NIGHT OF THE LEPUS (1972)
Tagline: How many eyes does horror have? How many times will terror strike?
(Horror, Sci-Fi, Apex Predator) [PG]
Attention! Attention! Ladies and gentlemen, attention! There is a herd of killer rabbits headed this way and we desperately need your help!
In this one, a really dumb little girl named Amanda lets a genetically altered rabbit out of its cage and the next thing you know, bam, we’ve got giant mutated blood-thirsty rabbits devouring animals and people all over rural Arizona. Can the National Guard stop the madness? Will Amanda get years of counseling because of all the havoc she reeked on this unsuspecting population?
First off, when I saw what this movie was about, I pretty much had to watch it “RIGHT NOW”. I love the idea of stuff that is essentially harmless being the subject of a goofy horror flick. While this movie does use lots of real rabbits, we actually get a dude in a bunny suit for some of the attack scenes. It’s hysterical now as an adult. I think as a kid, I might have been like, “no mom, we are not going to the rabbit section at the pet store, we are just not doing it.”.
Acting-wise this movie is actually solid. Janet Leigh plays Gerry Bennett and does an awesome job. Not only was she famous for films like PSYCHO and THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE, but she actually starred in the horror movie THE FOG with her also famous daughter Jamie Lee Curtis. The movie also stars Stuart Whitman as Roy Bennett and he also does a pretty solid job. Bennett had a long Hollywood career, but of the stuff I’ve seen, he also had uncredited roles in THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL and WHEN WORLD’S COLLIDE.
As much as I love the concept, most of this movie is just kind of so un-scary that you almost start looking for things to laugh at. It’s a lot like FROM HELL IT CAME or THE KILLER SHREWS where the concepts have potential sci-fi horror but get executed more like something from MONTY PYTHON’S HOLY GRAIL. Because this movie was trying to be something it really wasn’t it’s hard to say that the movie accomplished its goal.
Score-wise and regarding the pacing, everything is fine, but the lighting is horrifically bad in some shots. This might be a decent introduction to horror for teens, but overall I don’t know if I liked this one as much as I did something like OCTAMAN. At least OCTAMAN could get around. These rabbits are moving like they wouldn’t catch much less eat you, even if you were trying to walk slow.
I watched this film several months ago and I think the reason I didn’t do a review earlier is that I couldn’t get my head around a rating. This is probably because the movie is shot seriously, acted seriously, and because it's rabbits, it comes across as almost a full-blown comedy.
For those reasons, I am going to have to give this a 4 out of 7. It’s solid in some areas and is a fun film to a large extent, but killer rabbits unless you are just tossing them at people like in CRITTERS is a stretch.
Note – The word “Lepus” is the Latin term for “Hare”. It definitely sounds more ominous than “NIGHT OF THE RABBITS”.
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