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Top 10 creepy movie bunnies, in case you want to ruin Easter

Easter isn't a holiday that's rife with media and art devoted to it. There are few TV specials of which to speak. Save for Christian rock stations, no radio stations devote 24 hour coverage to Easter songs (which would pretty much amount to replaying "Easter Bonnet" and "Peter Cottontail" over...
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Easter isn't a holiday that's rife with media and art devoted to it. There are few TV specials of which to speak. Save for Christian rock stations, no radio stations devote 24 hour coverage to Easter songs (which would pretty much amount to replaying "Easter Bonnet" and "Peter Cottontail" over and over again). And there are precious few movies that capture the spirit of the season.

But there are a lot of films that sort of do the opposite. Here are ten movies that include rabbits, but that you probably don't want to include in your Easter baskets this year. Or show to your kids. Or even watch, for that matter, if you happen to be scared of crazy fucking rabbits.

10. Watership Down I saw this movie, like many kids, when adults rented it without really knowing what it was they were renting. It's a movie about rabbits--what could go wrong? A lot, as it turns out, as rabbits are blown away in bloody fashion, spawning numerous nightmares and a lot of ensuing and apologetic film rentals by parents trying to mend the mental damage. 9. Monty Python and the Holy Grail Sure, the whole movie isn't about a rabbit. But the voracious Rabbit of Caerbannog (and if you knew that was the rabbit's name, then pat yourself on the back and put down your Dungeon Master's Guide for a sec) is a pretty memorable part of the climax, if this film can be said to have a climax at all. And a pretty vicious little son-of-a-bitch bunny it is, too. 8. Cabin Fever Again, not a movie about a rabbit. Which makes it all the more strange when there's suddenly a guy in a bunny suit that shows up, randomly, in a hospital scene. To make it worse, he's credited as "We'll never tell." What the hell is that? Creepy, is what. 7. Night of the Lepus This was a 1972 horror film about rabbits -- and really, that's as far as you really need to read in this entry to determine whether or not this qualifies as a creepy bunny-movie, but let's keep going, just for kicks. It stars Janet Leigh, who it deserves mentioning does not get knifed in the shower by a mutant rabbit. This may be the kindest thing one can say about this film. 6. Fatal Attraction Don't look in the stew pot! And yeah, that wasn't supposed to be Hasenfeffer, but I guess it sort of is now. 5. The Brown Bunny It's tough to choose whether this movie is better known for the graphic oral sex between stars Vincent Gallo and Chloe Sevigny or the fact that it sucked. But it's also known for the very creepy fact that Roger Ebert's negative review of the film's debut at Cannes purportedly caused Gallo to curse Ebert with cancer...which Ebert then got. They've since reconciled, or so it's said ... but still. Creeeeeepy. 4. Sexy Beast A nightmare rabbit-man with a gun? This ain't Harvey, Ray Winstone, and you are by no means Jimmy Stewart. The fact that you're being seduced back into a life of violence by Ben "Ghandi" Kingsley makes it all the more creepy. 3. 8 Mile Eminem plays Jimmy "Rabbit" Smith in this film, which isn't so much creepy as much as it is inappropriate for audiences still interested in rabbits. What's really creepy is the urban legend that the film may have brought about the death of John Updike: 8 Mile starts with a quote from Updike's classic novel Rabbit Run, and Updike died some seven years later. Believe it ... or not. 2. Coonskin Ralph Bakshi's 1975 cartoon film was an equal-opportunity offender: While it largely attacks racism and the exploitation of African-American culture in entertainment, it manages to be accused of being racist itself. Also anti-Semitic, anti-Italian, and anti-American. It's actually one of Bakshi's best works, but at the same time, not what you want to watch if you're more a fan of, say, Space Jam. 1. Donnie Darko Frank is a rabbit that you seriously don't want to meet in a dark alley. Or anywhere, really. Especially if the world is ending in about 28 days. Or maybe you actually do want to meet him in that case...damn, I still don't get the end of that movie. Anyway, a sort-of dead guy with a bullet in his eye and sporting a rabbit costume with hollow eyes and big teeth? If that isn't creepy, we need to redefine the word.
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