31 Days of Horror: "Night of the Lepus"
31 Days of Horror: “Night of the Lepus”
by Sean McTiernan
Like most things, you can link this back to Leslie Nielsen. The reason “Airplane” is one of the funniest movies ever made, and if you don’t agree I’ll kill us both without hesitation, is they didn’t use comic actors. The comedy comes from seeing serious people deliver insane dialogue with grave facial expressions. (Also: can’t wait for the time people realise “CSI:Miami” was a comedy and it gets a serious critical re-evaluation). “Airplane” would not have been the same if Gene Wilder was up in that mix, telegraphing the hell out of all 20 jokes-per-minute that movies has. No shots at Gene Wilder-just, deadpan is the only path you can take to get that certain type of laugh. The one where the joke isn’t being told by the character, it’s on them. Which brings us to today’s movie.
Unlike most of the other productions on the camp end of this list, “Night of The Lepus” has zero self-awareness and no clue whatsoever that what’s happening on the screen could in any way be ridiculous. The guys behind “Silent Night Deadly Night 2” probably knew what they were doing was pretty crazy, perhaps even a set-up to capture the sole performance of a man possessed. The dudes behind “Nightmare On Elm Street Two” probably didn’t run around in paroxysms of ecstasy after their movie was greenlit, shouting “Get me some stairs, a baby carriage and some slow motion, we’re going to make history!”
But this film seems to have been made with zero sense that anything could be either amiss or humorous about what they were trying to do.
“Night of the Lepus” is an incredibly mediocre monster movie. Aside from the really jarring gore, it could be a colourised version of the kind of 50s monster movie parodied (weakly) in the largely forgotten (and, therefore, appropriately regarded) spoof “Eight Legged Freaks.” Oh and the monsters in “Night of The Lepus” are giant rabbits. So there’s that.
I must credit “NotL” for creating a feeling of creeping dread unparalleled by almost any other horror movie. This dread has nothing to do with the characters or the story. It’s slow realisation that there are no intentional jokes in this movie and that people are playing it straight not because of some fantastically-judged fearless acting choice, it just never occurred to them to do otherwise. Had someone taken the initiative to make everyone ham things up a bit, they could have had a camp horror classic. It’s unfair though to assume people could make such predictions in just the scripting stage or that such drastic changes could have been made to a movie. People are just trying to do their jobs. Still, you know what you’d think would have tipped them off? The fact they spend the movie being pursued by a giant fucking close-up of some sweet little bunny rabbits.
This is key to understanding “NotL.” In something like “Attack Of The Killer Tomatoes,” the ridiculousness of the monster is the joke. Everything in the movie plays into that. “NotL,” not so much. You see, somebody injected rabbits with some serum and then, a bit later, people started getting murdered by rabbits. Their main method of attack seems to be using “Field Of Dreams” slow motion. You only see the aftermath of this, which for some reason involves the victims being caked in pasta sauce and having their clothes ripped apart. Massive rabbits have an almost identical method of attack to an angry Gordon Ramsay apparently.
And no, not mutated scary rabbits like the sheep in the underrated and great New Zealand splatter movie “Black Sheep.”
No effort is made to show any mutation in the rabbits apart from size. This sounds kind of petty but once you see the movie, you’ll understand how ridiculous it is. The movie regularly cuts from footage of some rabbits affably wobbling across an obvious miniature landscape to hordes of screaming people and then expects you to be okay with that.
I know I haven’t been entirely complimentary to this movie so far but make no mistake, this is definitely worth watching. I don’t usually advocate watching bad movies just cause they’re bad, unless three deadpan men are talking over it, but “NotL” is a definite exception. It’s actually amazing to sit and watch the bizarre rabbit attack and the way none of the characters exhibit an ounce of skepticism about whether massive rabbit attacks could be A Real Thing That Happens.
In this age of ironic detachment and quality television, maybe it might be refreshing to look into “Night of the Lepus” for a reminder that there was a time movies could be both terrible and ridiculous, but only by accident, and chock-full of giant, sweet-faced bunny rabbits.
Sean Mc Tiernan has a blog and a twitter. So does everyone, though. He also has a podcast on which he has a nervous breakdown once an episode, minimum.You should totally email him with your questions / insults/ offers of tax-free monetary gifts.