13 Bunnies of Halloween #6

Have you ever seen the 1989 Aussie horror-ish flick Celia? (It's available to watch on YouTube if not -- or you can buy the Region 2 blu-ray from SecondRun which is what I did, and it was worth it.) It tells the story of the hyperactively imaginitive young girl Celia (Rebecca Smart) in Melbourne in the late 1950s who wants nothing more than to have a pet rabbit of her own. And yes the gif above is a spoiler, I suppose -- she eventually gets her rabbit! And because Celia is awesome she names it Murgatroyd. But it takes awhile to get to Murgatroyd -- half the film is her pining away for her own pet bunny, drawing it...

... and also dealing with the horrible bully Stephanie in her class who makes her own nasty little drawing about Celia's bunny-ward desires...

Don't worry though, Stephanie gets what's coming to her. They all get what's coming to them!!! Celia is not to be trifled with, try though they might. Which is to say that Celia is a goddamned legend as far as I'm concerned. Or she should be. She's put through the wringer and comes out a total hard-ass by the end -- Celia basically has the same character arc as Dutch, Arnold Schwarzenegger's character in Predator, and by the end I'd put money on her in a battle between those two. 

The film is set during the "Red Scare" in Austrailia and I suppose there's lot of symbolism involving the way that Celia's parents and community drive out the nice Marxists who live next door to them with the "rabbit plague" that's happening simultaneously -- we see lots of incredible newsreels from the time warning about Myxomatosis, the rabbit disease that also happens to be the title of a Radiohead song.

Anyway if you're an animal lover Celia is a tough sit -- poor little Murgatroyd does not have an easy life. But that made Celia perfect for an entry in our "13 Bunnies of Halloween" list! So all your suffering was worth it, Murgatroyd. He's the Jesus Christ of bunny rabbits, he is!