6) Night Of The Lepus (1972)
Gigantic animals running amok are a staple of B-horror movies. From the Atomic Age ants in Them! to the king-lizard of Godzilla, these gigantic creatures take the cruelty of nature (and what human beings do to it) and multiply it by a few hundred. There’s nothing more terrifying than very large animals doing what very large animals do, right?
Then there’s Night of the Lepus, in which Janet Leigh and DeForest Kelley face off against ginormous, man-eating bunny rabbits. This occurs because an enterprising farmer wants to limit the rabbit population without resorting to killing them outright, prompting two researchers (Leigh and Stuart Whitman) to develop a serum that will interfere with the rabbits’ breeding cycles. When one of the bunnies escapes, things go horribly wrong as the rabbits grow, breed, and develop a taste for human flesh.
Need I explain why this film has difficulty summoning terror? The premise itself is already funny, made more so when we see how the filmmakers attempt to make big bunnies scary. Releasing household pets onto tiny model sets, smearing rabbit teeth with blood, and having Janet Leigh scream in horror at the sight of Fluffy the Were-Rabbit just does not a great horror movie make.
Both Monty Python and Wallace & Gromit did killer bunnies better.
Published: Oct 8, 2014 01:39 am