Featuring the Past-Their-Prime Players:
	Cole Hillman (Rory Calhoun, star of about a bazillion westerns, but probably best known today as "that fellow who's always standing around on two legs" according to Montgomery Burns), a rancher who soon finds his land overrun by giant killer bunny rabbits. Yes, you read that right: giant killer bunny rabbits.
	Elgin Clark (DeForest Kelley, sadly reduced to this just three short years after the cancellation of Star Trek), the president of a local university. This means he goes around doing very presidential things, like helping to dynamite a mineshaft. Of course, he does this in the interest of ridding his town of giant killer bunny rabbits.
	Roy Bennett (Stuart Whitman, amazingly, one of two former Oscar® nominees appearing here), a Movie Scientist™. This gives him free reign to make crucial decisions at any moment, even concerning subjects he knows nothing about (like how to deal with a rampaging horde of giant killer bunny rabbits).
	Gerry Bennett (Janet Leigh, whose claim to fame, as we all know, is giving birth to an actress who would go on to make even worse "horror" films than this one), Roy's wife and fellow scientist. Being a Female Movie Scientist™, however, she'll head for the hills while the men folk do all the dirty work. Unfortunately, she'll still have to deal with a terror worse than a night in the Bates Motel: polyester bell-bottoms. Oh yeah, and giant killer bunny rabbits.

How often have you seen an awful movie and said to yourself, "What were they thinking?" Well, after watching Night of the Lepus, the question you'll be asking instead is, "Were they thinking?" This is one of those rare films where a person doesn't need to view a single frame to realize that the very concept (giant killer bunny rabbits! I mean, for god's sake!) is spectacularly misguided. The scary thing is that this movie is based on a novel (Year of the Angry Rabbit [!!] by Australian author Russell Braddon) meaning someone at some point actually had to have looked at the idea of giant killer bunny rabbits and said, "Wow, this sure looks good on paper!" Well, it doesn't, and it looks about a billion times worse on film.

Another phrase that comes to mind upon viewing this movie is "begging to be MiSTied", but this movie isn't simply begging to be featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000, oh no. It's pleading, groveling, beseeching, imploring to be ripped to shreds by Joel and the 'Bots in a bacchanalian orgy of riffing. Unfortunately, this movie was never featured on MST3k because they couldn't get the rights to show it. I know this, not because I have any special inside knowledge about the show, but because there is simply no other explanation that makes sense. (Strangely, however, the producers of The Matrix got the rights to show a brief clip; It's the movie playing on TV when Keanu goes to see the Oracle. Also, according to the IMDb, clips of it also show up in Natural Born Killers, but it's not worth stomaching that movie again to find out where they appear. Suffice to say that with all the random clips Oliver Stone threw in, I'd be hard-pressed to name a movie that isn't in there.) Bolstering my theory about the rights being hard to obtain is the fact that, amazingly, this cinematic heap of dung wasn't brought to us by AIP, Medallion, or Crown International Pictures. Nope, this thing was made by MGM. That's a real studio! Thinking this movie came from the same people who brought us 2001: a space odyssey and The Time Machine is enough to make baby Jesus cry.

Okay, to be fair, there were a lot of entries in the killer animal genre back in the 70's. In general, most of them featured a typically innocuous animal or insect either growing to massive proportions or simply attacking in massive numbers after humans foolishly screw around with the local ecology. In that respect, Night of the Lepus isn't much worse than the rest of the genre. Don't get me wrong; It's not a good movie by any stretch of the imagination, but in terms of plot, it doesn't attempt anything dumber than, say, Kingdom of the Spiders or Piranha. The primary difference, however, is that spiders and piranhas are scary. Giant killer bunny rabbits are not.

The movie opens with a TV news report, an infallible alert that those involved are completely clueless about how to deliver exposition in a movie. We see an anchorman sitting at a desk with a bright blue "special report" graphic behind him. (Los Angeles residents will immediately become saddened as they recognize this to be recently departed local anchorman Jerry Dunphy. Sorry, Jerry, but only two things in life are certain: death, and the Agony Booth.) Jerry begins his "special report" by making vague generalizations about the environment. He tells us about how nature maintains a "balance", but that sometimes humans throw this balance off. He then introduces footage that was shot in Australia in 1954, which is just what you would expect to lead off a "special report". (I'm sure that all the viewers who saw the graphic and assumed the Soviets had just nuked Miami are now utterly mystified.) Jerry tells us that this is where a "plague of rabbits has been, and still is, a threat!" Okay, so far, things are sticking fairly close to reality. In 1954, rabbits were in fact running rampant in parts of Australia and New Zealand, destroying crops and infuriating local farmers. Jerry asks, "Has man the right to defend himself against an enemy that threatens his life and property?" Well, since you put it that way... Yes.

We see archival footage of rabbits being rounded up, hacked at with machetes, and stuck in cages. This looks cruel until I remember it's not exactly all sunshine and roses for rabbits living in the wild. Jerry informs us that rabbits were originally sent to Australia with the hopes that "they'd become a valuable addition to the food supply!" Um, not exactly. What actually happened was that some rich aristocratic dude from Great Britain brought rabbits to Australia to hunt them for sport. I guess he was a pretty lousy shot, since some of those rabbits got away. Not having a natural predator in Australia and all, the population quickly grew out of control. Of course, Australians eventually got back at the rest of the world by sending them Young Einstein. The newsreel continues, showing us rabbits futilely ramming themselves against a fence. Things are totally silent at this point because there are huge gaps in Jerry's narration, which is another little touch that just screams quality.

Jerry then attempts to shift the topic of this "special report" towards something of actual relevance to those watching it. He tells us that rabbits are also currently a problem "all over the American West" and that "Science is doing all it can to contain this population explosion!" Ah, "science". Is there anything it can't do? Jerry tells us "a new plague of rabbits has broken out in the Southwest, as shown in these color films just received from our news team in Arizona!" Well, at least we're now seeing films made after the advent of color. (Of course, no reason for an American rabbit outbreak will ever be given.) Then, so we can understand the title and everything, Jerry reveals that rabbits are "scientifically known as Lepus", and concludes by asking, "Can this population explosion be contained?" I don't know, but someone really needs to buy the copywriter a thesaurus, because he just used the phrase "population explosion" about twenty times in the space of two minutes. Also, Jerry pronounced Lepus as "LEAP-us", but for the rest of the movie everyone else will say "LEH-pus". I hope this doesn't bother you, because it sure didn't bother the director.

Either way, we cut to some cute li'l bunnies coming out of a hole, and the opening credits roll to a tune that sounds like it was left out of a Bond movie (James Bond is also an MGM property. Coincidence?). After the credits, we watch as Cole Hillman (played by Rory Calhoun) rides across the plain on horseback. Suddenly, the horse rears up and falls on its side, sending Cole tumbling to the ground. Since we immediately cut to a rabbit scurrying away, the poorly made implication is that a rabbit hole caused the horse to stumble. Cole examines the motionless equine, and after a moment, he pulls a shotgun out of his saddlebags. (Kids, you might want to leave the room for a second.) Cole shoots the horse, and then walks off as mischievous rabbits look on in smug satisfaction. Damn bunnies. I always knew those things were evil.

Cole gets back to his ranch, and immediately his young son wants to know where "Ranger" is. In a deadpan voice that makes Jack Webb seem like a ham, Cole tells him, "Stepped in a rabbit hole, son. Broke his leg. I had to shoot him." Nothing quite like breaking it to the kids gently. He then yells at one of his ranch hands to go drive out there and get his saddle, all while still within earshot of his devastated son. Ah, the love. Cole then gets on the phone with an operator named Mildred and yells at her to get him in touch with Elgin Clark, president of the local university.

We cut to Cole walking across a strangely student-free college campus, side by side with Elgin (played by DeForest Kelley, sporting a natty Rhett Butler-style moustache). Cole complains that the rabbits are "eating me out of house and home!" Elgin recommends an exterminator, but Cole is hesitant. It seems he called in this same exterminator before to help him with a coyote problem, and apparently, the absence of coyotes is what caused the rabbit problem in the first place. So, needless to say, Elgin looks a little bit like a moron for suggesting Cole go to the same exterminator again. Cole reminds him, "There's a balance to these things, Elgin, it's tricky!" This is for the benefit of all the people in the audience who weren't paying attention to the "special report" that said the exact same thing two minutes ago.

Elgin tells him about the Bennetts, a husband and wife team of scientists. Despite the fact that they're being played by Stuart Whitman and Janet Leigh, he calls them a "young couple", and I can detect no trace of sarcasm in his voice. He explains that the Bennetts have come "out from the East" to look for ways to kill insects without destroying any of the surrounding wildlife. Cole is understandably skeptical because his problem is "rabbits, not insects!" but Elgin assures him that this is his ticket to bunny-free nirvana. Their conversation ends with Elgin promising to go up and see the Bennetts right away.

We immediately cut to a shot of bats flapping around and our first glimpse of Roy and Gerry Bennett. Roy is doing some very science-y stuff in front of a cave, while Gerry just sort of stands there watching. (Prepare for more of this kind of behavior from Gerry as the movie progresses.) Roy loads up a cage full of bats and takes them over to a rock. Standing there is their young daughter Amanda, who has to be about the creepiest kid I've seen outside of a Stephen King adaptation. Roy pulls out a microphone and holds it up to the cage of bats, so the little girl demands some exposition from Dad. Roy says that he's "trying to record their sound" and tells her to hush up.

Just then, Elgin Clark pulls up in a hideous brown Town and Country station wagon. Roy spots him, and tells his wife to go down and greet him. Gerry's a little ticked that Roy just told their daughter to shut up, but she does her womanly duty just the same. As she descends, we're horrified to see Janet Leigh is dressed in an ensemble consisting of a bright red shirt and zebra striped bell-bottoms. Also, for those of you who always wanted to see a chubby Dr. McCoy in an orange turtleneck sweater, your prayers have just been answered. Elgin calls up to say hello to Roy, but Roy just shushes him, still wrapped up in recording bat sounds. Boy, those scientists, huh? "Hear that?" Roy asks him, to some badly overdubbed chirping noises. "That's the cry of fear!" No, the cry of fear is what you heard when I popped this movie into my VCR. Roy explains that they can use this sound to control the bats' flight and that if they "put bats in the same areas as mosquitoes, they'll be able to do what DDT does!" Hmm, it looks like somebody's been reading Silent Spring.

Now that it's been amply demonstrated that Roy is, in fact, a scientist, Elgin mentions what brought him here in the first place, namely, the onslaught of rabbits at Cole Hillman's ranch. Gerry scoffs at this, and since this is 1972, she says, "Rabbits aren't exactly Roy's bag!" No, from the sound of things, Roy's bag is lighting up a doobie and toking with a spaced-out sister who won't bogart all the Mary Jane.

Elgin is persistent, however, and tells Roy that Cole Hillman is one of the few ranchers who wants to solve the rabbit problem without the use of poisons. Being an eco-friendly Movie Scientist, Roy is instantly persuaded by this, and agrees to help out. (I must say, however, that Stuart Whitman's eyebrows look positively evil in this scene. Just watch this movie and tell me you didn't think they were about to leap off his face and maul DeForest Kelley to death.) Roy says he'll go down to Cole's ranch that weekend, but Elgin urges him to go down there today [?] and take the whole family with him. Hey, why waste time? Plus, with the whole family in one place, it's that much easier to get the plot moving along!