Intensity	Stupidity:Nudity Ratio 9:1	Budget Medium

I am not sure if I ever saw all of this movie before, I definitely remember the vaseline-coated bunny rabbits running rough shod over the miniature sets, but while I was prepared for a classic B movie, I was delighted by this cheese fest. There were bunches of "mother earth fights back" movies loosely based on H G Wells "Food of the Gods" throughout the 70's and this was one of the first.

We open with a special news broadcast talking about overpopulation then switching to a special news program concerning large numbers of rabbits. We start out with old footage of one of Australia's rabbit infestations. The announcer discusses that the rabbits were imported for food and got out of control. We are then treated to new color footage (and, yes, he does mention specifically that the new footage is in "Color!") of cowboys rounding up some wild rabbits. As the credits roll, the camera tracks a cowboy riding the range. Suddenly the horse steps in a rabbit hole and breaks his leg, whereupon the cowboy shoots him. Soon he is back at the ranch making an angry call to the president of the local university demanding that something be done about the rabbits. He is then visited by a husband and wife team that takes some of the rabbits back to study. One of the rabbits is injected with a serum of unknown qualities and is accidentally released into the wild. Soon giant rabbits have taken over a semi-abandoned gold mine and scare the crap out of the scientist's daughter. The scientist immediately requisitions poison, dynamite and guns to deal with the problem, but they are unable to trap all the rabbits in the mine and soon the town is overrun. After the rabbits eat a couple dozen more people, the National Guard is called in and help the scientist electrocute the bunnies.

Oh man, where to start with this one? Perhaps we should start with the book that the movie is based on. Hmm, according to Alwyn W. Turner at Trash Fiction, the book is about how Australia becomes a world power when a poison that they develop to kill rabbits does not bother the rabbits at all but is instantly fatal to humans. Australia then uses this poison as leverage to take over the world. Mr. Turner does not mention any giant rabbits and I don't believe they were integral to the plot of the original book. I suspect the conversation at the producer's office went like this:

Director: ... and then the giant rabbits attack the town.

Producer: Well, I was looking for something with a message.

Director: No problem! The movies has bunnies in it, and you know how they breed! We can add a line or two about overpopulation!

Producer: Okay, but what about a literary angle?

Director: I've heard of a book called "The Year of the Angry Rabbit", haven't read it though.

Producer: Sold!

The initial scenes with the cowboy (Rory Calhoun, "Angel") and Elgin (DeForest Kelly) have a nice feel to them with Calhoun rejecting DeForest's first offer of help. Turns out that when the coyotes got too numerous the University guys did their job too well. Now there are no coyotes around at all and Calhoun's character is dismayed by this, rightfully so as with no coyotes the rabbits are running rampant. DeForest Kelly, whom I will do a disservice to and refer to as Bones for the remainder of this review, offers up a different scientist who has a more ecologically friendly approach. Perhaps it is a bit unfortunate that an actor named DeForest was chosen to espouse the ecological viewpoint, but it fits the film perfectly. When we are introduced to the husband and wife team of Roy and Gerry Bennet (Stuart Whitman and Janet Leigh) they are doing research on bats. After capturing a few bats and putting them in a cage, Whitman produces a tape recorder to record the sounds the bats make. When the bats fail to cooperate, he beats on the cage until they start making noise. He records the resultant squeals and during playback proudly proclaims them to be screams of fear that he will use to control bat colonies to help keep down insect populations. At this point, I would have cut my ties with this wacko, but Rory was made of sterner stuff than I, and he enlists the scientist's aid. We also get to meet the Bennet's daughter, Amanda, who plays an important part in the upcoming troubles. The Bennets apparently cannot afford a babysitter and the precocious (actually I would deem her an obnoxious brat) Amanda is always at her mother's side.

After capturing a few rabbits out at Rory's ranch, the scientists start running tests on them. Faced with a looming deadline and a lack of results, Whitman decides to try an untested serum of questionable origin. While his daughter cries not to hurt her favorite bunny, Dad injects the rabbit (Bunny X) while stating "I wish I knew what this serum does". Despite the fact that the rancher has a problem of too many rabbits, Whitman only injects one rabbit with the serum. Immediately after the injection, he is distracted by a phone call while his daughter swaps Bunny X with a bunny from the control group. She then insists her parents let her keep one as a pet. When they acquiese, she grabs the Bunny X. I believe this makes my case for considering her an obnoxious brat. If not, consider that the next thing you know she is taking the damn rabbit on the 50 mile drive back to the ranch where it is set free by the rancher's son.

The time frame on this movie is a little hard to follow, but what seems like a couple of weeks go by and Rory is again visited by the Bennet clan. While the grown ups are talking the kids ride off to the old gold mine to visit some old coot. When they don't find him in the cabin, Amanda goes looking for him in the cave. As she nervously walks into the cave, tentatively calling the miner's name, something moves in the dark. We are then treated to our first glimpse of the dreaded monsters and they turn out to be domestic rabbits of gigantic size. Okay, so Whitman did notice that the rabbits are not your typical jackrabbits and Rory did mention that some food stock rabbits had escaped from a neighboring ranch years ago, but still these guys are somebody's pets. The sight of these giant minilops (and possibly seeing a dead body) causes Amanda to faint dead away. The film then cuts to a room at the ranch with Amanda screaming for her daddy. Soon, Whitman finds out that his daughter was menaced by rather large members of the rabbit horde he was trying to get rid of. Immediately he calls for guns, poison and dynamite to blast the offending creatures to bits. WTF!?! He's all "ecological balance" and "work with nature" until it is his family threatened and then he wants to exterminate them. At this point, he has not even seen the bunnies, all he has to go on is his daughter's frightened exclamations. Sigh.

The next day all the key players are at the cave with the aforementioned guns, poison and dynamite. After all the charges have been placed, Whitman has a flash of conscience and decides to go into the cave to try to get some blood or a photo. Soon he and Rory are deep in the mine confronting the giant bunnies who panic when Whitman takes their picture. With a Kodak Instamatic with a flash cube. The recorder with the plastic microphone was bad enough, but a Kodak Instamatic! I just don't know what to say. Here he is risking his life to get a photograph of a giant rabbit and he takes the cheapest piece of shit camera there is. 126 cartridges, plastic lenses and a flash that is useless past ten feet. Are you kidding me? Is your prop person on drugs? There is no excuse for this. You have sound engineers and photographers on a movie set. They will have backup equipment that is pro quality and would be appropriate for a research scientist. This is like showing up for the Indy 500 with a Ford Pinto. Anyway, but the time I got done giggling at the camera, they had barely gotten out of the cave ahead of the bunnies and the cave entrance was blown up.

Of course, this was not enough to end the danger. We see the bunnies coming out of the rubble and starting on another bout of mayhem before the sun rises and they seek shelter in a small town. As the bunnies get their beauty sleep, let's catch up on a few plot points. At some point Whitman figures out that the problem was caused by Bunny X escaping. He never mentions that his daughter was the cause of the escape. He also discusses with Bones that they would have to let the Sheriff know about the rabbits, of course, this is after about five deaths. The serum seems to have caused some pretty significant changes to Bunny X and these changes are somehow transferred to the rest of the warren. When he injected Bunny X, Whitman noted that the serum caused hereditary changes which would imply that any affected bunny would be an offspring of Bunny X. While I grant you that bunnies breed like bunnies, to have Bunny X sire 1,000 kits in a couple of weeks seems a bit much. Not only do the rabbits grow to giant size and start eating cows, horses and people but they turn nocturnal.

The Sheriff realizes that the situation has grown beyond his ability to control, so he calls in the National Guard to help with the hundreds, if not thousands, of rabbits. After a daring rescue of his family, Whitman rejoins the main forces and comes up with a plan. They could use the railroad tracks like an electric fence to kill the bunnies. He has the National Guard round up the audience at a drive in theater to help funnel the bunnies down to the killing field. Sparks fly and rabbits die.

I have seen my share of Cheesy movies but this one takes the cake. Sometimes a cheesy movie will just be done cheaply. The film will have numerous flubbed takes and missed lines, boom mikes will be visible and the film will have a general ineptness that can be enjoyable. But movies like this actually have a reasonable budget, some good actors and maybe even a good basic idea, but somewhere something goes wrong. In this case the dialog is priceless. The National Guard announces that "a herd of killer rabbits is headed this way". To ensure the safety of the people in the cars that funnel the rabbits to the railroad tracks, the Guard commander repeatedly says "roll your windows up". After looking at some of the debris from an attack, a scientist opines that the damage looks like it was caused by a saber tooth tiger. Another factor in the cheesiness of the movie is that the actors play it absolutely straight. There is no winking at the camera and Rory in particular is a rock solid and serious and oblivious to the utter stupidity going on around him. The movie's director and screen writer have long lists of TV credits and the movie looks good; shots are in focus and the camera tracks the action well. Still at some point someone should have noticed that the rabbits are not in the least frightening.

Early on there is a scene where Rory is riding through a pasture when the horse suddenly collapses under him. We infer that he has stepped in a hole and broken his leg. The horse lies there kicking feebly not even trying to rise while Rory looks around and then pulls the rifle from the saddle. The reason I mention this is that the horse does a better job of acting than most of the humans in the movie. He is certainly more believable than Janet Leigh.

Night of the Lepus is one of the best, cheesiest movies in existence. Don't watch this movie unless you have an appreciation for horrible, stupid movies. Seriously, skip it if you think it might be scary or suspenseful or have frightening monsters. It is so silly and the bunnies so non-threatening that it might be a cure for Leporiphobia. Fear will definitely not be the emotion you experience when the rabbits appear on the screen. Most monster movies skip any mention of monster crap, though Alligator has a pretty good joke about it. These bunnies should be dropping pellets about the size of basketballs. And don't forget there are about 1,000 rabbits, so there should be rabbit shit all over the place.

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