Rancher Cole Hillman (Rory Calhoun) is overrun by pesky rabbits, but the man has enough ecological awareness not to indiscriminately spray poison. Looking for a more Nature-friendly alternative to his dilemma, he turns to scientists Roy and Gerry Bennett (Stuart Whitman and Janet Leigh). Specialists in conceiving alternative approaches to pest control, the couple bring their expertise to bear on the rabbit question. What if they could interfere with the rabbits' breeding, either to halt it altogether or to produce birth defects that kill off the next generation?

No sooner have the Bennetts injected a rabbit with an experimental serum than their disobedient daughter Amanda secretly takes the thing as a pet, only to accidentally lose it almost immediately. The infected bunny carries its mutagen into the wild population, producing a plague of oversized, vicious critters with a taste for human flesh.

Of course, the monsters breed like rabbits, which means the problem is going to get really bad really fast, while the humans scrabble to think of a way out to end the night of the lepus.

The early 1970s was a ripe time for ecologically-aware horror. Rachel Carson's landmark 1962 study of the effects of DDT pesticides had been a wake-up call for American society. The attitude that scientific progress and good old American know-how would inevitably conquer all problems started to crumble. For people living in the shadow of the Bomb, a cynicism towards science was already seeping in, but by the 1970s that cynicism would spill over. Exploitation movies, living up to their name, exploited these new fears. The monsters we faced were of our own creation-Mother Nature doesn't like to be fooled.

For being so much of its time in that respect, though, Night of the Lepus (1972) is a throwback. It seems desperately to want to be the next Them! (1954), not the next The Birds (1963). Nods to Them! abound: a little girl is rendered insensate by the sight of overgrown animals, the police discover inexplicable wreckage and irrational murders, the menace is halted by the military using the most prosaic of methods. Even the film's depiction of the military is a throwback; instead of the ambiguous, or openly hostile, attitude towards soldiers common to films of the 1970s, Night of the Lepus never questions whether sending armed men in with guns and flame-throwers is an appropriate solution to the problem at hand.

Actually seeing the movie is a let-down. Instead of self-consciously campy cheese a la Beware! The Blob (1972) or Mars Needs Women (1967), Night of the Lepus takes itself seriously. The cast play it straight, evidently laboring under the assumption that they're in a real movie.

Stuart Whitman makes for the least charismatic scientist hero in sci-fi movie history. The man was a decorated All-American actor with a fat resume of Western roles, but this was not his finest hour. As his wife, Janet Leigh is saddled with a role pocked with a casual sexism that was quite out of place in 1970s cinema (another throwback attitude). This is the scream queen from Psycho (1960), from The Manchurian Candidate (1962), from Touch of Evil (1958). Give her the right role and she could have carried the movie alone, but like Whitman her talents were simply squandered. DeForest Kelley, ex-Star Trekker, was known for bringing warmth and humanity to his roles. As Elgin Clark, he is saddled with an underwritten part that gives him nothing memorable to do or say. And let's not forget Rory Calhoun, so admired by The Simpsons' Mr. Burns for his ability to stand and walk. Here he plays a rancher trying to avoid using poison-as are we, trapped in the audience.

These talented thespians were hired to act alongside a plague of stock footage, hordes of pet bunnies hopping in slow-motion across miniature sets, and every once in a while to suffer the attacks of a stuntman in a rabbit suit. Donnie Darko (2001) made a man in a rabbit costume nightmarishly scary; this is more along the lines of a dad wearing an Easter Bunny suit at a neighborhood egg hunt, but with fake blood.

Little girl Amanda stands in for the audience's point of view, voicing the very objections the average viewer might be thinking-such as that bunnies are cute, not frightening. Giving this position to a character in the film might have been a smart move, except that it was put in the mouth of a child who acts like a brain-injury victim. Perhaps Melanie Fullerton was simply too old for the role as written and nobody bothered to fix it, but the obviously ten-year-old (or even older) girl behaves like a toddler. The actress occasionally looks blankly into the camera lens from the background of scenes focusing on other characters, as if looking for permission to leave. Meanwhile, her adult costars deliver sullen performances, exuding resentment for being stuck in such a turkey.

While the film suffers from over-earnestness, the publicity team at MGM seemed to think they had a camp classic on their hands. They sent out to theaters a "Go Get 'Em Fright Kit" which included, among other oddities, hundreds of "hi-camp, pop art Lepus foot buttons," to quote from the promotional literature. These were to be distributed to "discotheques, teeny bops, college kids, and wacked-out theatre patrons" (sic, sic, and sic!) The kits also provided "ghastly posters" with which to "glut every available foot of wall space" at "campuses, record stores, discotheques, psychedelic clothing stores and shopping centers." Although the trailer promised to be "the most stupefying, wacked-out glimpse of horror," the ringer in the Fright Kit is clearly the attempt to get Top 40 radio stations to play a record containing no music, just five minutes (five minutes!!!) of the warbly Lepus sound effect.

If only the filmmakers had shown half the creativity and awareness of the audience as the publicity department, the film might have been worth the bally-hoo. Years later, Janet Leigh summed it up to film historian Tom Weaver: "I've forgotten as much as I could about that picture."

Producer: A. C. Lyles
Director: William F. Claxton
Screenwriters: Don Holliday and Gene R. Kearney from the book "The Year of the Angry Rabbit" by Russell Braddon
Art Direction: Stan Jolley
Cinematography: Ted Voightlander
Film Editing: John McSweeney
Original Music: Jimmie Haskell
Cast: Stuart Whitman (Roy Bennett), Janet Leigh (Gerry Bennett), Rory Calhoun (Cole Hillman), DeForest Kelley (Elgin Clark), Paul Fix (Sheriff Cody), Melanie Fullerton (Amanda Bennett).
C-88m.

by David Kalat