Kottentail (2007) — Triskaidekafiles

KOTTENTAIL

WRITERS: Story by Tony Urban and Sharon Shoemaker

Written by Tony Urban

DIRECTOR: Tony Urban

STARRING: Nathan Faudree as Hans Kottentail

Kristin Abbott as Marissa Alvarez

Patricia Bellemore as Robin Sloan

Heather Darling as Yvonne Mikita

Noel Francomano as Lizzie Crewes

Bridget Marquardt as Scarlet Salinger

Clint Walker as Security Guard Raul

Jake Andolina as Doctor Pez

QUICK CUT: After being bitten by an escaped rabbit, Hans Kottentail goes on a wild adventure, meeting new friends throughout town.

THE MORGUE

Hans Kottentail - A shy, quiet farmer who emigrated from Germany, and is just trying to get by, and make friends. At least, until he’s bitten and mutates.

Marissa - A college student that Hans has a thing for. She’s your typical sweet, kind girl in these sorts of movies.

Lizzie - A local prostitute who has a very big personality. She might not be too bright, but she makes up for it in energy and determination.

Robin - Lizzie’s best friend, and a reporter. The pair also team up as an animal liberation group. To say Robin is the brains of this operation would be fair.

Officer Yvonne Makita - A rookie cop who gets no respect because she’s a woman, and constantly put on ‘meter maid’ type duties, despite being as qualified as her peers.

Doctor Salinger - A worker at a local animal testing lab, who has no idea how dangerous her bosses’ experiments are.

TRISK ANALYSIS: Welcome back, Triskelions! I managed to find an Eastery type movie for the holiday this year, and this was the closest date I could squeeze it in. Consider this like finding an easter egg someone didn't find under the couch. Yeah, that seems fitting for Kottentail.

The movie opens up in a lab with a scientist checking on bunny subject F13, and checks his reflexes by shocking him. Meanie.

He gets interrupted when Doctor Salinger arrives, to do her own checking on the bun, and give its injections of government chemicals.

Despite all my rage, I am still just a bun in a cage.

Oh so we're working with THAT level of budget.

Later, outside the lab, we meet two other women, who bill themselves as concerned citizens seeking to liberate lab animals. In reality, one of them is a prostitute, and the other is a reporter.

Anyways, Lizzie distracts the guard with sex and donuts, not necessarily in that order. While Raoul is looking the other way, Robin sneaks in and frees Frederico from his cage.

She sets the bunny down in the parking lot, sending the stuffed animal on his way, hopping ever further away in a series of jump cuts.

I’m gonna hug him and squeeze him and name him George.

The rabbit soon finds itself at the farm of Hans Kottentail, who tries to chase the critter out of his garden.

In the struggle, the bunny gives Hans a nasty bite, and escapes deeper into the forest.

Hans then heads into his house to tend to the wound, but everything ends up being a bit too much, and Hans passes out on the floor.

The doctors discover the theft, and Doctor Pez is more concerned, because he knows what's really going on, while Salinger thinks this is all just to make healthier rabbits.

Meanwhile, Hans is waking up, and discovering his body is starting to go through some changes. A bit late for puberty, but it happens!

In another meanwhile, we hop over to a sorority house with our usual hazing shenanigans of spanking a barely clothed woman. Because cheap horror movie. Most of these girls are just rabbit food for the plot, and the only noteworthy member is the spankee, Marissa, who has befriended Hans, despite how much teasing she gets over being nice to the local weirdo.

Anyways, there's a knock at the door, and it's Hans, delivering vegetables from his garden to the girls. But it's really just a thinly veiled excuse to see Marissa, who he is sweet on, and tries asking out. Sadly, she has a boyfriend, and the farmer shuffles off dejected.

Robin checks in briefly with Lizzie, after hearing the lab only report the break in, but didn't report the theft of the bun, which is decidedly weird.

Hans continues to transform, growing buck teeth, longer ears, and even growing whiskers, while Salinger is putting up wanted posters around town.

Do not anger, don’t think it’s just a harmless bunny rabbit, ohhhh no.

Hans takes his mind off things by peeping in on one of the local cops as she takes a shower, but the motel manager catches him and tries to chase him off. Not so nice when the rabbit ears are on the other foot, huh Hans??

The farmer further mutates, growing claws, and slashes his attacker, and get this, he hops off into the night.

Officer Mikita finds him as he's bleeding out, and gets all this info, while an animal control officer who is totally not played by the same dying actor, captures F13, and calls for his reward.

While the animal control officer and Salinger haggle over a price to get her bunny back quickly, Hans runs into Lizzie outside her hotel room, and she offers to show him a good time. Ah. This is another horny movie, I see.

Hans is found the next day on a basketball court by some 30 year old kids, who give him a hard time. Probably nothing new for Hans, but this time is different.

This time, Hans goes full easter mode, and tears through both guys, even ripping one of their heads off and slam dunking it. Hey, this guy should go against Teen Wolf.

Detectives Fulci and Bava, yes you know the references, arrive to check out the crime scene. Officer Mikita is there too, and soon Robin arrives to get a statement.

Don't make him hopping mad, you wouldn't like him when he's hopping mad.

While all this is going on, Marissa and her boyfriend are having a quiet afternoon lunch at the sorority house. Or at least, it was quiet, until the man-bun showed up to ruin their day.

I guess that's one way to get rid of the guy the girl you like is dating.

As Jason gets killed, Robin and Yvonne have a chat, and end up putting two and two and two together, getting more or less the plot of the movie.

Lizzie sees a sketch of the killer, recognises Hans, and tells Robin all about it. Well, all except his name, but close enough. While Robin drives off to work on her story, Robin hits the phonebook and gets Hans's address.

Marissa reports the murder of Jason to the cops, and naturally when they hear the massacre is from some bunnyman, they don't take her seriously. This all happening on or around Easter is NOT helping matters, either.

Fortunately, she runs into Officer Mikita, and she believes her, thanks to everything going on.

Oh you should not wear your hats like that.

The detectives might not believe it was a man-bun that did the killing, but they still manage to do their jobs, and head out to the scene of Jason's murder, to investigate.

Unfortunately, Hans returns to the scene of the crime, and kills both the detectives. And I have one complaint; how do you have a detective named Fulci and NOT do horrible eye stuff to him??

Lizzie has gone out to the Kottentail farm to investigate, and Robin isn't far behind. They don't really find anything significant besides a cat.

Hand me the keys, you fucking cocksucker!

All the girls slowly put everything together, since we're closing in on the final act, and they kidnap Salinger to get the final pieces of the puzzle. With that out of the way, the women team up to do what no one else seems capable of doing.

Following a little more murder at an easter egg hunt, the girls show up so Robin can cover it, and all they find are the scattered body parts of the city council.

The girls split up to take care of assorted tasks before meeting up for the final confrontation, and Hans uses his free time to murder all of Marissa's sorority sisters.

Mmm, strawberry Quik, fresh from the source.

So the girls are going to lure Hans back to his house with carrots from the lab, and Lizzie has the idea to dress sexy and distracting and like rabbits, because horror movie logic.

The girls get all dressed up in next to nothing, and end up sitting around for the entire night. Oh that must've been fun.

Robin sees the carrots are untouched, and is about to head outside, frustrated that the manbun outsmarted her. Which he punctuates by leaping up and dragging her outside, to kill her.

They realise they are out of their depth (YA THINK??) but don't know who to turn to. The cops have been zero help, are kinda dead, and they're especially not gonna listen to Fox Force Five here.

But, Salinger has an idea, and calls the animal control dude, and he rushes out to the farm.

...to get himself promptly killed, as these things go. Thanks for nothing!

Things look pretty bleak, but Lizzie gives what passes for an inspirational speech and rallies the surviving girls to take the fight to Hans.

Yvonne rushes out to try and grab the man-bun's attention by doing her best I Know What You Did Last Easter impression.

But this is one smart rabbit, who uh, came in through the back door, and takes Salinger hostage. They somehow are suddenly in the basement, where he chews out her throat.

Marissa confronts him, and gets her guts spilled out all over the basement floor for her troubles. He then takes Lizzie off to the barn to do who knows what.

Y'know what? I’m gonna do a brief aside here; This feels like a plot mixup, because wasn't he all obsessed over Marissa at the start of the movie? Shouldn't she have been the one his attentions are focused on? Otherwise, it just makes things very random.

Anyways. Yvonne follows the couple to the barn, where the fight continues, until Lizzie shotguns Hans in the back. This would normally be the end of the movie, but just before the credits roll, he rises from the dead like it's Easter or something, and pounces on the girls. He then hops off into the sunset.

I’m here to kick ass and dye easter eggs. And I’m all out of easter eggs.

TRISK ASSESSMENT

Video: It doesn’t look too bad, but doesn’t do much either. Especially for something that came out in the mid 2000s, it feels like it should look much better.

Audio: All right, but several moments that get very muffled. Oh, and for some reason, this DVD came with three THREE!! commentary tracks. I now know more about the behind the scenes shenanigans, making off, and secrets for THIS movie than I do the last half dozen MCU flicks.

Sound Bite: “Raul would like to see your boobs."

Body Count: Woot, we got a clean sweep this week, with everyone getting killed by the end of the movie.

1 - It takes us 28 minutes to get started, when Kottentail rips out a kid's neck.

2 - And then tears off the head of another.

3 - Blonde's boyfriend gets killed off screen.

4 - Kottentail guts detective Bava.

5 - And then Fulci

6 - Kottentail offs one of the easter egg hunters

7 - And then a second one

8 - Kottentail rips off the face of a sorority girl

9 - Then he slashes another one's neck

10 - And then attacks the third.

11 - Robin gets slashed by the bunnyman

12 - Animal control dude gets pounced by Kottentail

13 - Salinger gets her neck chewed out

14 - Marisa gets her guts spilled on the floor

15 - Kottentail gets shotgunned by Lizzie.

16 - Until he’s not dead, and Lizzie and Yvonne get pounced.

Best Corpse: Marissa gets the award this week, for spilling her guts all over the place, and in honour of how much that stunk, and the cast had to suffer to shoot the scenes.

Blood Type - B+: There’s a hefty amount of blood, but it’s fairly tame on that front, save for stuff like, oh, spilled guts. The makeup on Kottentail looks pretty great for a low budget film though.

Sex Appeal: There is a fair amount of nekkidness here.

Drink Up! every time there is a comic panel transition.

Movie Review: When I first watched this movie, I thought it was just on the side of all right. Nothing bad, nothing great, just kinda there. But the more I’ve watched it, while I have not discovered some hidden depths to it, it has really grown on me. It’s charming, it’s fun, it knows exactly what it’s doing. It doesn’t try and dress things up like the fact they’re using a stuffed bunny for all of F13’s scenes. Nathan is actually fairly good as Hans, and he brings some wonderful menace to Kottentail as well. Most of the girls are good enough or better. Lizzie is a particular standout, as her energy brings up any scene she’s in. It’s good, silly fun with a giant man rabbit killing people, that never takes itself too seriously. Four out of five drugged carrots, grading on the curve that it is doing exactly what it wants, more or less how it wants.

Entertainment Value: It should be no surprise that this is a silly movie. Hans is charming and brings a lot of heart to the character, but when he goes beaster mode, it is a lot of fun. He really throws himself into it, and tears through the cast. The characters are funny, and while it’s packed full of them, they all have very distinct personalities, motivations, and purposes. This was a fun, funny, bloody good time, that really only gets dinged because sometimes it’s trying a bit TOO hard to be horny. Which isn’t a big problem, but c’mon. Four out of five bunny ear headbands.