What I say:
Once again a group of B-movie reviewers have decided to take on another roundtable topic. This time is vermin or creep-crawly
movies.
In your heart, there are the dark fears, but even are the deeper and darkest fears. Those fears, yoyu wouldn't admit to anyone...Some
are the famous ones like arachnaphobia (fear of spiders). However, some are far less known like coulrophobia (fear of clowns)
triskaidekaphobia (fear of the number 13), or paraskavedekatriaphobia (fear of Friday the 13th). What is my ranting got to do
with other than phobia-name dropping? Well, most people if not afraid at least aren't too fond of the aforementioned creepy-crawly
creatures in their face. But, what do creepy-crawly creatures have to do with giant rabbits?
We've heard how certain animals when introduced into areas and don't have any natural predators they just keep expanding. Cane
toads have become a pest in Australia after being introduced and breeding out of control. You may be saying what has that got to do with
Bignormous bunnies. Well, Australia also had a plague of rabbits, too. The idea is that on the valley after the wolves have been killed, the
rabbits have no natural predator to cull the population. SCIENCE once again tampers and manages to screw things up with one of the
most annoying movie children ever...
Certain decades are known for the dangers that are most exclusively used in films. The sci-fi movies of the 1950s almost took the
copyright on the dangers of the atomic and hydrogen bombs and the dangers of nuclear energy. The 1970s loved to create ecological
terror movies like Food of the Gods. Granted, most nature-runs-amok movies from the 70s were Jaws ripoff movies. How
could one tell that Night of the Lepus is from the 1970s without the polyester clothes? The beating of the audience with the
environmentalism, the dangers of pesticides, etc...
Giant rabbits running amok and feasting on people with Bones from Star Trek looking like he really wished the series
hadn't been cancelled. Caught this movie as a kid where it was etched into my mind. This movie has sort of become one of those
movies that makes you wonder how could it have been made. Who in their right mind would want to make a giant killer rabbit
movie? The 1950s saw the beginning of giant insect movies. At least, some people are instinctively disturbed by bugs. But
rabbits?
The killer rabbit genre wasn't killed by this movie. They popped up later thanks to Monty Python and the 1980s classic Summer
School (Any PG-13 movie with killer rabbits, the classroom slaughter scene, and film footage from Texas Chainsaw
Massacre is a classic). Wouldn't doubt that the Sci-Fi Channel hasn't had some original killer rabbit movie. With as many killer
snake and shark movies, killer rabbits would almost be a leg up in improvement.
People may have forgetten that pre-CGI used the infamous forced perspective effects. At least, the effects are better than
Beginning of the End. However, claiming a movie's effects are better than
what Bert I. Gordon did could be faint praise only seen with an electron microscope.
Rory Calhoun is best known for all of his roles as cowboys. However, we must never forget Rory Calhoun from
Hell Comes to Frogtown. The movie that brought humanoid-Frog hybrids to the tail-end
of the 1980s though not on the fault of Rowdy Roddy Piper. Rory may be best known to most genre fans for Motel Hell, the movie
that has the human head garden which is used for the tastiest kind of sausage: Caucasian, the other white meat...
Stuart Whitman is another one of those Western character actors. He's popped up in many of guest roles in plenty of shows from the
1970s and 1980s. Actors do get the occasional stinkers like Omega Cop,
too. However, Adam West was in that movie, too.
Poor DeForest Kelley. Between the Star Trek TV series and the Star Trek movies, this turned out to be his last
non-Trek based acting role. Can understand why he only wanted to do Bones after being in a movie with giant killer bunny rabbits. This
role is slightly more than a cameo and less than a starring role. He sort of hovers around the background with very little importance on
the plot.
Janet Leigh had to contend with Norman Bates and killer Birds. However, she faces her biggest challenge before battling
bignormous bunnies.. We can only hope Janet Leigh was able to teach to Jamie Lee Curtis to avoid giant killer rabbits which allowed
her to evade Michael Meyers in Halloween.
Funny how no one realized that the kids were responsible for the infected rabbit getting out into the wild. Amanda as the whiny girl
switching the experimented rabbit and taking it for a pet was the beginning. The boy knocking the rabbit loose and blaming it for being
responsible for breaking the horse's leg. Those 2 acts were the factor for all the deaths of the people in this movie. Hate to think what
moral there would have been if they'd been chewed oout at the end of the movie. It would have been like a Leave it to Beaver
episode where Beaver apologized to Ward for accidentally starting a global thermonuclear war.
Somehow, the rabbit closeup of its eye will always bring the ominously creepy music. If this movie had been made a couple years
later, the ominously creepy music would have been replaced with chanting in Latin like in the Omen. The closeup on a rabbit's
eye with the Latin chanting of the scientific name of the rabbit's kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, group, and species wouldn't be
quite as ominous as the Psycho theme or the Friday the 13th score but better than the huge number of generic synthesizer
scores...Every time the ominous music plays chant "LEPUS MAXIMUS!!! LEPUS MAXIMUS!!!"
