Night of the Lepus (1972)

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

While working in Southern Arizona, a group of scientists attempting to curtail the local rabbit population finds that a rabbit injected with a serum to curb their breeding cycle has turned those it has come into contact with into ravenous, gigantic rabbits devouring the countryside.This one here was pretty good and did have a lot going for it. One of the film's better parts is in the second half where the mystery about the unknown creatures doing the damage is rather nice and is done in the perfect manner. This one handles it by building up a stream of suspense sequences that only underscore how dangerous the threat is because it slowly dawns that there's something dangerous going on. These are highlighted by the early attacks on the population, and they are all done rather nicely and do their job of making the threat rather imposing and something to be taken advantage of. Once the rabbits get fully grown, there's a lot more fun to enjoy from this, as there's plenty of scenes to provide either action or suspense. The tunnel destruction plan where the rabbits are seen interacting with the cast as they discover who's really causing it with the chase through the tunnel, the farmland attack from their initial rampage on through to overrunning the house and the diner attack where the swarm overruns the town all provide plenty of suspense since there are various tactics within them to make them feel creepy and has some fun with the story. There's also the farm swarming scene in the middle that gets really action-packed and manages to feel really big and grand due to the size of the creatures and the size of the herd. That's what makes them good villains in a creature feature such as this since one creature bigger than a man is bad enough but to have a herd that large at the same size is simply terrifying and it works for the film. Alongside a rather clever and creative ending here which is just fun and some rather nice bloody deaths, these here are the film's best parts. There wasn't much in the way of flaws with this one. One of the flaws is that there's too ludicrous a situation causing them to get loose. It's obvious that the daughter will cause it, and rather than feeling sympathetic towards the situation but will instill more a feeling of rage and hatred for doing such a thing. They're not cute, and their actions just induce outright hatred for their stupidity. The gigantic rabbits at times do look really cheesy, especially when shown in a specific feature for a close-up. It's hard to take them seriously when they're in those poses as the over-sized fangs and cute face throw up a disorienting tactic that can be cause for some concern. The last flaw in this is the use of the real-life footage at the beginning to explain the film's back-story. Basing a film off a real-life incident can work, but the real footage goes against the later scenes and the effect it has is a little jolting, especially in such a weak-rated film. Otherwise, there isn't much here against this one.Rated PG: Violence, Language and mild animal violence.

This could well be the worst movie ever associated with MGM. Zoologists are enlisted to help an Arizona rancher curtail the rabbit population explosion on his land, but a serum injected into one nasty bunny creates a race of leaping monsters. Not only are these giant jackrabbits angry and on the attack, they're seemingly out for human blood. As a low-budget entry in the mutant animal genre, one can expect the obvious--but nothing in the script, adapted from Russell Braddon's novel "The Year of the Angry Rabbit", prepares us for homicidal cottontails. The sound effects of the marauding enemy underground are well-accomplished, but the visual effects are laughable, the color processing atrocious, and the cast (good actors including Stuart Whitman, Janet Leigh and Rory Calhoun) looks fatigued. NO STARS from ****

Cole Hillman's (Rory Calhoun) ranch is plagued with rabbits, and he wants to employ an ecologically sound control method. As a favor to Hillman, Elgin Clark (DeForest Kelley) calls in zoologist Roy Bennett (Stuart Whitman) to help. Bennett immediately begins injecting rabbits with hormones and genetically mutated blood in an effort to develop a method of disrupting rabbit reproduction.This is a film that has fared well in recent years compared to its original outing. There is no getting around it -- this is a pretty bad movie, with a young girl and Janet Leigh providing the most pointless characters and subpar acting. And the rabbits? I was surprised this was not Bert Gordon, because it is right up his alley.But now, looking back forty years, we can poke fun at it, and actually be fairly impressed by the effects. I would much rather see the miniature sets than a super-imposition or computer cheese. This looked about as real as large rabbits can, I suppose.Maybe they should not have taken themselves so seriously and they would have done better -- clearly the writer wanted a serious film, as the overall tone is quite realistic all things considered. But giant rabbits? That plays best as camp, and should have been written as such.

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.