‘Night of the Lepus’ Is a Horror Movie So Ridiculous, It Works – Armessa Movie News

“Ladies and gentlemen, attention! There is a herd of killer rabbits headed this way, and we desperately need your help!” It’s not exactly the kind of message one would expect to hear over the Emergency Broadcast System, but yes, in 1972’s Night of the Lepus, fluffy cottontails are overtaking a tiny Arizona town. And they’re not your standard pink-nosed little cuties, either. No, they’re giant mutated lagomorphs, stomping and chomping on anyone and anything that gets in their way. The premise of this low-budget horror movie sounds like a screwball comedy, but it was meant to be an edge-of-your-seat horror thriller. Starring Janet Leigh, Stuart Whitman, Rory Calhoun, Paul Fix, and a host of other heavyweights from Hollywood cinema’s golden age, Night of the Lepus is a movie that’s so wrong on so many levels, but at the time same time, so deliciously right. How did this low-budget entry in the horror genre ever get made, how did it manage to get so many big stars, and how did it end up being a cult favorite? It’s a story almost as improbable as the movie itself.

‘Night of the Lepus’ Feeds into the ‘Nuclear Threat’ Horror Genre

In the 1950s, when Americans were shivering in fear amidst the Cold War threat of destruction via nuclear holocaust, major film studios like Warner Brothers and Universal, as well as cheapie operations like American International Pictures, took advantage of the nation’s mass paranoia by producing a cluster of bargain-basement-budgeted films about giant ants (Them!), gargantuan insects (The Deadly Mantis), and even overgrown people (The Amazing Colossal Man), all byproducts of nuclear radiation, terrorizing sleepy towns and big cities. These B-grade movies brought audiences to theaters, but by the 1960s, the genre had largely been played out, with moviegoers looking for films with slightly more sophisticated subjects than monstrous tarantulas crawling over the amber waves of grain. Then came the 1970s, with the world reawakening to the nuclear threat, both in terms of global destruction via atomic weapons, as well as the potential catastrophic environmental impact of nuclear energy. Never wasting an opportunity to monetize the public’s uneasiness and despair, Hollywood resurrected the giant mutation horror genre. Though produced on shoestring budgets, these chillers frequently boasted big names, like screen legend Ida Lupino (The Food of the Gods) and sex kitten Joan Collins (Empire of the Ants). Yes, these movies were about humongous creatures wreaking whatever havoc humongous creatures wreak as a result of nuclear exposure, but there was an underlying socially conscious message in them, too: if we don’t stop this atomic stuff, all the bugs and animals of the world will get huge, rise up in revolt, and eat us for dinner.

A Western Producer Woos a Western Director into the Horror Genre

One of the groundbreaking entries in this new horror genus was William F. Claxton‘s Night of the Lepus. Claxton had made his mark directing 1950s and ’60s Western features like The Quiet Gun and Young Jesse James, in addition to classic television series about the old frontier like Rawhide and The Rifleman. Throughout his prolific career, Claxton worked with some of Hollywood’s most well-known stars, but by the advent of the 1970s, Westerns were no longer the big draw they used to be, so Claxton found work directing one-off episodes of TV shows like Gunsmoke and Here Come the Brides. With the exception of a forgettable tearjerker called A Letter to Nancy, Claxton’s big screen projects were all but finished. But then producer A.C Lyles, best known for pumping out a string of low budget 1950s and ’60s Westerns, some of which were directed by Claxton, approached the director with the chance to jump on the giant-nuclear-animal-horror movie bandwagon with Night of the Lepus. Lyles also had at his disposable a veritable “who’s who” list of aging screen legends, most of whom had appeared in a Claxton-directed film at some point in their careers. In the early 1970s, before TV series like The Love Boat and Fantasy Island came long and gave employment to former big screen gods and goddesses of the glory days of the studio system, opportunities for actors of yesteryear were few.

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But with stars like Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, and Olivia de Havilland finding newfound fame in the horror genre with movies like What Ever Happened to Baby Jane and Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte, there was now a new niche for performers of a bygone era. With little coaxing, Lyles managed to get Claxton behind the camera, and old buddies Whitman, Calhoun, and Fix in front of it for the not-so-epic tale of bunnies gone wild. The movie still needed a leading lady, an actress who not only had a bankable name, but who could also draw in horror film fans. Calling Janet Leigh! Leigh became a horror icon with her turn as Marion Crane, the unfortunate shower-taker in1960’s Psycho, and she had a long and successful run in subsequent films like Bye Bye Birdie and The Manchurian Candidate. By the end of the decade, however, her career was winding down. Despite making some appearances in small screen series and made-for-TV movies, Leigh had all but removed herself from the spotlight. She only agreed to accept Lyles’ offer to appear in Night of the Lepus because it was being filmed in Tucson, close enough to her home so that she could be with her family on weekends. With one of the movie world’s most famous scream queens on board, Night of the Lepus got the green light. And the ridiculousness began.

Bad Special Effects and Actors in Bunny Suits

Based on a 1964 novel, The Year of the Angry Rabbit, the film’s script was co-authored by the book’s writer, Russell Braddon, and screenwriters Don Holliday and Gene R. Kearney. Even though the concept of giant rabbits might have worked on the printed page as something frightening, Night of the Lepus‘ most ominous challenge — and glaring failure — was to make big bunnies scary. Creepy-crawly spiders? Ants with dangling antennae and multiple legs? Yes. Furry things with big, floppy ears and twitching noses? No. The film’s plot revolves around efforts to ease a sudden infestation of the rapidly reproducing species in the rural Southwest. Whitman and Leigh play Roy and Gerry Bennett, the two most inept married scientists on the planet, responsible for developing a hormone injection designed to stop the little beasts from breeding. Unfortunately, the injections cause the adorable critters to grow to enormous sizes and get very ill-tempered and hungry. It’s not long before the town is experiencing both an animal control problem and a Godzilla-like disaster of epic proportions.

While the movie makes a valiant attempt to tell a morality tale about the dangers of experimentation in eco-science, the socially relevant content gets lost among the laughable special effects. For no discernable reason, whenever the big rabbits are seen hopping down the bunny trail, they’re moving in slow motion. It could be that cinematographer Ted Voigtländer and editor John McSweeney Jr. saw the dailies and, realizing that humongous hares trotting along at standard speed aren’t the least bit frightening, thought slowing down their movements would accentuate the potential terror. To make matters worse, as the rabbits run, the sound effects accompanying them seem more like galloping horses than patting feet. The closest the creatures come to being frightening is when their big old front teeth are seen in extreme close-up just before they chow down on their prey, and even then, they evoke images of Bugs Bunny more than murdering menaces. Making things even more confusing, just before the rabbits kill, and without explanation, they roar like lions. Then there’s the issue of the bunny suits. In scenes where the silly rabbits are engaged in paw-to-hand combat with the town’s citizens, it’s obvious audiences are looking at actors dressed up like rabbits, tangling with their scene partners in Rock ‘Em, Sock ‘Em Robot style. It’s difficult to be frightened knowing the evil hare tearing up the latest town resident has a zipper running down its back.

A Film That Borrows Heavily From a 1950s Classic

Night of the Lepus borrows heavily from the plot elements of 1954’s Them!, the horror classic about giant killer ants, right down to its climactic conclusion that’s anything but. In Them!, the evil insects are cornered in the Los Angeles sewer system before they’re torched to death with a flamethrower. In Night of the Lepus, the town’s sheriff (Fix) takes his patrol car to a crowded drive-in theater. Never mind that choosing to go to a drive-in amidst a giant rabbit invasion seems to be the height of bad decision-making, but when the sheriff asks all the patrons to drive their cars around town and shine their headlights into the rabbits’ eyes to push them toward an electrified fence on the outskirts of town, everyone immediately and gladly complies, despite the deadly danger involved in the task. Before you know it, all those gigantic, rabid lettuce-chompers are headed for the train tracks, where they encounter a barrage of rifle fire, torches, and of course, massive lethal voltage. In just a few short, violent minutes, hundreds of blood-splattered, charred rabbit carcasses litter the landscape and the town is safe again. The film’s conclusion could only have been better if director Claxton had included a scene on how the giant bunny bodies were removed from the town, followed by the arrest of the dynamic husband and wife science duo for creating this whole mess in the first place.

It’s The Cast That Saves The Movie and Makes it a Cult Classic

The film’s cast must be commended for playing it all straight and with the utmost conviction, despite the ludicrous nature of the proceedings. From Calhoun as the town’s gun-totin’, order seekin’ farmer, to Star Trek‘s DeForest Kelley as the pensive, concerned college professor, and to Leigh as the woman who screws everything up, but who somehow still emerges as the movie’s heroine, Night of the Lepus simply wouldn’t have been even semi-plausible without the talents of the performers. Director Claxton can be faulted for a lot of things when it comes to this trash-tastic spectacle, but his ability to get the most out of his actors isn’t one of them, and that may be the main reason why the movie is so awful in such a wonderful way. When legendary names are able to act their hearts out in a film about giant bunnies and give it 110%, it’s something to be admired. While critics savaged the movie at the time of its release, Night of the Lepus developed a cult following, making nearly $4 million off of a $900,000 budget, and gave new life to the giant creature feature genre. For all of its faults and all of its unintended hilarity, it’s a movie that seems to have a huge lucky rabbit’s foot attached to it, and it’s a must-see for good, campy Halloween season fun.