Rabbit Test

Rabbit Test
April 9, 1978
Laugh or Die Productions [These are the choices?]
Comedy, Romance
VHS
C+

Like Sextette, this shows how tacky the late '70s could get, but it's less enjoyably bad.  It does admittedly have more of a plot, the complications (medical and otherwise) faced by the world's first pregnant man, played by a young Billy Crystal, around the time he was making TV history as a gay main character on Soap.  The movie has a very slight resemblance to Miracle of Morgan's Creek, in that the unwed pregnancy shocks the whole world, but the reaction is more mixed here.  Also, like Trudy K., Crystal's Lionel Carpenter gives birth on Christmas, but it's a lot more blasphemous here, since the baby is possibly a Saviour.  (A deep-voiced star says, "Oh my God, it's a girl!!")  But then the whole movie is tasteless in just about every way imaginable, while Morgan's knew how to be suggestive without being PG-raunchy.

Then again, Joan Rivers (writer/director/over-actress in the role of a nurse) is no Preston Sturges.  If you're going to have a joke where an African waitress in rabbit ears and a swimsuit says, "I'm your jungle bunny," you've got to make it so outrageously funny that the viewer can't help but laugh, even if it's guiltily.  It's the same with jokes about (to take a few examples among many) incest, abortion, and urine.

Oddly enough, while there's none of the good-natured sweetness of Sextette (which loved even those it mocked), there is somehow a not bad romance here, between Crystal and his Russian Gypsy girlfriend, played by Joan Prather, who would find more success as Janet on Eight Is Enough.  And Doris Roberts, in the Doris Roberts Role of Crystal's mother (cf. Angie, Everybody Loves Raymond), is much better than her material.

There are two genuinely funny things in the movie: Richard Deacon's very phony toupee and a routine about a commemorative stamp.  Likely if you dare to watch this movie, it's going to have to be for the cast. Seemingly, nearly every actor and actress from the '70s you've heard of (or haven't) was in this flick, from a young Michael Keaton to Valerie Curtin and Suzanne Zenor from the first Three's Company pilot.  Rivers's Hollywood Squares colleagues (or at least game-show stalwarts) include George Gobel (as the President of the US), Fannie Flagg (as the First Lady), Peter Marshall (as himself), Jimmie "J. J." Walker (as an African ventriloquist), and Mr. Center Square himself, Paul Lynde, as the doctor whose rabbit dies.  Alice Ghostley is Lynde's nurse.  Billy Barty is Walker's black-face dummy.

This time Charlotte Rae plays Cousin Claire.  Roddy McDowall has a dual role, as the Gypsy grandmother and as Dr. D & C Fishbine.  (Hardy har har!)  Imogene Coca and/or Norman Fell plays his child.  (It's hard to tell in this movie.)  Hamilton Camp is some relation.

Ben Frommer, who's Mr. Sanchez, was "Man" in Plan Nine from Outer Space.  (Luckily, this isn't the extent of his resume.)  Intern William Callaway was a party guest in Annie Hall.  The role of the Japanese doctor was one of a handful that Rollin Moriyama would have in my late '70s movies.

Hospital visitor Tommy Madden would be One-Eyed Midget in The Muppet Movie.  May Boss, "Frail Old Lady," would be Adele Miller in Americathon.  (She was far from frail in real life and in fact was a stuntwoman, even up to 2003.)  Adam Anderson, the "Sobbing Sailor," would be a pilot in The Nude Bomb.  Rod Haase, who's the surfer on the bus, would be Wally in The Gong Show Movie.  Rosey Grier, who's the taxi driver, would be himself in The Gong SM.  Raymond O'Keefe, Bronco here, would be a man at the hospital in Nine to Five.  Shelley Morrison, who plays Mrs. Borzoni, would be Rosa the Maid in Troop Beverly Hills.