'RUN RABBIT, RUN' is it's name, and if you've seen 'Get Out', you know how diabolic and sinister it is. I've seen the film four times, and every time I view it, the amount of dread it adds to the films scenes are not diminished. The other evening I had the Blu-ray of David Lean's 1942 film, 'In Which We Serve', playing. A favorite of mine, I've seen the film many times. But I hadn't played it since viewing 'Get Out'. Around the 3/4 point of Lean's film, there's a sequence in which a (very young) Richard Attenborough, accused of cowardice before his ship is sunk, is tormented by this same song, 'Run Rabbit, Run'. The music played first, then the lyrics. I almost thought I was losing my mind, and it certainly freaked me out hearing it, seemingly, out-of-the-blue! Anyone else here think this is a very effective, very creepy song?
Anyone else here think this is a very effective, very creepy song?
Yes. I first heard it used in the trailer for this Ken Russell-directed play from a decade ago:
I'm watching GET OUT for the first time tonight and when that car stereo in the first scene was heard playing this track, I was as freaked out as the poor guy on the sidewalk!
Their most famous song was a thing called 'Underneath the Arches'. Innocent times I suppose. If the hit comedy series 'Dad's Army' is known in the US, the title music was also sung by Bud Flanagan of the same duo. Their most famous song of WWII was 'We're Gonna Hang Out the Washing on the Siegfried Line', also on the World at War album by the way.
Practically my earliest memory is of sitting cross-legged in the warm sun on the wooden floor of the infant school hall, being taught to sing "Run Rabbit, Run".
It's all a testimony to how an innocuous piece of light music can take on sinister undertones by simple juxtaposition. This heightens both the song and the scene by contrasts.
The original was a comedy comment on not just farmers, but the Home Guard volunteers who dressed up in uniform and got their guns out 'every Friday'.
It's pretty innocuous, Montana, but when you add in the dimension of someone in a seriously compromised position and that song is pushing them remorselessly backwards with not a friendly set of hands anywhere to be found, then yep, it can be very sinister indeed. It's like the hounding pursuers are laughing entirely at their prey's expense, via their unforgiving taunts - quite a clever usage for inclusion within that context.
