Night of the Lepus
Encyclopedia
Night of the Lepus, also known as Rabbits, is a 1972 American science fiction
horror
film based on the 1964 science fiction
novel The Year of the Angry Rabbit
. Released theatrically on October 4, 1972, it focuses on members of a small Arizona town who battle thousands of mutated, carnivorous killer rabbits. The film was the first science fiction work for producer A.C. Lyles and for director William F. Claxton, both of whom came from Western film
backgrounds. Various character actors from Westerns the pair had worked on were brought in to star in the film, including Stuart Whitman
, Janet Leigh
, Rory Calhoun
, and DeForest Kelley
. Shot in Arizona, Night of the Lepus used domestic rabbit
s filmed against miniature models and actors dressed in rabbit costumes for the various attack scenes.
Before its release, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
(MGM) renamed the film from its original name of Rabbits, and avoided including rabbits in most promotional materials to try to keep the mutant creatures being featured a secret. However, the studio itself broke the secret by issuing rabbit's foot
themed promotional materials before the release. Widely panned by critics for its premise, bad directing, stilted acting, and laughable special effects, the film's biggest failure was considered to be the inability to make the rabbits seem scary. The film has gained cult status for its badness, and was released to home video for the first time in October 2005 when it was released to Region 1 DVD.
) seeks the help of college president Elgin Clark (DeForest Kelley
) to combat thousands of rabbit
s that have invaded the area after their natural predators, coyote
s were killed off. Elgin asks for the assistance of researchers Roy (Stuart Whitman
) and Gerry Bennett (Janet Leigh
) because they respect Cole's wish to avoid using cyanide
to poison the rabbits. Roy proposes using hormones to disrupt the rabbits' breeding cycle, and takes some rabbits for experimentation. One rabbit is injected with a new serum believed to cause birth defects. However, the Bennett's daughter Amanda (Melanie Fullerton
) loves the injected rabbit, so she switches it with one from the control group. Amanda is then given the injected rabbit as a pet, but it soon escapes.
While inspecting the rabbits' old burrowing areas, Cole and the Bennets find a large, unusual animal track. Meanwhile, Cole's son Jackie (Chris Morrell) and Amanda go to a gold mine to visit Jackie's friend Billy, but find him missing. Jackie finds more of the animal tracks in Billy's shed, while Amanda goes into the mine and runs into an enormous rabbit with blood on its face. Screaming in terror, she runs from the mine.
Mutilated bodies begin to crop up around town, including Billy, a truck driver, and a family of four. Elgin, the Bennets, Cole, and Cole's two ranch hands, Frank (Henry Wills
) and Jud (Chuck Hayward
), go to the mine to try and kill the rabbits with explosives. As Elgin and Cole set charges on top of the mine, Roy and Frank enter the shaft to get pictorial evidence. Outside, a rabbit surfaces and attacks Jud before Gerry can shoot it. Roy and Frank escape the rabbits in the mine and run outside as the explosives are detonated.
The explosives fail to kill the rabbits, and that night they attack Cole's ranch, killing Jud while Cole, Frank, Jackie, and Cole's housekeeper escape into the storm shelter. The rabbits make their way to the small town of Galanos, killing everyone they find before taking refuge in the buildings for the day. In the morning, Gerry and Amanda leave to avoid the coming press, but get stuck along a sandy stretch of road. Roy and Elgin update Sheriff Cody (Paul Fix
) on the situation, and after realizing the rabbits have escaped the mine, call in the national guard. As night falls, the rabbits leave Galanos to continue making their way to the main town, Ajo
, killing everything in sight. Cole proposes using a half-mile wide stretch of electrified railroad track as a fence to contain and kill the rabbits. They recruit a large group of people at a drive in theater
to help herd the rabbits with their car lights, with assistance from the machine gun fire of the national guard.
Thousands of rabbits make their way into the trap, where they are shot and electrocuted. At the end of the film, Cole tells Roy that normal rabbits, as well as coyotes, have returned to the ranch.
's 1964 science fiction
novel The Year of the Angry Rabbit
. A.C. Lyles, known primarily for producing western
films, would make Night of the Lepus his first and only science fiction
production. To craft the film, he pulled together people he had worked with on other Westerns. Gene R. Kearney and Don Holliday were tasked with converting the novel to a screenplay. In doing so, they removed one aspect of the novel, in which the rabbits were viral plague carriers, and moved its setting from Australia to Arizona. The film was shot at the Old Tucson Studios
in Tucson, Arizona
, a site well known for its use in various Western
pictures. Filming began at the end of January 1972 and concluded in early March.
According to Turner Classic Movies
' David Kalat, the film's director William F. Claxton also came from a Western film background. In directing Night of the Lepus, he applied the same techniques used in his other films, and declined the use of "standard" horror effects that would have enhanced the atmosphere, such as "canted camera angles, dark shadows, [and] eerie music." Rory Calhoun was cast as rancher Cole Hilman, whose ranch would be the start of the rabbit explosion. Well known for his western work, Night of the Lepus put him in unfamiliar territory as it was his first science fiction role, however, he found familiarity in the Western film trappings and his role as a rancher. Janet Leigh, who played Gerry Bennet, took the role because it was being filmed close to her own home, allowing her to travel home on weekends, and allowing her family to visit her on the set. Though she felt the script "read well", she declined to allow her two children play minor roles in the film as she did not want them to see or be part of any type of horror film. She would later state the film lacked an "ideal director" to bring the script to life, and the film failed, in part, because it was impossible to make a "bunny rabbit menacing." Fellow The Rifleman
actor Paul Fix
was given the role of the sheriff of the town under siege, while DeForest Kelley
, who frequently guest starred in Westerns, was cast as Elgin Clark, the college president who asked researchers to try to stop the rabbits.
The domesticated rabbits used in the film differed greatly in appearance from the wild rabbits that were plaguing the southwest at the time. In the film, this was explained by stating that the rabbits were descended from recent rabbit farm escapees. To depict the rabbit attacks, a combination of techniques were used. For some scenes, the rabbits were filmed in close-up stomping on miniature
structures in slow motion
. For attack scenes, they had ketchup
smeared on their faces. For other scenes, human actors were shown wearing rabbit costume
s.
Originally titled Rabbits, production company MGM renamed the film, using the latin name for "rabbit" in hopes of keeping the audience from presuming the rabbits would be non-menancing. To further prevent the audience from thinking of cuddly bunnies in relation to the film, the theatrical posters featured no rabbits, instead displaying only eyes and referencing unnamed "creatures". The trailers also showed no critters, and the press releases only mentioned that the film had "mutants." The only clue given to the audience was the required acknowledgment on the poster to Braddon's novel. However, some of the film promoters gave away the secret by sending out various souvenirs decorated with rabbit's foot designs.
Night of the Lepus was released theatrically on July 26, 1972. Its home video
release did not come until 33 years later, when Warner Home Video
released an edited version to Region 1 DVD
on October 4, 2005.
Vincent Canby wrote it was not an "especially memorable movie," that it was typical for the genre of science fiction horror, but that it failed due to the fact that the rabbits, despite attempts to make them "appear huge and scary, still look like Easter bunnies
." In an October 1972 issue, fellow critic Roger Greenspun panned the film for not "even reasonably try[ing]" to make the rabbits scary, its reliance on "tired cliché's of monsterdom", "technical laziness" in its special effects, "stupid story", and "dumb direction that leaves the film in limbo" between a horror film and a fairy tale. In the Monthly Film Bulletin
, Tom Milne felt the film had a promising beginning before moving into a "well-worn horror groove," such as the effort to trap Gerry and Amanda alone in a deserted area for a last minute rescue. Noting that the film had "a certain overall charm and several striking sequences", he felt the film would have been more successful if it "had the courage of its convictions--and its realism". As an example, he points to the scene following the attack on the Calhoun ranch, in which Roy is walking into town and tourists refuse to stop and pick him up because he has a gun. The tourists then go to the small town where the rabbits have killed everyone and are hiding in the buildings, but rather than becoming the next victims, the family call it a ghost town
and leave. In the 1977 piece Dark Dreams 2.0: A Psychological History of the Modern Horror Film, Charles Derry compared the film to the earlier successful works The Birds
and Willard
, particularly the former, noting that both featured a "loveable[sic] creature". Though he felt the special effects were poor, he felt the film successfully tied into ongoing fears of throwing ecology
out of balance, with the rabbits serving as an appropriate metaphor
for human fears about overpopulation
.
John J. Puccio of DVDTown.com felt the film would have been better had it been an intentionally humorous horror spoof, rather than a legitimate attempt at making a horror film with killer rabbits. Stating that it was in the "so-bad-it's-good" category for only two minutes of the film, he found the actors to be "stiff and uninvolved" in delivering their lines, and that the film seemed more like an "old television horse opera" than a horror film with more slow-paced filler than action sequences, and the few bits of action ruined by the "corniest possible 'action' music". AMC Film Critic's Christopher Null states that the film is famous as "one of the worst films ever made". He heavily criticizes Claxton, feeling that he "just seems wholly incapable of making the movie remotely frightening, or even of making much sense" and that the bad special effects "make the entire film a huge joke." Reviewing the title for Classic-Horror.com, Julia Merriam gave the film credit for attempting to be a "socially-conscious eco-horror", but criticized the slow pacing, bad dialog, poor editing with a heavy reliance on stock footage
that did not appear to be from the same film, and senseless character actions such as entering a rabbit-filled cave just to photograph them. She also criticized the film's obvious use of people in rabbit suits, but concluded the film's biggest flaw was that "fluffy bunnies just aren't scary".
In Horror Films of the 1970s, John Kenneth Muir
felt the film was one of the "most ridiculous horror film[s] ever conceived", with a poor blend of horror and environmentalism that resulted in the film being more of a comedy. He criticized the "primitive special effects", badly done editing and laughable dialogue, and noted that while the rabbits and actors are rarely seen on screen together, the filmmakers used obviously fake rabbit paws and people in rabbits suits for the few scenes calling for human/rabbit interactions. Like most critics, he pointed out that the rabbits were "cute bunnies" rather than "fanged, disease-ridden mutated creatures", but he felt the actors did the best they could with the material, and praised them for "[keeping] straight faces as they heroically stand against the onslaught of the bunnies."
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
horror
Horror film
Horror films seek to elicit a negative emotional reaction from viewers by playing on the audience's most primal fears. They often feature scenes that startle the viewer through the means of macabre and the supernatural, thus frequently overlapping with the fantasy and science fiction genres...
film based on the 1964 science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
novel The Year of the Angry Rabbit
The Year of the Angry Rabbit
The Year of the Angry Rabbit is a science fiction novel by Australian author Russell Braddon, in which giant mutant rabbits run amok in Australia while the Prime Minister uses a new super weapon to dominate the planet....
. Released theatrically on October 4, 1972, it focuses on members of a small Arizona town who battle thousands of mutated, carnivorous killer rabbits. The film was the first science fiction work for producer A.C. Lyles and for director William F. Claxton, both of whom came from Western film
Western (genre)
The Western is a genre of various visual arts, such as film, television, radio, literature, painting and others. Westerns are devoted to telling stories set primarily in the latter half of the 19th century in the American Old West, hence the name. Some Westerns are set as early as the Battle of...
backgrounds. Various character actors from Westerns the pair had worked on were brought in to star in the film, including Stuart Whitman
Stuart Whitman
Stuart Maxwell Whitman is an American actor.Stuart Whitman is arguably best-known for playing Marshal Jim Crown in the western television series Cimarron Strip in 1967...
, Janet Leigh
Janet Leigh
Janet Leigh , born Jeanette Helen Morrison, was an American actress. She was the wife of actor Tony Curtis from June 1951 to September 1962 and the mother of Kelly Curtis and Jamie Lee Curtis....
, Rory Calhoun
Rory Calhoun
Rory Calhoun was an American television and film actor, screenwriter and producer, best known for his roles in Westerns.-Early life:...
, and DeForest Kelley
DeForest Kelley
Jackson DeForest Kelley was an American actor known for his iconic roles in Westerns and as Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy of the USS Enterprise in the television and film series Star Trek.-Early life:...
. Shot in Arizona, Night of the Lepus used domestic rabbit
Domestic rabbit
A domestic rabbit, or more commonly known as simply the rabbit, is any of the several varieties of European rabbit that have been domesticated....
s filmed against miniature models and actors dressed in rabbit costumes for the various attack scenes.
Before its release, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. is an American media company, involved primarily in the production and distribution of films and television programs. MGM was founded in 1924 when the entertainment entrepreneur Marcus Loew gained control of Metro Pictures, Goldwyn Pictures Corporation and Louis B. Mayer...
(MGM) renamed the film from its original name of Rabbits, and avoided including rabbits in most promotional materials to try to keep the mutant creatures being featured a secret. However, the studio itself broke the secret by issuing rabbit's foot
Rabbit's foot
In some cultures, the foot of a rabbit is carried as an amulet believed to bring good luck. This belief is held by individuals in a great number of places around the world including Europe, China, Africa, and North and South America. It is likely that this belief has existed in Europe since 600 BC...
themed promotional materials before the release. Widely panned by critics for its premise, bad directing, stilted acting, and laughable special effects, the film's biggest failure was considered to be the inability to make the rabbits seem scary. The film has gained cult status for its badness, and was released to home video for the first time in October 2005 when it was released to Region 1 DVD.
Plot
Rancher Cole Hillman (Rory CalhounRory Calhoun
Rory Calhoun was an American television and film actor, screenwriter and producer, best known for his roles in Westerns.-Early life:...
) seeks the help of college president Elgin Clark (DeForest Kelley
DeForest Kelley
Jackson DeForest Kelley was an American actor known for his iconic roles in Westerns and as Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy of the USS Enterprise in the television and film series Star Trek.-Early life:...
) to combat thousands of rabbit
Rabbit
Rabbits are small mammals in the family Leporidae of the order Lagomorpha, found in several parts of the world...
s that have invaded the area after their natural predators, coyote
Coyote
The coyote , also known as the American jackal or the prairie wolf, is a species of canine found throughout North and Central America, ranging from Panama in the south, north through Mexico, the United States and Canada...
s were killed off. Elgin asks for the assistance of researchers Roy (Stuart Whitman
Stuart Whitman
Stuart Maxwell Whitman is an American actor.Stuart Whitman is arguably best-known for playing Marshal Jim Crown in the western television series Cimarron Strip in 1967...
) and Gerry Bennett (Janet Leigh
Janet Leigh
Janet Leigh , born Jeanette Helen Morrison, was an American actress. She was the wife of actor Tony Curtis from June 1951 to September 1962 and the mother of Kelly Curtis and Jamie Lee Curtis....
) because they respect Cole's wish to avoid using cyanide
Cyanide
A cyanide is a chemical compound that contains the cyano group, -C≡N, which consists of a carbon atom triple-bonded to a nitrogen atom. Cyanides most commonly refer to salts of the anion CN−. Most cyanides are highly toxic....
to poison the rabbits. Roy proposes using hormones to disrupt the rabbits' breeding cycle, and takes some rabbits for experimentation. One rabbit is injected with a new serum believed to cause birth defects. However, the Bennett's daughter Amanda (Melanie Fullerton
Melanie Fullerton
Melanie Fullerton was an actress in the late 60's and early 70's. She starred in Night of the Lepus along with Stuart Whitman as well as co-starred in To Rome With Love with John Forsythe, Vito Scotti, Joyce Menges, and Susan Neher.-Filmography:...
) loves the injected rabbit, so she switches it with one from the control group. Amanda is then given the injected rabbit as a pet, but it soon escapes.
While inspecting the rabbits' old burrowing areas, Cole and the Bennets find a large, unusual animal track. Meanwhile, Cole's son Jackie (Chris Morrell) and Amanda go to a gold mine to visit Jackie's friend Billy, but find him missing. Jackie finds more of the animal tracks in Billy's shed, while Amanda goes into the mine and runs into an enormous rabbit with blood on its face. Screaming in terror, she runs from the mine.
Mutilated bodies begin to crop up around town, including Billy, a truck driver, and a family of four. Elgin, the Bennets, Cole, and Cole's two ranch hands, Frank (Henry Wills
Henry Wills
Henry Wills was a British journalist and photographer with a passion for local history and archaeology. He is best remembered for his writings on British anti-invasion preparations of World War II, his most often cited work being Pillboxes — A Study of UK Defences 1940.Henry Wills worked for...
) and Jud (Chuck Hayward
Chuck Hayward
Charles B. Hayward was an American motion picture stuntman and actor. He was associated particularly with the films of John Wayne...
), go to the mine to try and kill the rabbits with explosives. As Elgin and Cole set charges on top of the mine, Roy and Frank enter the shaft to get pictorial evidence. Outside, a rabbit surfaces and attacks Jud before Gerry can shoot it. Roy and Frank escape the rabbits in the mine and run outside as the explosives are detonated.
The explosives fail to kill the rabbits, and that night they attack Cole's ranch, killing Jud while Cole, Frank, Jackie, and Cole's housekeeper escape into the storm shelter. The rabbits make their way to the small town of Galanos, killing everyone they find before taking refuge in the buildings for the day. In the morning, Gerry and Amanda leave to avoid the coming press, but get stuck along a sandy stretch of road. Roy and Elgin update Sheriff Cody (Paul Fix
Paul Fix
Paul Fix was an American film and television character actor, best known for his work in westerns. Fix appeared in more than a hundred movies and dozens of television shows over a 56-year career spanning from 1925 to 1981...
) on the situation, and after realizing the rabbits have escaped the mine, call in the national guard. As night falls, the rabbits leave Galanos to continue making their way to the main town, Ajo
Ajo, Arizona
Ajo is a census-designated place in Pima County, Arizona, United States. The population was 3,705 at the 2000 census. Ajo is located on State Route 85 just from the Mexican border. It is the closest community to Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument....
, killing everything in sight. Cole proposes using a half-mile wide stretch of electrified railroad track as a fence to contain and kill the rabbits. They recruit a large group of people at a drive in theater
Drive-in theater
A drive-in theater is a form of cinema structure consisting of a large outdoor screen, a projection booth, a concession stand and a large parking area for automobiles. Within this enclosed area, customers can view movies from the privacy and comfort of their cars.The screen can be as simple as a...
to help herd the rabbits with their car lights, with assistance from the machine gun fire of the national guard.
Thousands of rabbits make their way into the trap, where they are shot and electrocuted. At the end of the film, Cole tells Roy that normal rabbits, as well as coyotes, have returned to the ranch.
Production
The script for Night of the Lepus was based on Australian author Russell BraddonRussell Braddon
Russell Reading Braddon was an Australian writer of novels, biographies and TV scripts. His chronicle of his four years as a prisoner of war, The Naked Island, sold more than a million copies....
's 1964 science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
novel The Year of the Angry Rabbit
The Year of the Angry Rabbit
The Year of the Angry Rabbit is a science fiction novel by Australian author Russell Braddon, in which giant mutant rabbits run amok in Australia while the Prime Minister uses a new super weapon to dominate the planet....
. A.C. Lyles, known primarily for producing western
Western (genre)
The Western is a genre of various visual arts, such as film, television, radio, literature, painting and others. Westerns are devoted to telling stories set primarily in the latter half of the 19th century in the American Old West, hence the name. Some Westerns are set as early as the Battle of...
films, would make Night of the Lepus his first and only science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
production. To craft the film, he pulled together people he had worked with on other Westerns. Gene R. Kearney and Don Holliday were tasked with converting the novel to a screenplay. In doing so, they removed one aspect of the novel, in which the rabbits were viral plague carriers, and moved its setting from Australia to Arizona. The film was shot at the Old Tucson Studios
Old Tucson Studios
Old Tucson Studios is a movie studio and theme park just west of Tucson, Arizona, adjacent to the Tucson Mountains and close to the western portion of Saguaro National Park. Built in 1939 for the movie Arizona, it has been used for the filming of several movies and television westerns since then,...
in Tucson, Arizona
Tucson, Arizona
Tucson is a city in and the county seat of Pima County, Arizona, United States. The city is located 118 miles southeast of Phoenix and 60 miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border. The 2010 United States Census puts the city's population at 520,116 with a metropolitan area population at 1,020,200...
, a site well known for its use in various Western
Western (genre)
The Western is a genre of various visual arts, such as film, television, radio, literature, painting and others. Westerns are devoted to telling stories set primarily in the latter half of the 19th century in the American Old West, hence the name. Some Westerns are set as early as the Battle of...
pictures. Filming began at the end of January 1972 and concluded in early March.
According to Turner Classic Movies
Turner Classic Movies
Turner Classic Movies is a movie-oriented cable television channel, owned by the Turner Broadcasting System subsidiary of Time Warner, featuring commercial-free classic movies, mostly from the Turner Entertainment and MGM, United Artists, RKO and Warner Bros. film libraries...
' David Kalat, the film's director William F. Claxton also came from a Western film background. In directing Night of the Lepus, he applied the same techniques used in his other films, and declined the use of "standard" horror effects that would have enhanced the atmosphere, such as "canted camera angles, dark shadows, [and] eerie music." Rory Calhoun was cast as rancher Cole Hilman, whose ranch would be the start of the rabbit explosion. Well known for his western work, Night of the Lepus put him in unfamiliar territory as it was his first science fiction role, however, he found familiarity in the Western film trappings and his role as a rancher. Janet Leigh, who played Gerry Bennet, took the role because it was being filmed close to her own home, allowing her to travel home on weekends, and allowing her family to visit her on the set. Though she felt the script "read well", she declined to allow her two children play minor roles in the film as she did not want them to see or be part of any type of horror film. She would later state the film lacked an "ideal director" to bring the script to life, and the film failed, in part, because it was impossible to make a "bunny rabbit menacing." Fellow The Rifleman
The Rifleman
The Rifleman is an American Western television program that starred Chuck Connors as homesteader Lucas McCain and Johnny Crawford as his son, Mark McCain. It was set in the 1880s in the town of North Fork, New Mexico Territory. The show, filmed in black-and-white with a half hour running time, ran...
actor Paul Fix
Paul Fix
Paul Fix was an American film and television character actor, best known for his work in westerns. Fix appeared in more than a hundred movies and dozens of television shows over a 56-year career spanning from 1925 to 1981...
was given the role of the sheriff of the town under siege, while DeForest Kelley
DeForest Kelley
Jackson DeForest Kelley was an American actor known for his iconic roles in Westerns and as Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy of the USS Enterprise in the television and film series Star Trek.-Early life:...
, who frequently guest starred in Westerns, was cast as Elgin Clark, the college president who asked researchers to try to stop the rabbits.
The domesticated rabbits used in the film differed greatly in appearance from the wild rabbits that were plaguing the southwest at the time. In the film, this was explained by stating that the rabbits were descended from recent rabbit farm escapees. To depict the rabbit attacks, a combination of techniques were used. For some scenes, the rabbits were filmed in close-up stomping on miniature
Scale model
A scale model is a physical model, a representation or copy of an object that is larger or smaller than the actual size of the object, which seeks to maintain the relative proportions of the physical size of the original object. Very often the scale model is used as a guide to making the object in...
structures in slow motion
Slow motion
Slow motion is an effect in film-making whereby time appears to be slowed down. It was invented by the Austrian priest August Musger....
. For attack scenes, they had ketchup
Ketchup
Ketchup is a sweet-and-tangy condiment typically made from tomatoes, vinegar, sugar or high-fructose corn syrup and an assortment of...
smeared on their faces. For other scenes, human actors were shown wearing rabbit costume
Costume
The term costume can refer to wardrobe and dress in general, or to the distinctive style of dress of a particular people, class, or period. Costume may also refer to the artistic arrangement of accessories in a picture, statue, poem, or play, appropriate to the time, place, or other circumstances...
s.
Originally titled Rabbits, production company MGM renamed the film, using the latin name for "rabbit" in hopes of keeping the audience from presuming the rabbits would be non-menancing. To further prevent the audience from thinking of cuddly bunnies in relation to the film, the theatrical posters featured no rabbits, instead displaying only eyes and referencing unnamed "creatures". The trailers also showed no critters, and the press releases only mentioned that the film had "mutants." The only clue given to the audience was the required acknowledgment on the poster to Braddon's novel. However, some of the film promoters gave away the secret by sending out various souvenirs decorated with rabbit's foot designs.
Night of the Lepus was released theatrically on July 26, 1972. Its home video
Home video
Home video is a blanket term used for pre-recorded media that is either sold or rented/hired for home cinema entertainment. The term originates from the VHS/Betamax era but has carried over into current optical disc formats like DVD and Blu-ray Disc and, to a lesser extent, into methods of digital...
release did not come until 33 years later, when Warner Home Video
Warner Home Video
Warner Home Video is the home video unit of Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., itself part of Time Warner. It was founded in 1978 as WCI Home Video . The company launched in the United States with twenty films on VHS and Betamax videocassettes in late 1979...
released an edited version to Region 1 DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
on October 4, 2005.
Contemporary
In a July 1972 issue of The New York TimesThe New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
Vincent Canby wrote it was not an "especially memorable movie," that it was typical for the genre of science fiction horror, but that it failed due to the fact that the rabbits, despite attempts to make them "appear huge and scary, still look like Easter bunnies
Easter Bunny
The Easter Bunny or Easter Rabbit is a character depicted as a rabbit bringing Easter eggs, who sometimes is depicted with clothes...
." In an October 1972 issue, fellow critic Roger Greenspun panned the film for not "even reasonably try[ing]" to make the rabbits scary, its reliance on "tired cliché's of monsterdom", "technical laziness" in its special effects, "stupid story", and "dumb direction that leaves the film in limbo" between a horror film and a fairy tale. In the Monthly Film Bulletin
Monthly Film Bulletin
The Monthly Film Bulletin was a periodical of the British Film Institute published monthly from February 1934 to April 1991. It reviewed all films on release in the United Kingdom, including those with a narrow arthouse release. The MFB was edited in the mid-1950s by David Robinson, in the late...
, Tom Milne felt the film had a promising beginning before moving into a "well-worn horror groove," such as the effort to trap Gerry and Amanda alone in a deserted area for a last minute rescue. Noting that the film had "a certain overall charm and several striking sequences", he felt the film would have been more successful if it "had the courage of its convictions--and its realism". As an example, he points to the scene following the attack on the Calhoun ranch, in which Roy is walking into town and tourists refuse to stop and pick him up because he has a gun. The tourists then go to the small town where the rabbits have killed everyone and are hiding in the buildings, but rather than becoming the next victims, the family call it a ghost town
Ghost town
A ghost town is an abandoned town or city. A town often becomes a ghost town because the economic activity that supported it has failed, or due to natural or human-caused disasters such as floods, government actions, uncontrolled lawlessness, war, or nuclear disasters...
and leave. In the 1977 piece Dark Dreams 2.0: A Psychological History of the Modern Horror Film, Charles Derry compared the film to the earlier successful works The Birds
The Birds (film)
The Birds is a 1963 horror film directed by Alfred Hitchcock based on the 1952 short story "The Birds" by Daphne du Maurier. It depicts Bodega Bay, California which is, suddenly and for unexplained reasons, the subject of a series of widespread and violent bird attacks over the course of a few...
and Willard
Willard (1971 film)
Willard is a 1971 horror film starring Bruce Davison and Ernest Borgnine, directed by Daniel Mann. The movie is based on the novel Ratman's Notebooks by Stephen Gilbert, and was nominated for an Edgar Award for best picture...
, particularly the former, noting that both featured a "loveable[sic] creature". Though he felt the special effects were poor, he felt the film successfully tied into ongoing fears of throwing ecology
Ecology
Ecology is the scientific study of the relations that living organisms have with respect to each other and their natural environment. Variables of interest to ecologists include the composition, distribution, amount , number, and changing states of organisms within and among ecosystems...
out of balance, with the rabbits serving as an appropriate metaphor
Metaphor
A metaphor is a literary figure of speech that uses an image, story or tangible thing to represent a less tangible thing or some intangible quality or idea; e.g., "Her eyes were glistening jewels." Metaphor may also be used for any rhetorical figures of speech that achieve their effects via...
for human fears about overpopulation
Overpopulation
Overpopulation is a condition where an organism's numbers exceed the carrying capacity of its habitat. The term often refers to the relationship between the human population and its environment, the Earth...
.
Retrospective
Allmovie's Jeremy Wheeler felt the film was "all good, unintentionally campy fun" and "silly to its core." Noting that the special effects were "obvious", he criticized the "truly heinous dialogue" and remarked that Leigh "slums it" by appearing in the film. In Stories Rabbits Tell: A Natural and Cultural History of a Misunderstood Creature, Susan E. Davis and Margo DeMello considered the film an "entertaining romp", praising the "alarmingly realistic" circumstances behind the rabbit mutations, while criticizing the "notoriously badly done" special effects and the rabbits being made to "roar" during their attacks. Calling it "one of [the] worse career moves" for Kelley and Leigh, they criticized the ending of the film in which all the rabbits were killed, calling them "unwitting victims...of human attempts to control nature." In his book Videohound's Horror Show: 999 Hair-Raising, Hellish, and Humorous Movies, film critic Mike Mayo panned the film, calling the script "lame", the scenes of the rabbits "hopping around H0 scale sets in slow motion" humorous, and the rabbits just not scary. He also criticized the principal performers, stating that the film featured a "group of so-so character actors", except Leigh who he considered a "star", and that all gave "wooden performances".John J. Puccio of DVDTown.com felt the film would have been better had it been an intentionally humorous horror spoof, rather than a legitimate attempt at making a horror film with killer rabbits. Stating that it was in the "so-bad-it's-good" category for only two minutes of the film, he found the actors to be "stiff and uninvolved" in delivering their lines, and that the film seemed more like an "old television horse opera" than a horror film with more slow-paced filler than action sequences, and the few bits of action ruined by the "corniest possible 'action' music". AMC Film Critic's Christopher Null states that the film is famous as "one of the worst films ever made". He heavily criticizes Claxton, feeling that he "just seems wholly incapable of making the movie remotely frightening, or even of making much sense" and that the bad special effects "make the entire film a huge joke." Reviewing the title for Classic-Horror.com, Julia Merriam gave the film credit for attempting to be a "socially-conscious eco-horror", but criticized the slow pacing, bad dialog, poor editing with a heavy reliance on stock footage
Stock footage
Stock footage, and similarly, archive footage, library pictures and file footage are film or video footage that may or may not be custom shot for use in a specific film or television program. Stock footage is of beneficial use to filmmakers as it is sometimes less expensive than shooting new...
that did not appear to be from the same film, and senseless character actions such as entering a rabbit-filled cave just to photograph them. She also criticized the film's obvious use of people in rabbit suits, but concluded the film's biggest flaw was that "fluffy bunnies just aren't scary".
In Horror Films of the 1970s, John Kenneth Muir
John Kenneth Muir
John Kenneth Muir is an American literary critic. He has written twenty-one reference books in the fields of film and television, with a particular accent on the horror and science fiction genres....
felt the film was one of the "most ridiculous horror film[s] ever conceived", with a poor blend of horror and environmentalism that resulted in the film being more of a comedy. He criticized the "primitive special effects", badly done editing and laughable dialogue, and noted that while the rabbits and actors are rarely seen on screen together, the filmmakers used obviously fake rabbit paws and people in rabbits suits for the few scenes calling for human/rabbit interactions. Like most critics, he pointed out that the rabbits were "cute bunnies" rather than "fanged, disease-ridden mutated creatures", but he felt the actors did the best they could with the material, and praised them for "[keeping] straight faces as they heroically stand against the onslaught of the bunnies."