Watch Night of the Lepus For Free

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Just given the title, I was never expecting this movie to be anything good, but godd*amn was it hard to sit through. Number one, and above all, the acting was horrendous. It tops Billy Owens in terms of badness. Just the fact that the only reaction to seeing a killer rabbit the size of a buffalo is mild shock. Not to mention that they thought they could bury RABBITS with dynamite, when in fact, the guy who went to the top of the mountain dropped a rock and it fell for six seconds -- meaning these things can dig a hole deeper than the height of the Sears Tower. So what in the hell would make them think that collapsing rabbit burrows would be effective in any way? I don't expect much of a horror movie, but I expect a bit of common sense exhibited by the bad, bad actors by which it was played. Oh, and the ending was beautiful. An electrified railroad. You know, because that would stop something that can easily clear it. Yet, somehow, it did, because even the creators of this film got sick of it at a point. There's not enough beer in the world.

The one thing I really liked about Night Of The Lepus was the depiction of that vast army of supersized rabbits. Otherwise a whole lot of familiar players look like they're in some kind of discomfort doing this science fiction epic.Rabbits do two things very well, they multiply and they eat. The famous introduction of them to Australia is used as an example when they were imported to Australia and become ravaging the food supply.The same thing is happening in the Southwest USA. One of those effected is rancher Rory Calhoun. He sends for scientific type help and he gets Professor Stuart Whitman and wife Janet Leigh who bring their little daughter with them.Whitman doesn't play this like Dr. Frankenstein, but he's decided on some radical experimentation with hormones. Does it ever grow wrong with rabbits growing to be the size of SUVs.This was produced by A.C. Lyles of the geezer westerns of the Sixties. I wish he had stuck to those.

Ranchers in the American Southwest must deal with hordes of rabbits that are laying waste to their lands. Most would prefer to use poison, but the more humane Cole Hillman (Rory Calhoun) enlists the services of a husband and wife team, Roy and Gerry Bennett (Stuart Whitman and Janet Leigh) who propose to keep the bunnies from breeding by injecting them with hormones. Unfortunately, one test rabbit who's been given an experimental serum escapes into the wild and promptly causes mutations among its kin, leading to murderous four foot tall predators that cause even more damage than they were doing before. Eventually the National Guard must be called in to deal with the problem.This scenario is amusing, no doubt about it. No matter how hard the filmmakers and animal trainers try to make our antagonists fearsome, it doesn't really work. Director William F. Claxton handles everything in a workmanlike fashion, but, much like everyone on screen, tends to take the proceedings a little too seriously. That said, there's definite camp value in hearing lines such as "There's a horde of killer rabbits coming this way!". The actors give the movie more gravitas than it deserves; Whitman, Leigh, and Calhoun are joined by DeForest Kelley ("Damn it, Jim! I'm a doctor, not Elmer Fudd!"), Paul Fix, and Melanie Fullerton. Music, cinematography, pacing, and special effects are all adequate enough; fans of B horror may be pleased by the amount of bloodletting going on.This little movie was actually a little ahead of the curve, predating "Jaws" by a few years; it may be on the cheap and cheesy side of "nature strikes back" cinema, but it's still entertaining for what it is.Five out of 10.

William F. Claxton directed this legendarily awful film as a genetic experiment to control rabbit overpopulation in Arizona accidentally results in giant killer rabbits who overrun the state, resulting in the National Guard being called in to save the day(Elmer Fudd was busy elsewhere...) Shoddy film in every way possible, though you do feel sorry for the embarrassed looking cast(Stuart Whitman, Rory Calhoun, Janet Leigh, and Deforest Kelley). Unreleasable film is among the worst ever made, a truly jaw-dropping experience.Pay close attention to how out-of-scale the rabbits are to their reported size, as well as their surroundings(when they stampede the general store, on the far left-hand side you can see the face of a stagehand who looks about 50 Ft. tall!)