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Stitch's Movie Madness: Night of the Lepus
18 years ago
General
As I write this, it's almost Easter time, and do you know what that means? Jelly beans, maybe? Dyed eggs? Chocolate peeps? Hah! How about some giant killer bunnies? Seriously. Giant. Killer. Bunnies. If that concept doesn't exactly strike fear into your heart... well, that's exactly the problem facing the makers of the 1972 creature feature 'Night of the Lepus', which is about a plague of lapine terror that strikes a cozy desert backwater town somewhere in rural America.
Just try and imagine it - you're out in the middle of the desert, you've parked your 70s-era RV and set up the grill so you can cook up a nice hot dog BBQ for the kids and the missus, when suddenly, from out of the darkness of the night... what's that sound? That weird, rhythmic thumping? That high-pitched cacophony of gerbil-like squeaks? Oh dear lord, it can't be... it's... it's...
It's a bunch of bunnies. That's it. That's all this flick has to offer in terms of blood-curdling chills... just lots of shots of fluffy rabbits twitching their noses and skipping around, accompanied by scenes of esteemed actors like Rory Calhoun, Janet Leigh and DeForest Kelley going "Arrrrgh!" while the director presumably goads them with instructions like "Scream! Run! The bunnies are coming! They're going to tear your faces off! They want your blood! Scream for your lives, damn you!"
Not that the filmmakers don't try. Let's give them credit, they do everything in their power to make these puff-tailed critters seem menacing. Unfortunately, merely filming rabbits in slow motion while they pounce through miniature sets designed to make them look roughly the size of Siberian tigers while playing what sounds like slowed-down bongo music on the soundtrack (is it supposed to be the heavy thumping of their gigantic, terrible feet, perhaps?) doesn't generate horror so much as an oddball David Lynchian surrealness.
With a story that's more giggle-worthy than scary, 'Lepus' follows the struggles of a rancher (rugged leading actor Stuart Whitman, who sports a grand total of one facial expression throughout) who finds his desolate strip of desert jeopardized by a rabbit population explosion. Given that his 'ranch' seems to consist largely of barren dirt and tumbleweeds, it's difficult to imagine just what threat the rabbits pose to his livelihood... but no matter. Enter brilliant scientist Rory Calhoun, who has an ingenious plan to save Whitman's farm by injecting random chemicals into rabbits. "I wish I knew what the effects of this serum would be," he intones while he sticks a syringe into bunny. "Let's hope it works." Now that's science.
Through a ridiculous set of coincidences, the injected rabbit is set loose to breed with the local population of bunnies, and within what seems like a matter of minutes there's a swarm of thousands of Winnebago-sized, flesh-eating Peter Cottontails ravaging the countryside. Why the rabbits have turned carnivorous as well as gigantic is just one of those scientific mysteries that man will never understand, but the real question is, what can a weather-beaten rancher, an incompetent scientist, his annoying family, and 'Star Trek's Dr. McCoy (here sporting a slick gameshow hairdo and matching 70s-porno mustache) do about it?
The answer, not surprisingly, involves lots of running around, screaming, and getting eaten. Fortunately, the entire local population, from the local sheriff to dozens of people at a drive-in to the national guard itself, need virtually no convincing of the threat posed by a squadron of giant meat-eating bunnies. "Killer rabbits are coming this way!" shouted through a bullhorn is apparently all it takes to persuade people that their lives are in danger, and it isn't long before the town's survivors have banded together to try and save themselves from a final onslaught of furry fury.
You may not be left with a deep-rooted phobia of bunnies after watching 'Night of the Lepus', but ultimately this is a film that raises a lot of questions, questions that need asking. What, for instance, is the price of man's meddling with things he doesn't understand? What chemical is it, exactly, that makes rabbits grow big enough to literally eat a horse? Can guns and dynamite really stop an eight-foot bunny? And what made the director think that smearing cherry pie filling on a bunch of rabbit's faces would make them seem scary? Regrettably, we may never know the answers.
Just try and imagine it - you're out in the middle of the desert, you've parked your 70s-era RV and set up the grill so you can cook up a nice hot dog BBQ for the kids and the missus, when suddenly, from out of the darkness of the night... what's that sound? That weird, rhythmic thumping? That high-pitched cacophony of gerbil-like squeaks? Oh dear lord, it can't be... it's... it's...
It's a bunch of bunnies. That's it. That's all this flick has to offer in terms of blood-curdling chills... just lots of shots of fluffy rabbits twitching their noses and skipping around, accompanied by scenes of esteemed actors like Rory Calhoun, Janet Leigh and DeForest Kelley going "Arrrrgh!" while the director presumably goads them with instructions like "Scream! Run! The bunnies are coming! They're going to tear your faces off! They want your blood! Scream for your lives, damn you!"
Not that the filmmakers don't try. Let's give them credit, they do everything in their power to make these puff-tailed critters seem menacing. Unfortunately, merely filming rabbits in slow motion while they pounce through miniature sets designed to make them look roughly the size of Siberian tigers while playing what sounds like slowed-down bongo music on the soundtrack (is it supposed to be the heavy thumping of their gigantic, terrible feet, perhaps?) doesn't generate horror so much as an oddball David Lynchian surrealness.
With a story that's more giggle-worthy than scary, 'Lepus' follows the struggles of a rancher (rugged leading actor Stuart Whitman, who sports a grand total of one facial expression throughout) who finds his desolate strip of desert jeopardized by a rabbit population explosion. Given that his 'ranch' seems to consist largely of barren dirt and tumbleweeds, it's difficult to imagine just what threat the rabbits pose to his livelihood... but no matter. Enter brilliant scientist Rory Calhoun, who has an ingenious plan to save Whitman's farm by injecting random chemicals into rabbits. "I wish I knew what the effects of this serum would be," he intones while he sticks a syringe into bunny. "Let's hope it works." Now that's science.
Through a ridiculous set of coincidences, the injected rabbit is set loose to breed with the local population of bunnies, and within what seems like a matter of minutes there's a swarm of thousands of Winnebago-sized, flesh-eating Peter Cottontails ravaging the countryside. Why the rabbits have turned carnivorous as well as gigantic is just one of those scientific mysteries that man will never understand, but the real question is, what can a weather-beaten rancher, an incompetent scientist, his annoying family, and 'Star Trek's Dr. McCoy (here sporting a slick gameshow hairdo and matching 70s-porno mustache) do about it?
The answer, not surprisingly, involves lots of running around, screaming, and getting eaten. Fortunately, the entire local population, from the local sheriff to dozens of people at a drive-in to the national guard itself, need virtually no convincing of the threat posed by a squadron of giant meat-eating bunnies. "Killer rabbits are coming this way!" shouted through a bullhorn is apparently all it takes to persuade people that their lives are in danger, and it isn't long before the town's survivors have banded together to try and save themselves from a final onslaught of furry fury.
You may not be left with a deep-rooted phobia of bunnies after watching 'Night of the Lepus', but ultimately this is a film that raises a lot of questions, questions that need asking. What, for instance, is the price of man's meddling with things he doesn't understand? What chemical is it, exactly, that makes rabbits grow big enough to literally eat a horse? Can guns and dynamite really stop an eight-foot bunny? And what made the director think that smearing cherry pie filling on a bunch of rabbit's faces would make them seem scary? Regrettably, we may never know the answers.
I have seen this jaw-dropping festival of 'What were they THINKING!?' before, and I think it's actually even worse than you make it out to be. That said, I am convinced that this movie NEEDS to be remade. With as much CGI special effects as possible. Get a good director and scriptwriter behind it, and this would be *the* perfect way to satirize all the goddam bloated, insipid, soulless, cliche-riddled special-effects-drowned summer 'blockbusters' hollywood thows at us. It starts off with just RV-sized maneating bunnies, but ends with a 100 foot tall megabunny with sabre-buckteeth eating everything in Manhattan!! My god, if Matt Stone and Trey Parker wrote this and Tim Burton directed, I would film-fap myself to _death_.
Pity it'll probably never happen, though. *sigh*
(Thanks for the kind words, btw.) :3
And don't worry; it's the internet. Punctuality is but an illusion.
Yes, I remember your posts on the Rangers board, but I'm embarrassed to admit that it's been so long that I'm kinda fuzzy on everybody's stories... are yours backed up anywhere?
http://rrdatabase.dyndns.org/writte......php?author=67
Gotta love the RR database!