Thiel-a-Vision Review: Night of the Lepus

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Kids mean trouble in monster movies: if they're not befriending the beast, they are often responsible for its creation. A little girl was the catalyst for the Night of the Lepus, part of the "nature takes revenge" film cycle of the '70s. "Lepus" referred to the oversized rabbits spawned by a failed attempt at population control. A scientist's young daughter took a liking to one of the test rabbits being injected with a mutating serum, and SWITCHED HIM with a bunny from the control group. Then, naturally, she adopted him...adoption in this case consisting of immediately losing him down a burrow. It wasn't long before ten-foot varmints were bounding in slow motion across miniature farmsteads.

On paper, Night of the Lepus made logical sense. As the movie pointed out via newsreel footage, rabbit infestations have been a real-world problem which would surely be intensified if said hares were the size of Volkswagens. And I have no doubt that oversized rodents could easily become killers of livestock and slow-moving humans alike. In that regard, Lepus worked as a cautionary tale and a scientific lesson ala the quintessential giant ant movie, Them!

The problem was, of course, that the movie was about bunnies. Cute, fuzzy bunnies. There's a good reason that most mutant animal movies feature creatures which are naturally ugly and threatening. No matter how many extreme close-ups of saliva-dripping maws and titanic incisors the filmmakers inserted, there was no getting around the fact that a herd of galloping, giant bunnies were adorable, not terrifying.

God love 'em, the special effects people did their best. The miniature and high-speed photography were surprisingly good, and aside from one lousy matte in which the rabbits bounded through a fence, the proceedings were as effective as possible. Which is to say, not very.

There's a moment in Lepus which was simply classic. One of the local constabulary pulled his squad car into the front row of the drive-in theater and shouted into his bullhorn, "Ladies and gentlemen, attention! There is a herd of killer rabbits headed this way and we desperately need your help!" Strangely enough, not one person found cause to doubt or even hesitate in the face of such a warning. Instead, every last driver dutifully lined up his or her car and followed the police into the desert, single-file. I found this strange, because the last time someone said that to me in a drive-in, I just kept necking and let the killer rabbits do their worst.

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