Night of the Lepus

February 07, 2007

Night of the Lepus (1972) starring Janet Leigh (from Psycho (1960)) and DeForest Kelley (from "Star Trek") is a crazy film, wait… you probably do not know what a Lepus is? The word Lepus is the technical term for Rabbit. So basically the title of the movie is the Night of the Rabbits. Yeah that’s right, killer rabbits almost like the Monty Python kind. However these rabbits are bigger than a Mack Truck, blood thirsty, vicious, highly reproductive rabbits that are terrorizing a small town.

The plot is pretty standard and hasn’t really changed in the last 30 years. Scientists experiment on some rabbits, this time with growth hormones, and one of the experimental rabbits get mixed up with none experimental rabbits and then all hell to breaks loose.

Now this movie is far from good. It’s campy 70’s horror schlock. It does have some great stuff in it though. The first being the blood thirsty rabbits and the second is all the miniatures. They use regular rabbits with tiny towns and cars to add to the “illusion”.
However my absolute favorite is when they do a close ups of rabbits licking the really bad fake blood off their teeth. It’s almost as cheesy, in a good way, as the menacing sound effect for when the rabbits are in full stampede.

So if you are stuck in the video store on Halloween night, with an empty shelf and you see Night of the Lepus, go on and give it a try… you’ll defiantly laugh the rest of the night.