Summary
Arizona rancher, Cole (Rory Calhoun) is plagued with rabbits, and he wants to find a humane way to eliminate them. A zoologist,Roy(Stuart Whitman) is called upon to do experiments on a few rabbits to stop their reproductive system. One of the rabbit’s escapes and breeds with others to create giant man eating rabbits.
Expectations Going In
The last time I saw this was in the 80’s as a kid. It never was released on VHS and it did not come to DVD until about six years ago. When it was released I couldn't bring myself to watch it, because sometimes what is good as a child is terrible as an adult. I never could figure out why it was only shown on TV late at night. Now I am aware that this movie is a joke by some and a cult classic by others. Well, let’s give this a shot and see how it is. .
Bad
The child actors and the writing is horrible in this movie. There is a scene where Roy (Stuart Whitman) takes a rabbit out of the cage and injects it with hormones and puts it back in the cage. His daughter Amanda opens not the sixth cage that the rabbit was pulled from but the fifth cage and replaces the rabbit with the one without hormones. You got that right the little girl opened the wrong cage that had her rabbit in it that was injected with hormones. She failed at the easiest scene there is, opening up a cage.
Another horrible child actor plays Cole’s son Jackie. He throws Amanda’s rabbit down on the ground and the rabbit runs away. Amanda is cool with it and doesn’t even argue with Jackie. Jackie says he is sorry. I would expect a little bit of emotion from Amanda. After all some jerk kid tossed your animal on the ground and it ran away.
Later, Jackie and Amanda go to a gold mine and Jackie tells Amanda to go into the mine to look for the prospector and he will look inside the prospector's shanty. Really kid, you’re a teenage boy; I would be in that mine before that girl would. Not to mention I know that most little girls would say no to that.
Cole and Roy find animal tracks and are not sure what they are. They look like bear tracks to me. They conclude that the animal has to weigh about 150 pounds. Take that weight and figure a weight to size ratio on an animal. Keep that in mind for a minute, we will get back to it. We have to make fun of the children some more.
Amanda enters the mine and we get our first look at the huge rabbit. There is no way to tell how big it is supposed to be in the mine, because we get a close up view on a rabbits face and it has fake blood around its mouth. The hilarious part about this scene is that the rabbit has killed the prospector. To top it all off, we are aware that Amanda is in this mine without a flash light, but someone is constantly shining a light on the rabbit.
Let’s discuss how the rabbits kill people. The second body we see appears to have been a mannequin with ketchup all over it. For those that aren’t aware, fake blood is made from corn syrup, food die, and various other ingredients. The rabbits apparently ripped this guy's arm off and left him to die. The next scene we see a family of four with real people and not a mannequin. They are lying on the ground and have blood on them. No wounds of any type that would explain why there was so much blood. When Roy, Cole, and some other ranchers go inspect the mine a rancher goes inside the shanty. A rabbit digs up from the ground and attacks the rancher. Gerry (Janet Leigh), Roy’s wife, shoots the rabbit and the rabbit jumps away. The rancher has blood all over him, but yet he has no wounds and is just out of breath. In other scenes the rabbits jump on the humans and that seems to kill them.
Remember how I mentioned size to scale ratio, well the film makers have a first grade education. The rabbits are outside at night (hint the name of the movie) and we have a scene showing the rabbits next to a water tower and they are three fourths the size of the water tower. You are aware of how tall a water tower is I am sure. Use that image on that scale size. Now the next scene the rabbits are next to a house and they are now half the height of a one story house. Just wait, this gets better. We now have a scene with a truck driving down the road and they are half the size of a truck. I’m getting a head ache thinking of all the stupidity here. In another scene the sheriff tells Roy that the rabbit’s teeth are this long. He uses a hand gesture to show that the teeth are about two inches long. I am sure that a 150 pound rabbit would have bigger teeth than that.
One last complaint I have is that everyone making this film seemed to forget that rabbits can burrow in the ground. We have a scene where we see a rabbit coming up from the ground but during the night attack Cole and his family run to the cellar to escape the rabbits. As, I said did they forget that rabbits burrow.
Well, I could go on with bad things to say, but I'll stop here.
Good
You expect me to say something good? Hmm. The movie has Stuart Whitman, Janet Leigh, Rory Calhoun, and DeForest Kelley (Dr. McCoy from Star Trek) in it. You would expect it to be good, but I don’t blame them. Their acting was the only thing good about this movie. They were aware it was an atrocity and Janet Leigh refuses to speak of this movie. She claims to have only made it, because it was within driving distance from home.
Overall Thoughts
Night of the Lepus belongs back in the ground and blown up with dynamite. I found myself bored and annoyed, but I stuck with it because I remember watching it as a child. The garbage you think is good as a kid just doesn’t stick as an adult. I don’t recommend it and I definitely wouldn’t watch it again. I did look on Amazon and found that it sells for $20. If, this movie would have been made in black and white and made in the 50s, I might have enjoyed it more.
Don’t Watch…EVER!!
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