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By
WAYNE KLEIN
Remember the scene in "Fatal
Attraction" where Glenn Close goes all wiggy and
where we see the bunny rabbit in the pot stewing?
I believe that rabbits have precognition (you
know, the ability to see a bad movie before its
even thought of) and they don't suffer fools
lightly. Yes, "Fatal Attraction" made them hopping
mad. "Night of the Lepus" is the revenge
before-the-fact. Made at the nadir of MGM's
existence during the 70's, "Night of the Lepus"
plays like a bad 50's horror movie that's been
colorized, buffed to a nice sheen and served for
your cult horror movie viewing pleasure. Featuring
Stuart Whitman, Janet Leigh (who must have owed
someone a very big favor to appear in this film),
Rory Callhoun and Deforest Kelley (the cult of
Trek can be very unforgiving for an actor unless
you're name is Patrick Stewart. My guess--he
couldn't get any work), this movie comes across as
a bad B movie from the 50's teleported to the
future.
Whitman and Leigh play Dr. Roy and Gerry Bennett
who, without a clue, decide to inject a serum that
turns normal bunnies with normal incisors into
giant carnivorous bunnies with incisors ready to
rip into the fresh flesh of unsuspecting humans!
The serum was designed to interrupt the
reproductive cycle of rabbits ending a rabbit
problem for a local rancher. Lesson learned that
when you deprive bunny rabbits of sex they get big
(must be all those surging hormones), angry and
really, really hungry. The bunnies then proceed to
hop-hop-hop down the trail and eat anything with a
pulse in slow motion. What, you didn't know that
when bunnies become giant that they move in slow
motion? It was in the "Giant Bunny Handbook" in
biology class. That's really all that happens in
this slick example of hucksterism. It's funniest
in French as you can imagine this as a bizarre
shotgun marriage between new wave cinema and no
wave horror films. So turn down the lights, pop
open some bubbly and throw a rabbit into the
stewing pot and put on "Night of the Lepus."
Here's what's truly evil. "Night of the Lepus"
looks better than half the classic films that have
shuffled onto DVD within the last year. The print
here looks crisp and clean with a tiny bit of
softening in the image from time to time due to
the age of the movie. The colors are vibrant and
the soundtrack with its guttural bunny growls
sounds perfect in this transfer of the original
mono soundtrack. This movie was made for hot
teenage dates as you could miss it huge chunks of
the film and never care.
There were a lot of dogs released in the 70's and
I can only suspect that "Night of the Lepus" was
created to make them perform better at the box
office kind of like those rabbits they used to use
at the dog races. Keep your eye out for the guy in
the bad bunny suit that attacks people in the
close ups. If you have a taste for rabbit, you'll
enjoy this outrageous…thing. Clearly Elmer Fudd
was too busy to exterminate these vermin otherwise
this would have been a ripe Bugs Bunny cartoon
short. Watch at your own peril in the dark, at
night, with a pot boiling on the stove in case
your hungry. |
