Pigeons From Hell, Rabbits From Hades

NIGHT OF THE LAGOMORPH!
If you've been following the blog faithfully then you'll recall Your Humble Scribe was wibbling on about the word "Lagomorph", and the reality is a lot less interesting and exciting than your febrile imagination's images.  No, a Lagomorph is not an oozy, boozy, ten-foot tall tentacled terror from Transylvania.  It is - Art?

A rabbit

     On the plus side, it does make a better casserole than the tentacled terror from Transylvania - which boils down into slime and talons, I'm afraid.
     Of course, Conrad could not simply leave it there.  O no.  For he is now dead set on finding examples of KILLER RABBITS, which will thoroughly justify having today's title.
     And here we hark back to yesteryon's Tale Of Terror, "Night Of The Lepus", a film where one has to apostrophise the word "Horror" because they really blew it with this one.  Art?

No!  No!  You should be shrieking with terror, not laughter.
(Also, "Awwwww!" is NOT an appropriate response)

     They tried to make this sinister by filming it in slow motion.  Well, it doesn't work.  You can't properly scale animal motion, and the rabbits you see here are far larger than the ones supposedly seen in close up.  By the way, "Lepus" is the Latin for "Hare", not "Rabbit" and is pronounced "Lee-puss" rather than the way you're saying it - "Leepers", even though they are.
     Oh, and "Pigeons From Hell" is a horror story written by Robert Howard, tangential to the subject of zombies.

Bunnies having just dined on humans, apparently

     The film is based on an Australian satirical novel by Russell Braddon, called "The Year  Of The Angry Rabbit", which does indeed feature gigantic rabbits, mutated by that handy catch-all of the Sixties, atomic radiation.  I've read the precis and it's very silly, which is what it aimed for, and NOTL might have done better if it had kept the INTENTIONAL laughs.  Art?

Behold the inheritor of the Earth

     No list of Killer Rabbits would be complete without the Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog, from "Monty Python And The Holy Grail".  Art?

Bunny and bones

     I shall gloss over this one as it's quite famous and any mention of the "M" and "P" words risks a descent into unfunny reminiscences.
     Then we have the Killer Rabbit assassin from "Misfits".  By the time this series finished there were more Misfits than Fits, frankly, and this homicidal hopper is the result of someone whose imagination creates copies of whatever they think in the real world.  Art?

Natty suit, man.  Rabbit!  Sorry, I entirely meant rabbit.

     We cannot leave this subject without mention of Bugs Bunny, who was for O so long the put-upon victim of Hom. Sap's violent and aggressive tendencies - Elmer Fudd I'm looking at YOU! - but who does get justice served in the end.  Art?

Yes, Elmer.  Look afraid.  Look very afraid.

     I'm not sure if you can include the rabbits of "Watership Down" here, as it's many decades since I read it, and the only homicidal hopper I can remember is General Woundwort, who is happy to attack packs of hunting dogs, which says much for his bravery if not brains.  Art?

"I was raised at Caerbannog, you know!"

     Hmmmm.  I didn't think I'd be able to sustain much of an item there.  Who knew there were so many Killer Rabbits in the world! 

"Alamein To Zem Zem" By Keith Douglas
I have decided to annotate this memoir of the Unpleasantness in North Africa, because it fills a gap in my accounts derived from memoirs of the Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry.  Miles Hilyard never fought there because he got sent to Crete and was captured there, and transferred to the HQ of 7th Armoured Division after escaping.  Stuart Hills and David Render only fought in Europe from D-Day onward.  Stanley Christopherson's diaries are missing crucial bits, and are written from the perspective of a Squadron commander; whereas Keith was a lot lower on the totem pole, commanding only 2 tanks at first, rather than 16.

A Crusader Mk III

     We shall be coming back to this topic, O yes indeed!

Meanwhile, We Change Subject Again
I like to mix it up.  Besides, it's good mental exercise.
     Okay, we have now reached Number 27 on that "Rolling Stone" list of the 50 greatest sci-fi television shows ever, and Conrad's not especially impressed with this one, not after Quatermass.  For Lo! we are talking "Dollhouse".  Art?

Lots of bright young things*

     To me it was the ho-hum story of people having personalities programmed in, or something, and it seemed like a rehash of every other idea Joss Wedon had ever entertained, and since it only lasted two seasons, it wasn't especially popular.  Or something.  Frankly the precis never made me want to waste a single second looking at it, and why waste my time on this when there's "Doom Patrol" or "The Umbrella Academy" to watch?
     Next!

Elephant Puns
This one will also take a bit of explaining.  Perhaps I should have titled it "Elephant Guns" as that's what the meat of the matter is about.  To provide some background detail, an elephant gun is the generic name for a big-game double-barrelled rifle of very large calibre, that fires a bullet the size of a carrot.  They are fearsome engines, used to slay things like charging elephants or rhinos, and are extreme overkill were you only looking to see off the upright hairless ape.  Art?

Normal round versus 600 Nitro Express

     The reason I bring this up is because Listy - he of the Overlord blog and books, too - brought up the subject of how effective an elephant gun would be at tackling Teuton armour in the First Unpleasantness, for reasons too complicated to go into here.
     This immediately means a discourse about Teuton armour of the First Unpleasantness, which is a topic in itself, and we're aleady well over the Compositional Ton, so we will come back to the matter of thick-skinned beasts at a later date.  Art?

"Mister Unwary fires a Nitro Express"

Finally -
If I were to say "Mission To Moscow" then I hope your immediate response would be a curled lip, a sneer and a disparaging remark about how the only good "Police Academy" film was the first one.
     For Lo!  There was an earlier film that went by this title, from 1943, and that dating is crucial, for it was during the brief 4-year period where the Sinister Union and South Canada were allies against the Teuton hordes of Herr Schickelgruber.  Art?

The traditional Ruffian art of pipe-painting

     It is a thoroughly disgraceful bit of servile boot-licking, not so much a tissue of lies and more the whole Andrex factory of them, portraying Stalin as shockingly misunderstood and completely benign.  The purges and show trials of the Thirties are portrayed as entirely justified retaliation for Teuton and Nipponese sabotage, and Conrad remembers seeing some of these scenes on television, before I changed channels**.  Art?

A trial of show

     Let us be clear: the show trials and purges were nothing to do with foreign subversion or sabotage and everything to do with that oriental despot Stalin getting rid of potential opposition, or potential potential opposition, or the offspring of the descendants of the relatives of the third cousins once removed from the potential potential potential opposition, or just people who once looked at him funny at a party conference in 1923 (and yes, he really was that petty).     "Blimey!" I hear you comment.  "The snowy-haired old git is being a bit crotchety today, isn't he?!"

Uh-oh.  Someone's not happy!

     Yes, well with "Chernobyl" deservedly winning a raft of awards, Your Humble Scribe is cynically wondering how long it will be until the Tsar Putin-approved Ruffian version comes out.  You know, where the Eeeevil CIA actually blew up the reactors, after parachuting in on combat dolphins powered by pixie-dust, or some such*.


* Bah!
**  Probably by throwing something at the controls.