Night of the Lepus - Lisa's Review

SHOCKTOBER SPECIAL: BEST WORST MOVIES

In honour of Halloween, we're taking a special "Shocktober" break from the Time-Out 100 Best Horror films, to focus on some of the worst...

Sooooo, Killer Bunnies, what can I say?  Yes, seriously!  I spent most of the movie with those few words going around and around in my head.

With an idea of the premise and as I started to watch this movie, I was sure it had to be a comedy, tongue-in-cheek at least, but would you believe, they were serious about the killer bunnies.

I have to be honest before I give you an opinion, as I write this, I am very hungry and on an enforced diet, so grouchiness may affect the humour segment of my brain.  That said, the movie did make the corners of my mouth twitch a few times (and that is no mean feat!).

Sooooo, we have a scientist with this wife and impossibly annoying daughter (who has black eyebrows and white/blonde hair... what's up with that?) who are attempting to lessen the rabbit population.  How do they do this?  By injecting them with HORMONES to make them infertile??? Hmmmm, potential problem there guys!  Anyways, a test rabbit is injected with a serum and coincidentally from a lab full of the damn things, this is daughter-dearests favourite.  She swaps the injected rabbit with another bunny and it is released back to the population with dire consequences.

The consequences are giant, killer rabbits.  Yup, I shit you not!  We are also intended to take this seriously!  Would you believe they managed to convince Janet Leigh to star in the movie?

Sooo, what more can I say really... the 'kill' scenes were ridiculous.  The rabbits at no point looked menacing, frightening or even particularly hungry.  They were all cute twitchy noses and floppy ears... allbeit giant ones.

Did they attempt the man-in-a-bunny-suit for the effects?  Did they hell... instead we have real, cute, fluffy bunnies hopping through tiny sets.  We never see a bunny and person in the same scene and what is supposed to be terrifying before any person is jumped upon by the giant beasts, in in actual fact most amusing (at least it would have been had I not been imagining rabbit steaks and tomato sauce).

I felt myself feel a little sorry for the poor bunnies with matted fur full of face blood.... I found myself wondering did it taste nice for the bunnies as it was smeared around their mushes.

Another mildly amusing scene in the movie occurs when a policeman makes an announcement on a speaker at an drive-in movie theater breaking the news of killer rabbits.  He advises drivers to wind up their windows and drive away.  Was a titter raised?  Was there a heckle to be heard?  Nope... cue every motorists lights coming on at exactly the same time and everyone driving away.

Of course we have the inevitable 'rabbits running amock' (or rampant rabbits if you will.. mwahahaha) scene leading up to the mass execution by the coppers.  Did we feel sorry for the rabbits?  Nope... Did we fear the rabbits?  Nope... Were we amused by the rabbits?  Somewhat...

In conclusion, had I been in a slightly more receptive mood, had a wee drinkie, a big fat pizza and the company of some like-minded mates, I would probably have laughed my arse off at this.  Sooooo, with that said, if you want a 'so bad its good' movie to watch for a laugh with your mates, you could do much, much worse than this.  As it's not particularly my thing, I'm afraid no 'recommended' from me.

Night of the Lepus - Will's Review

SHOCKTOBER SPECIAL: BEST WORST MOVIES

In honour of Halloween, we're taking a special "Shocktober" break from the Time-Out 100 Best Horror films, to focus on some of the worst...

Based on the novel "The Year of the Angry Rabbit", and starring Janet Leigh, DeForrest Kelley, and a bunch of other people you'll recognise if you watch a few 60's / early 70's movies, the most striking thing about Night of the Lepus is how po-faced the whole thing is!

You'd think a movie about giant killer rabbits had to be a spoof, but you'd be wrong; the filmmakers have honestly made every attempt to make this a genuinely good / frightening monster movie... and that's exactly why it works!



Even within the movie, no-one seems to pause and go "Rabbits?.. Really?"; it's just taken at face value that this is a thing now... at one point a police car pulls into a drive in movie theater and evacuates the place, telling the patrons that "there's a herd of killer rabbits headed this way" (not even mentioning that they are giant killer rabbits) and everyone just calmly starts their engines, and do as the cop says!

So-Bad-It's-Good movies that were intentionally made as So-Bad-It's-Good movies rarely work; the true masterpieces of bad cinema are almost always serious films that were either incompetently made, or just so fucking ludicrous that they had no hope in hell of being taken seriously... This falls into the latter camp

While I'm sure a bunny the size of a car, lolloping towards you with blood on its mouth would be terrifying in real life, on film its just too goofy for words!

That a farmer would have access to experimental biologist to solve a simple rabbit infestation, that those biologists would be using an "experimental serum" sent to them by the department of health, that the department of health would somehow come to possess a serum that they have literally no idea what it does, that said serum would not only cause a rabbit to grow to several feet tall in a matter of hours, and that the gigantism would be contagious; these things alone make the movie laughable beyond words, that fact that a giant rabbit isn't remotely scary is just the icing on the cake!

The rabbits seem to change size a lot, depending on what else is in shot with them, and they are very rarely seen in the same shot as a human... I can understand why, it's because CGI wasn't invented, and stop motion / guy in a suit would have looked awful; but at the same time the way they have worked around that (Actors looking up and screaming, cut to: shot of a rabbit in extreme close-up) often makes it look like someone has edited bunnies into another movie for shits and giggles.

The actors do a remarkably good job; Leigh especially is a trooper, saying the line "It's okay now, he's gone... the rabbit is gone" to a hysterical adult without even the faintest hint of a smile.

Effects wise, we're talking red paint for blood, but I must admit that some of the miniature sets were astounding (even if they couldn't just pick a scale and stick to it).

I love this movie... I'm sure that the film-makers would be disgusted to hear the ways in which I love this movie (although surely, they've heard it enough times by now), but I loved it.

I'm using the "So Bad It's Good" tag here, and it's never been truer.

This review can also be found at Will's solo blog, which runs every October.

WEEK 124 - Night of the Lepus (1972)

SHOCKTOBER SPECIAL: BEST WORST MOVIES

In honour of Halloween, we're taking a special "Shocktober" break from the Time-Out 100 Best Horror films, to focus on some of the worst...

Reviews / Author Comments due: 05/10/2013

More Info: Wikipedia, IMDB

DVD: Region 1 Import

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