William F. Claxton

(On Cable TV, January 2020) I’ve been waiting to see Night of the Lepus for the past twenty years, ever since a snippet of it was featured in The Matrix. Predictably, it doesn’t live up to the hype—unless you’re expecting a B-grade midnight-movie kind of thing, in which case it definitely has its moments. Riffing on very early-1970s ideas about overpopulation, director William F. Claxton’s film presents as evil antagonists nothing but… gigantic cuddly rabbits. It’s really amazing what a bit of ominously slow-motion macrography can do, although you’ll have to either reluctantly suspend your disbelief or just revel in the sheer absurdity of it all. Alas, rabbits aside (although there is really no Night of the Lepus with “rabbits aside”), the film isn’t that good. The first half is a bit dull, while the second half becomes only slightly more enjoyable on a pure camp level. Even today, you can imagine the midnight-movie crowd whooping it up at some of the most over-the-top sequences. Janet Leigh stars in this MGM production, which clearly fits it in the “Classic Hollywood stars stuck in 1970s B-grade horror movies from the studios’ dying gasps” genre. Despite its weaknesses, I almost recommend seeing Night of the Lepus—it’s gloriously stupid enough to offset most of its most lifeless moments. This being said, you almost have to know how to watch bad B-movies before tackling this one, because there’s no way it’s good in a traditional sense.