A Film I Like: ‘Night of the Lepus

A FILM I LIKE: ‘NIGHT OF THE LEPUS’

For this blog post, I thought I would talk about a film I like, which is ‘Night of the Lepus’.

Before going on, perhaps I should explain that I am one of those strange people who find bad films entertaining. Not any old bad film mind you, but those that somehow manage, through their sheer ineptitude, to be funny. Night of the Lepus is one such movie, so please don’t bother to watch it if you are after a genuinely good film.

Anyway, this movie belongs to that genre of film that feature ‘giganticism’. What I mean is, films where the plot revolves around some creature that grows to enormous size and goes on to terrorise a community.

There have been quite a few such films, most of which came out in the 50s. There is what is perhaps the most famous, ‘Them!’ (1954) in which ants are transformed into elephant-sized monsters following atomic testing. There was ‘Tarantula’ (1955) in which the titular spider is given a serum that has the unfortunate side effect of turning it into a 50 ft monster that devours cities before the army finally defeat it with napalm. 1957 brought us ‘In The Beginning The End’ (featuring 15 ft grasshoppers) and ‘The Deadly Mantis’.

All these films follow much the same formula. Some kind of creature gets transformed into a monster after being exposed to fallout from atomic testing or being the subject of some kind of experiment, and then it goes on the rampage knocking down buildings and eating the townsfolk until the army sort everything out by throwing bombs at the monster.

For me, the real charm of such films lie in their special effects, which typically consists either of a terrible full-sized puppet or real creatures crawling over what are obviously toy buildings. It’s the juxtaposition between the dramatic music and serious acting and the awful effects that make these movies entertainingly bad.

‘Night of the Lepus goes one better in the entertainingly funny stakes, thanks to its choice of creature. As you can see from perusing the films I mentioned, they usually feature animals that plenty of people are already freaked out by even when they are normal size. A lot of people don’t like insects, snakes or spiders, so the thought of there being 50 ft versions hunting and eating you could make for a scary movie (and maybe these were scary movies to a 50s audience).

But ‘Night Of The Lepus’ (which was released in 1972) is about an invasion of...Giant bunny rabbits.

I can only imagine that the production team had a conversation that went a bit like this:

“I got an idea for a film. These scientists invent a serum intended to do good, but it turns a snake into a huge…”

“Been done”.

“What has?”

“A movie about a giant snake has been done already. And giant ants, spiders, crocodiles, octopuses, mantises, gorillas, leeches, crabs, rats…”

“Ok so...what animal has not featured in a monster movie?”

“.....Rabbits?”

And then they greenlighted and filmed it.

So, anyway, the plot of ‘Lepus’ is pretty typical for a film of this kind. Starring Janet Leigh, DeForest Kelley and a bunch of other actors I don’t know from Adam, it’s set in a desert town where the rabbit population is becoming a serious problem. Boffins come up with a serum that’s meant to thin the population but wouldn’t you know it? It instead turns the adorable bunnies into bloodthirsty, four feet tall monsters.

The special effects consist of giant puppets attacking the actors and shots of real bunnies hopping through miniature sets, wreaking havoc as their fluffy bodies bump into things.

The film does try to inject some horror into the story. There is quite a bit of gore featured. But, every time those rabbits are shown they look so cute it’s like an hilarious awwww! moment shoehorned between the bloodletting. It somehow never occurred to the production crew that rabbits are inherently bundles of adorable cuddly fur and not good subjects for a monster movie. You might as well put a kitten in the role of the beast!

Actually, there was ‘Kitten Kong’, in which a baby cat rampages through London. But that was a sketch on ‘The Goodies’ and was meant to be a joke. As a fan of bad films I think it works to ‘Lepus’s advantage that it does not see itself as a parody. One of the charming things about such films is that, despite bad acting and terrible special effects, they take themselves completely seriously. It also means there are some unintentionally funny lines of dialogue, my favourite being when Janet Leigh comforts a frightened little girl. “It’s alright now, darling, the rabbit is gone!”.

Often in movies like this you get a false victory in which the townsfolk wrongly assume the problem is dealt with, only for the monster to come back stronger and meaner than ever before finally being defeated for good. ‘Lepus’ has one of the stupidest false victories ever. It turns out that the giant rabbits have turned a disused mine into their warren. The townsfolk decide to dynamite the entrances and seal the bunnies inside. Only, it’s not solved for long because the giant rabbits just tunnel their way out. Of course they do! They’re rabbits aren’t they?

There’s not much more to say about this film. It’s a monster movie made unintentionally funny due to the fact that, for reasons known only to its makers, it put one of the cutest animals there is in the role of the monster. By no means is this a good movie in the sense that Jaws or Citizen Kane are good movies, but if you are like me and you enjoy bad films that unintentionally make you snigger, this might be worth a bash.