Showing posts with label night of the lepus. Show all posts
Showing posts with label night of the lepus. Show all posts

Saturday, July 12, 2008

Possibly Vampires

Last night Michael and I finally saw the cinematic masterpiece Night of the Lepus. Giant mutant killer bunnies on the rampage! I got it from Scarecrow Video where you can get anything. Oh my god this movie was great! We watched bits over in slow-mo and laughed our asses off! JoJo watched and got some pointers on world domination. If you can get a hold of this movie, watch the first half for the "special effects" and skip the second half if you want to. The first half has awesome close-ups of blood-drenched tooth-baring giant rabbits. The second half is just many scenes of rabbits running through miniature sets, and then of people killing them.

Michael and I kept wondering how the bunny wranglers got the rabbits to bare their teeth so much. Bitter paint on their teeth? Glue on their gums? I hope it wasn't to bad for the rabbit "actors". Every once in a while you'd see a person in a bunny suit, too, for those scenes which a rabbit actor just couldn't pull off.

I put together a montage of our viewing experience. I hope it inspires you to get the movie some day!

Thursday, March 8, 2007

The Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog

Never underestimate a rabbit. As relatively new rabbit owner who is very familiar with the Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog, I have been cautious. Jo-Jo seems so soft and sweet, but we never let our guard down. We keep her full of cilantro, and so far she hasn't tried to eat us.







Scotland isn't the only place with killer rabbits, so it's not just a one-time-monster-fluke kind of thing. Case in point: Gabrielle on Xena: Warrior Princess locked in a fight to the death.




And you think you're safe in the great country of USA? You are not, sir. The fine art house film Night of the Lepus will cure you of that misconception. Here's the "plot" outline, from an IMDB comment:



"In brief: Somewhere in the American Southwest, ranchers are losing their crops to hungry herds of Jackrabbits. A scientist, attempting to figure out a way to slow the reproduction rate of the rabbits, injects an experimental hormone into some test animals. One of the test rabbits escapes and begins mating with the local bunnies, resulting in a horde of giant killer mutant rabbits with a taste for human flesh. You CAN'T make this stuff up, kids! From there it's long-eared, low budget mayhem of the highest order, with scenes of regular-sized bunnies rampaging through miniature Western towns (complete with dubbed-in squeals and roars on the soundtrack) and hungry bunnies (played by stuntmen in full body rabbit suits) attacking unlucky townspeople, until the military is called in to neutralize the threat. Anyone who makes it more than fifteen minutes into this movie without cracking up is a better person than I am. You can almost imagine Janet Leigh during filming, smoking cigarettes in between takes and asking DeForest Kelley "What the hell are we doing in a movie about KILLER RABBITS? I worked with Alfred Hitchcock for cryin' out loud! I am going to KILL my agent!" I had pet rabbits growing up and never found them scary in the slightest. Maybe that's why I love this movie so much. To this day, I wonder if the studio person who green-lighted this project and allowed it to be made still had a job when his superiors saw the final product. Do yourself a favor and check out NIGHT OF THE LEPUS, an unjustly forgotten slice of early 70s drive-in cheese. You may love it, you may hate it, but I promise you, you will NEVER forget it! "