious, however, was that this large, wet animal, making strange hissing noises and gnashing its teeth, was intent upon climbing into the Presidential boat.
After some objected that rabbits can't swim, a picture of the incident was produced, clearly showing the rabbit swimming. The rabbit's political affiliation is still unknown.
3. The Haunted Warren:
It’s a rare reminder of a time when the warrens that carved a honeycomb under the Brecks were a rich source of income for landowners.

Thetford Warren Lodge was built around the 1400s a few miles west of Thetford – probably at the bequest of the prior of Our Lady’s Priory who had Royal approval to hunt small game and was keen to protect his livelihood by constructing a defensive lodge which could repel poachers.
It was big enough to accommodate hunting parties and the prior’s warrener, who protected, farmed and sold the rabbits which were prized for their meat and their fur, and strong enough to deal with those who came prepared with bows, arrows and sharpened sticks with a view to rabbit poaching.
Warreners, who lived in the highest part of the warren on the second floor, would bore holes to make burrows and provide food such as groundsel, dandelions and thistles, spreading gorse and tree boughs as shelter and food in colder months. On the ground floor of the building was a storeroom for traps, nets and racks to dry skins and hang salted meats.
At one point, the lodge was acquired by the Maharajah Duleep Singh – the Indian prince exiled to Norfolk in the 19th century – on a 99-year lease.
A few warreners are still working in Breckland, trapping rabbits and moving them to other warrens in a bid to control the population.
As with many medieval buildings, the lodge – which is now maintained by English Heritage - has its fair share of spooky stories attached to it.
One ominous tale harks back to the building’s warrening history: it is said that a large – even huge – ghostly white rabbit with flaming red eyes guards the doorway to the lodge and is an omen of death to anyone who lays eyes on it.
A further two strange stories appear to be rooted in the nearby Leper Hospital of St Margaret where poor souls suffering from this highly-contagious disease were kept away from the rest of society on the edge of town: the building was ransacked by thieves in 1304 who stole silver, linen and cloth and then set fire to the building.
It is said that a figure with a strange, two-dimensional face can be seen gibbering horribly and terrifying witnesses as it wanders the area close to the lodge and an eerie face has been reported looking out from the first floor window of the building, even though it no longer has any floors. In 2011, a man was seen peering from a second floor window wearing blue and white clothing and boasting gaping black holes where his eyes and mouth should have been.

Movies and Shows:

The strange history of terrifying bunny rabbits in film
Despite being among the softest and least threatening of woodland creatures, rabbits rarely get portrayed as such in movies. While most of us would be content to watch one nibble on a carrot for 90 minutes, filmmakers have routinely sought to capitalize and subvert the rabbit’s image, either by brutally murdering them or turning them creepy and cannibalistic.

Killer Rabbit
Now I think the most famous movie rabbit is in Monty Python and the Wholly Grail:
Monty Python and the Holy Grail, 1975

The bunnies bite back in Terry Gilliam’s and Terry Jones’ riotously funny Monty Python and the Holy Grail, when King Arthur (Graham Chapman) and his knights of the round table get more than they bargained for from a seemingly innocuous, fluffy white scamp. “That’s no ordinary rabbit, that’s the most foul, cruel and bad-tempered rodent you ever set eyes on… it’s got a vicious streak a mile wide,” warns their Scottish guide. Unconvinced, the ensuing carnage is hysterical. “Run away, run away!”
The Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog guards the entrance to the cave of Caerbannog in the movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Yes, he may look like a innocent little fluffball, but he can bite your head off before you even realize it, as he did Bors, Gawain, and Ector in the movie. Run away! Run away!

The Killer Rabbit also appears in the musical Spamalot.

Were-Rabbit
Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, 2005

Cheese lover Wallace and his faithful pooch Gromit returned in DreamWorks Animation’s second Oscar-winning feature to date, The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, written and directed by Steve Box and Nick Park and featuring the vocal talents of Ralph Fiennes and Helena Bonham Carter. In this gorgeously pun-tastic affair, the stop-animated clay duo take on a mentally enhanced bunny following an invention mishap, but it’s not the enormous beastie with a penchant for demolishing oversized veggies that’s terrorising the village – it’s actually a mutated Wallace.
In the 2005 claymation film Wallace & Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit, a mysterious nocturnal rabbit is raiding a community's vegetable gardens, threatening the annual vegetable contest. It turns out that the hero of the story is suffering from a curse (brought on by his own machinery) that causes him to turn into a giant rabbit when he is exposed to moonlight!

Vampire Rabbit

Bunnicula, the Vampire Rabbit was a 1982 animated ABC Weekend Special based on a series of children's books by James Howe.

Now I remember reading this book series as a child. My Wife will comment "Bunnys are evil - Remember Bunicula?". Bunnicula was a family pet who sucked the juices out of vegetables. Not all that frightening in reality -unless you're a vegetable. Nevertheless, Bunnicula can sprout bat wings, fly, and move things with the power of his mind.

Imaginary Rabbit - Donnie Darko, 2001

Writer/director Richard Kelly’s dimension-bending feature debut delivered one of cinema’s most memorable bunnies in the towering, dead-eyed frame of Frank, who may or may not be an evil time-travelling demon intent on destroying the planet. Or possibly saving it. We’re still not entirely sure, and that’s the genius of it. With Jake Gyllenhaal the only person able to see Frank, and the only one aware of impending doom, it’s a refreshingly bizarre take on the end of the world that set up Jake and his sister Maggie for big things, but it’s Frank who haunts our fevered dreams.
Evil rabbits can even invade our thoughts! The 2001 movie Donnie Darko left many with nightmares of imaginary human-size rabbits, and not the benign imaginary friend we met in the movie Harvey. The apparition of a 6-foot rabbit named Frank saves Donnie Darko's life and tells him the world will end in 28 days. Frank incites Donnie into committing criminal acts -and why not, if the world is going to end anyway?

Fatal Attraction, 1987

Speaking of lust and murder, while Adrian Lyne’s Fatal Attraction technically scrapes a pass, in this pot-boiler thriller that spawned the term ‘bunny boiler’. Glenn Close’s Alex has an affair with and becomes obsessed by Michael Douglas’ Dan, who goes on to reject her in favour of his good wife, leading to the unfortunate end of his family’s pet bunny. Vengeance is meted when Close ends up both drowned and shot in the bath in the film’s seriously dodgy, if ludicrously entertaining, finale.

Watership Down, 1978

Quite possibly the most evilly terrifying film ever inflicted upon unsuspecting children, Martin Rosen’s animated adaptation of Richard Adams’ classic novel, Watership Down. Responsible for scarring the psyche of an entire generation, it’s a sort of rabbit-led Game of Thrones, where woe first befalls the bunnies (voiced by John Hurt and Richard Briers, amongst others) when heavy duty digging machines destroy their warren, forcing them to go on the run. It’s all downhill from there, with paws trapped in snares, insane rabbit dictators, nasty cats, dangerous dogs and eye-bleeding death by myxomatosis.

Akira, 1988

Sticking with scary animated rabbits, Japanese dystopian classic Akira, by writer/director Katsuhiro Ohtomo, features a disturbingly oversized example during psychic patient Tetsuo’s (Nozomu Sasaki) fevered nightmare scene. What starts off with a teensy cutesy red car riding bunny and his teddy bear mate is soon replaced by hulking monstrosities that destroy all before them, Godzilla-style, before being scared off by the blood gushing from Tetsuo’s feet after he steps on broken glass in his bid to escape. If ever you needed a reason not to eat cheese (or carrots) before bed, this is it.

Harvey, 1950

Long before Jake Gyllenhall cornered the market in giant invisible bunny besties, James Stewart (It’s a Wonderful Life, Vertigo) starred as eccentric boozehound Elwood P. Dowd in Henry Koster’s Harvey (adapted from the play by Mary Chase by herself and Oscar Brodney). The rabbit in question shares Frank’s ability to stop time in Donnie Darko, though this is less creepy sci-fi and more silly whimsy with a comedy of errors, like when Elwood’s sister gets locked up in a sanatorium in his stead. Just like It’s a Wonderful Life, events are far from bleak; it’ll leave you with a fuzzy glow.

Belenggu, 2012

Men in rabbit suits are rarely good, kids. Indonesian writer/director Upi Avianto’s highly stylised thriller/horror flick Belenggu hammers home the message with a knife-wielding dude in a white and pink get up in this enthralling slice of nutty noir. Elang (Abimana Aryasatya) thinks he’s met the love of his life in Jingga (Imelda Therinne) but the course certainly doesn’t run smooth any more than the narrative does here.

Night of the Lepus, 1972

Janet Leigh (Psycho, The Manchurian Candidate) stars alongside Stuart Whitman (The Mark, The Comancheros) in this schlocky horror B-movie directed by William F. Claxton of Little House on the Prairie and Bonanza fame. Based on the novel The Year of the Angry Rabbits by Sydneysider Russell Braddon, Don Holliday and Gene R. Kearney handle the hokey screenplay about enormous killer rabbits running amuck in small town US. Firmly in the so bad it’s good territory, most of the ‘giant’ critters are obviously household pets romping around in miniature sets.
The 1972 film Night of the Lepus is the definitive monster bunny movie. Plagued by too many rabbits, a community turns to scientists who experiment on the rabbits to keep them from reproducing. An escaped rabbit reproduces anyway, and the results are huge carnivorous mutants that eat anything in their way, including humans!

STP video
https://youtu.be/YxS4lqppZ6Y

AFI miss murder
https://youtu.be/YU4hhNKsPog

Versatile Rabbits

- “Mythology has caught on to the duality of the rabbit, making them figures of both light and darkness, a bridge between the otherworld and the heavens, the ideal beast to plague your subconscious.”
Bunnies can portray any evil character,
This may be true, but the evil cinematic rabbit has yet to reach its final form. Obviously, bunny rabbits are out to get us. Beware!

http://mentalfloss.com/article/19880/horror-bunnies-8-rabbits-avoid
http://www.horrorsociety.com/2014/04/19/5-horror-films-easter-sunday/
http://www.westword.com/music/top-10-creepy-movie-bunnies-in-case-you-want-to-ruin-easter-5713795
Weird Norfolk: The Phantom Rabbit of Thetford Warren Lodge
http://www.edp24.co.uk/news/weird-norfolk-the-phantom-rabbit-of-thetford-warren-lodge-1-5004915
http://www.avclub.com/the-strange-history-of-terrifying-bunny-rabbits-in-film-1798429921
15 Weird and Wonderful Rabbits in Movies
http://www.sbs.com.au/movies/article/2014/04/16/15-weird-and-wonderful-rabbits-movies

NEWS:

Beastly Haunted Trail

http://www.post-gazette.com/pets/2017/09/22/Pet-Events-Haunted-Trail-Goat-Yoga-and-Wine-and-Rabbits/stories/201709230006
Skeletons, spiders, coffins, clowns and other things that go bump in the night are scary but fun at the outdoor Halloween fundraiser at the Beaver County Humane Society, 3394 Brodhead Road, Center.

The wooded, winding Beastly Haunted Trail takes a good 30 minutes to navigate. See props and displays that volunteers have built over hundreds of hours in the last year. Volunteers are also on hand to jump out and scare visitors.

Because of the fright factor, children 12 years old and younger must be accompanied by an adult.

Since 2014 word-of-mouth and social media have attracted visitors from Allegheny and other counties and from as far away as West Virginia. The Beastly Haunted Trail is open Friday and Saturday nights, 7-10 p.m., from Sept. 29 through Oct. 28. Cost is $12 per person.

Alien Bunnies Attack in the ‘Cute Little Buggers’ Trailer

https://youtu.be/kBg_rgBwFQM

http://bloody-disgusting.com/movie/3460928/alien-bunnies-attack-cute-little-buggers-trailer-exclusive/
Gremlins meet Hot Fuzz in Cute Little Buggers, premiering on VOD November 7th from Uncork’d Entertainment.

Tony Jopia’s highly anticipated comedy-horror hybrid sees locals of a peaceful English village, enjoying their annual summer festival when they are suddenly attacked by mutated killer rabbits!

“Somewhere in the depths of space, aliens are watching the earth and planning their attack. Unaware of the impending danger, the locals of a sleepy English village are preparing for their summer festival. The aliens launch their offensive by mutating the local rabbit population, and when the furry demons are released, the body count starts to pile up as blood, guts, and fur flies in all directions as the humans fight off the alien threat.”

The film features genre icon Caroline Munro (Maniac, The Spy Who Loved Me).

Bunny Man!
The legend has circulated for years in several forms. A version naming a suspect and specific location was posted to a website in the late 1990s by a "Timothy C. Forbes". This version states that in 1904, an asylum prison in Clifton, Virginia was shut down by successful petition of the growing population of residents in Fairfax County. During the transfer of inmates to a new facility, one of the fifteen transports crashed; most, including the driver, were killed, ten escaped. A search party found all but one of them.

During this time, locals allegedly began to find hundreds of cleanly skinned, half-eaten carcasses of rabbits hanging from the trees in the surrounding areas. Another search of the area was ordered, and the police located the remains of Marcus Wallster, left in a similar fashion to the rabbit carcasses hanging in a nearby tree or under a bridge overpass—also known as the "Bunny Man Bridge"—along the railroad tracks at Colchester Road. Officials name the last missing inmate, Douglas J. Grifon, as their suspect and call him "the bunny man".

In this version, officials finally manage to locate Grifon but, during their attempt to apprehend him at the overpass, he nearly escapes before being hit by an oncoming train where the original transport crashed. They say after the train passed, the police heard laughter coming from the site. It is eventually revealed that Grifon was institutionalized for killing his family and children on Easter Sunday.
For years after the "Bunny Man's" death, in the time approaching Halloween, carcasses are said to be found hanging from the overpass and surrounding areas. A figure is reportedly seen by passersby making their way through the one lane bridge tunnel.

Fairfax County Public Library Historian-Archivist Brian A. Conley extensively researched the Bunny Man legend. He has located two incidents of a man in a rabbit costume threatening people with an axe. The vandalism reports occurred a week apart in 1970 in Burke, Virginia.

The first incident was reported the evening of October 19, 1970 by U.S. Air Force Academy Cadet Robert Bennett and his fiancée, who were visiting relatives on Guinea Road in Burke. Around midnight, while returning from a football game, they reportedly parked their car in a field on Guinea Road to "visit an Uncle who lived across the street from where the car was parked". As they sat in the front seat with the motor running, they noticed something moving outside the rear window. Moments later, the front passenger window was smashed, and there was a white-clad figure standing near the broken window. Bennett turned the car around while the man screamed at them about trespassing, including: "You're on private property, and I have your tag number." As they drove down the road, the couple discovered a hatchet on the car floor.

When the police requested a description of the man, Bennett insisted he was wearing a white suit with long bunny ears. However, Bennett's fiancée contested their assailant did not have bunny ears on his head, but was wearing a white capirote of some sort. They both remembered seeing his face clearly, but in the darkness, they could not determine his race. The police returned the hatchet to Bennett after examination. Bennett was required to report the incident upon his return to the Air Force Academy.

The second reported sighting occurred on the evening of October 29, 1970, when construction security guard Paul Phillips approached a man standing on the porch of an unfinished home, in Kings Park West on Guinea Road. Phillips said the man was wearing a gray, black, and white bunny costume, and was about 20 years old, 5 feet 8 inches (1.73 m) tall, and weighed about 175 pounds (79 kg). The man began chopping at a porch post with a long-handled axe, saying: "All you people trespass around here. If you don't get out of here, I'm going to bust you on the head."

The Fairfax County Police opened investigations into both incidents, but both were eventually closed for lack of evidence. In the weeks following the incidents, more than 50 people contacted the police claiming to have seen the "Bunny Man". Several newspapers reported the incident of the "Bunny Man" eating a man's runaway cat, including the following articles in The Washington Post:

"Man in Bunny costume Sought in Fairfax" (October 22, 1970)
"The 'Rabbit' Reappears" (October 31, 1970)
"Bunny Man Seen" (November 4, 1970)
"Bunny Reports Are Multiplying" (November 6, 1970)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bunny_Man

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