Comments on: Night of the Lepus (1972)

By: parkyakarkus

parkyakarkus — Mon, 18 May 2009 05:58:35 +0000

Count me lucky–I got to see this at a Los Angeles drive-in the week it premeired. Oh, what a hoot! Me and my younger siblings in the the family station wagon were hurling raspberries non-stop at the “killer bunnies” FX, while feeling really sorry for DeForrest Kelley. My sisters were ten years old and under, and even _they_ remarked on how pea-brained the Amanda character was.
And then the second feature turned out to be “Blood Creatures of the Prehistoric Planet”! A perfect Saturday night for all…

By: Nathan Shumate

Nathan Shumate — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 16:05:07 +0000

So at least you got a good story out of a bad movie.

By: HP

HP — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 07:30:50 +0000

But you just have to imagine what the original audiences thought . . ..

That would be me.

Actually, I saw it a year later, when it first aired on TV. And I made my Dad give up his show so we could watch it. Bless his heart.

In my defense, the trailer is pretty cool, especially if you don’t know the movie beforehand. “What . . . happened . . . that night science made its greatest mistake? What . . . unknown terror … was born that night?”

I was just around 9 or 10 years old, and I was still that age when I judged the quality of a movie based on whether it had monsters and fights and guys from Star Trek in it, and not on things like acting, writing, or cinematography. And I very clearly remember the moment, about halfway through the film, when I looked at the screen and said to myself, “Wait a minute — this movie isn’t good! This movie is . . . what’s that word? . . . bad. This movie is bad! How could this happen?”

I don’t think it had ever occurred to me before that a movie about giant killer mutant animals could actually be bad. So I learned a very important lesson that night. That night . . . of the lepus! Thanks, Dad, for missing your show.

By: Nathan Shumate

Nathan Shumate — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 18:14:34 +0000

Oh, I don’t hold her parents unaccountable by any stretch. They’re a couple of dweebs, stupid in the precise manner which makes the plot possible.

That said, Amanda is the proximate cause of it all.

By: fish eye no miko

fish eye no miko — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 17:54:33 +0000

You say you blame Amanda for the rabbit rampage, but you gotta admit her parents are somewhat to blame…

1) Given Amanda’s… deficiencies, why did they let her hang out in the lab? For that matter, why did they let her take a rabbit OUT of the lab?

2) Why weren’t the test rabbits better marked, so they realized the switch before things got as far as they did?

3) As far as I can tell, Amanda was going to take the rabbit home and keep it, right? So it would have been isolated from other rabbits. So surely dad smacking the rabbit out of her arms (and causing it to get loose and into the general rabbit population) was partially to blame?

“Of course, even giant rabbits don’t eat meat”

Yeah, why does every embiggened animal, regardless of their natural diet, suddenly become a meat (and more specifically, human) eater? Can’t they be menacing in ways that have nothing to do with “Oh, noes, they’re gonna eat us!”?

By: Nathan Shumate

Nathan Shumate — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 11:53:08 +0000

At least frogs and worms have that non-mammalian “ick” factor for a lot of people. There’s nothing unsettling about a flopsy-wopsy bunny wabbit, no matter how big it is.

By: Bryan

Bryan — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 07:52:32 +0000

I think that frogs and worms (“Frogs” & “Squirm”) are about the only things less threatening. Unless you lick an African frog and flip out. A bunny could at least ‘try’ to bite you, and at least they are fast enough to chase you.

Too bad you didn’t go into the ‘awesome’ ending. Also too bad the little girl wasn’t also dumb enough to fall for the trap (yeah, I also couldn’t stand her).

By: Felicity

Felicity — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 02:45:09 +0000

I can see why the DVD is being marketed as camp; taken unironically, at face value, it’s a fairly boring movie, when you get right down to it. The only entertainment comes from the silliness of giant killer rabbits (well, that and Janet Leigh looking surprisingly sexy in that black plastic lab apron). I understand that to salvage some money from this turkey, the DVD publishers had to give the audience a reason why they should bother.

But when the DVD tries to sell you the ironic appreciation prefab, that spoils the fun. The ideal scenario would be to come across this DVD at the dollar store, read a serious premise description on the back, think, “What?! That’s hilariously bad!” and take it home.

By: Robert

Robert — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 20:02:49 +0000

To complete the irony, just a couple of years later, “Watership Down” – which involves its lapine characters in more than a few scenes of vicious, bloody mayhem – would be marketed as a ‘children’s movie’, leaving untold thousands of unsuspecting youngsters utterly traumatized…

By: Nathan Shumate

Nathan Shumate — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 18:28:20 +0000

Agh! I can’t believe I missed that. Correction a-comin’!