Review of Night of the Lepus

A lot of animal attack movies were made in the 70s, but none were ever quite as absurd as this one. First off, the movie is call 'Night of the Lepus'. Lepus means in Latin "Hares', but the movie has both hares and rabbits. There are several important differences between rabbits and hares even though both animals belong to the Lagomorpha order of mammals. Most of all, hares are brownish gray with white belly mammals that can give birth to up to five young at one time. The movie producers didn't both researching, as both rabbits and hares are show cast here. And while we're at it, a group of rabbits is called a 'troop' not a 'herd', movie. Still, how are rabbits supposed to be scary? They are not even meat eaters. Rabbits and hares are essentially herbivorous. They solve this problem, by having them corrupted by science. Science that doesn't make any sense that turns them into giant insane blood-lust carnivorous. Although the premise was in of itself ridiculous, what ruined this movie for whomever was able to look past that was how nonchalant everybody was about the threat. Clearly the actors realized that nothing short of the greatest performance ever made could make these rabbits the least bit frightening so they didn't bother acting scare. Stars such as DeForest Kelley of Star Trek fame, plays an college president Elgin Clark, whom couldn't even bother giving out a sense of fear. I think Dr. McCoy Deforest's porno mustache is the scariest thing about this movie. Another main stream actor that is in this movie is Janet Leigh of Psycho fame. Poor Janet! She went from being stabbed to death by Norman Bates to nearly being stomped to death by Roger Rabbit!! She doesn't do any good as researcher Gerry Bennett, but make the rabbits worst off by having her daughter take an infected rabbit out of the lab, and put into the wild. This happens when her daughter's rabbit is taking away from her from a farmer kid that hates rabbits because they kill his chickens. Rather than killing it, the farmer boy free the bunny into the wild to mate with the hares. If this doesn't make any sense, it doesn't. Second, the infected rabbit would take weeks to produce that many new hares that are mutation. Not in a few days. Anyways, the town people starts getting attack by giant killer hares or what is supposedly a giant killer hare. Most of the time, it's just people in rabbit costume smearing red tempera paint all over people's body to simulate bloody attacks. That or close ups of hares to make them look bigger on camera. Yes, it was that low budget. Behold the horror of adorable little domestic bunnies running around scale model sets! Dear God, save us from the apocalyptic horror of the giant twitching noses! Oh the humanity! The filmmakers could have at least used better special effects for the mutant rabbits rather than using stock footage, horrible slow motion and technical laziness shots of carnage spliced with adorable bunnies that throws you off even if you were willing to believe the premise. The town people smartest folks such as the scientist and the police officer believe they are being attack by Sabre Tooth Vampires Tigers. Not kidding. That's what they think they are getting attack from. I guess, it kinda makes sense, because the bunnies somewhat roars like lions in this. Most of the characters in this movie are borderline dumb as rocks. It takes them forever to realize that they are getting attack by giant rabbits. Where's Elmer Fudd when you need him? They need more holy hand grenades! Imagine the luck you get from one of those rabbit's feet if you capture one. Anyways the whole plot is them trying to kill them all. I don't know if any animals were hurt or kill during the making of this film, but I have to believe that some probably didn't make it. Lenny from Of Mice and Men will probably be sad about that. The producers could have been hungry for rabbit stew, who knows. Finally, the movie fails to deliver the obvious environmental message about habitat preservation and human encroachment on the ecosystem; for example, the most likely cause of a sudden burst of rabbits would be caused by mankind's hunting of wolves and cougars and birds of prey, ETC. None of this is explained. Rather than making it camp, I am also surprised how seriously this movie took itself. It is based off a book called 'The Year of the Angry Rabbit', and that is supposed to be a satire. It is so hilariously bad on so many levels, and the fact that it takes itself way too serious makes it even better. The movie tries to be too much like Alfred Hitchcock's 'The Birds' (1963). Hitchcock was interested in the notion about birds killing people, because we don't expect birds to kill people, they are harmless. Director William Claxton saw a good idea of killing hares, but should have keep it in the regimes of being realities. Seriously, out of all the animals to make a horror movie monster out of, they choose the sweetest and cutest one. The best thing that probably came out of this movie is that it was later use for background in the movie Matrix (1999). Not kidding. Look it up, at the scene where Neo meets the Oracle. Anyways, the movie is a 'so-bad it's good' category of films to me. Night of the Lepus is one of my favorite movies ever when it comes to the sheer fun you can get out of a movie. It just that funny to watch.