Night of the Lepus (1972)

The 1970s saw a revival of a '50s staple: giant animals attacking.  Unlike earlier, they decided they didn't need to build models or put guys in rubber suits.  There was a new way of doing things: take a real animal, dress it up a bit and film it walking around miniatures.  No muss and no fuss.  Well, except for the fuss that animal rights activists threw about the obvious mistreatment of the animals, including gluing things on to them and doing stuff to force them to perform.

As far as I know that didn't happen in Night of the Lepus, as all the "blood" on the big, hulking, frightening creatures is ketchup.  There are a few scenes where I questioned what was happening to the bloodthirsty beasts they filmed, galumphing their way through the Sonoran Desert to reek havoc among our dusty backroads communities.  Even the posters show strange eyes looking out of the darkness, huge fangs and Janet Leigh fleeing what must the most terrifying creatures on the face of the earth.

For those who aren't familiar with the Latin name of these horrid creatures that leave nothing but destruction in their wake, a lepus is a creature, covered in fur, with powerful back legs and overgrown incisors that can devastate a pile of alfalfa in seconds.  It is, in fact, a rabbit.

Cole Hillman (Rory Calhoun) is a rancher that is having a major problem.  Since having the coyotes cleared off of his property the rabbit population has multiplied, and now he needs a solution to that.  Not wanting just another stop-gap solution he turns to scientist Roy Bennett (Stuart Whitman) and his wife Gerry (Leigh), who just happen to be doing to some tests on rabbits to try to get them under control naturally.  The tests result in larger than normal specimens and, when their daughter Amanda (Melanie Fullerton) accidentally lets one into the local population, they grow to the size of wolves.

They start behaving like them as well, with large packs of rabbits roaming the countryside at night and killing anything that gets in their way.  As they begin to pose a clear and present danger the National Guard is called in to help as is Dr. Elgin Clark (DeForest Kelley), a friend of Hillman's.  As everyone else works toward a solution more and more civilians come under attack from the furry fiends.

I used to own rabbits.  They are not naturally vicious, but they are quick to defend themselves.  I have probably had more bleeding from rabbits than from cats, and those hind legs and incisors have some major defensive qualities.  However, even at the size of a wolf, it is hard to imagine bunnies as a threat.  Rabbits and hares are not rodents, despite the common misconception, but they sometimes behave in similar manner.  That said, there are huge rodents of this size in existence, and as of yet no one has made a killer capybara film. 

There is a reason for this.  Just the idea of a movie about killer rabbits is so ridiculous that every poster and trailer did their best to hide the monster in this film.  The original title was The Rabbits, but the name was changed to Night of the Lepus due to the fear that no one would want to see a movie about killer rabbits.  This should have been more than a hint to everyone involved, but they went ahead anyway.  

At that point, when it was clear that everyone was serious about making this, it should have been made as a comedy.  Unfortunately, this movie is as serious as can be, with a lengthy introduction in the style of a newscast talking about the destruction that rabbits caused in Australia after their introduction and the dangers of letting animals overpopulate.  We have Hillman shooting his horse within the first few minutes of actual movie after it breaks its leg stepping into a rabbit warren.  We even have bloody, mutilated bodies of the townspeople to drive the point of the threat home.  All of this should be hilarious and the perfect film for a bad movie night.  Instead, it is a dry, boring watch.  

The slow-motion forced perspective rabbits aren't menacing no matter how much director William F. Claxton tries to make them and this does have a few set pieces that, if played for laughs instead of straight horror, would have at least proved entertaining.  Instead this doesn't even rise to a good cult film.  

Night of the Lepus (1972)

Time: 88 minutes

Starring: Stuart Whitman, Janet Leigh, Rory Calhoun, DeForest Kelley

Director: William F. Claxton