Part of Critical-Film's 2009 September Screams

Killer Animal movies are hard to come by. Let me rephrase that GOOD killer animal movies are hard to come by. The genre itself seems to produce numerous film, mostly DTV these days, but so few of them are any good that one could rightfully dismiss this sub-genre as derivative, boring, too political, or just plain bad; and you would be right. Let's take a look at the company in which Night of the Lepus resides:

Frogs
Anaconda
The Nest
Orca
Black Sheep
Squirm
Grizzly
Arachnophobia

...the list goes on. And on. And on. Some are good (Arachnophobia), but most are bad (pretty much the rest of the list, and then some).

Night of the Lepus holds a special place in this catalogue of films, as it's villains are not exactly what you would consider terrifying. Generally the animals in charge of inflicting fear on the film's protagonist(s) are usually scary in and of themselves (spiders, snakes, bears, etc.), or at the very least gross (worms, cockroaches). Not this time though, the culprits are bunny rabbits. Vicious, bloodthirsty bunny rabbits. Giant, vicious, bloodthirsty bunny rabbits.

It's movies like this that give the 70s horror decade a bad name. For as many genuine classics that came from that period of time, there were far more films that made the crippling mistake of thinking their ideas were scary, when they were anything but. Giant killer bunny rabbits were of those ideas.

There are two significant problems with Night of the Lepus - First, bunnies aren't scary, especially when they're rated PG. Even the most capable director would have a difficult time making this material frightening, but with today's special effects capabilities, the film could at least be made enjoyable by means of some more explicit violence. That brings us to the second significant flaw with the film – The special effects; there are none. Because these are giant bunnies, they are shot at low angles on miniature sets to give the film some sense of scale. Because these bunnies are blood-thirsty their mouths are painted red, as if they've just mauled someone. In reality, though, it looks ridiculous, as do the majority of the miniature sets.

All of these flaws combine to form a film which, as typical of similar films from this era, serves only to provide a few laughs to it's audience as a result of the sheer ridiculousness of the entire thing. But provide laughs it does, and under the right circumstances could be quite enjoyable. As a movie, however, it's a terrible misfire on all accounts.