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| Title: | Movie Reviews and Discussion |
| Notice: | Please do DIR/TITLE before starting a new topic on a movie! |
| Moderator: | VAXCPU::michaud o.dec.com::tamara::eppes |
|
| Created: | Thu Jan 28 1993 |
| Last Modified: | Thu Jun 05 1997 |
| Last Successful Update: | Fri Jun 06 1997 |
| Number of topics: | 1249 |
| Total number of notes: | 16012 |
73.0. "Night of the Lepus" by DSSDEV::RUST () Mon Mar 15 1993 16:00
"Night of the Lepus" is a heroic, but fatally-flawed play on your basic
"critters affected by human-induced environmental pressure (usually
radioactivity-related) become very, very large" B-movie plot. In this
case, however, the producers opted to tackle a real challenge: instead
of making the monsters something that people are already scared of when
normal-sized - spiders, ants, worms, teenagers - they went for a beast
that hardly anybody fears.
Rabbits.
Gigantic, omnivorous, surly, aggressive - and, of course, prolific -
rabbits.
Via trick photography, miniature sets, and the occasional use of what I
can only describe as a "hot grill" (which, when electrified, caused the
thundering herds of bunnies to leap sideways and shake their paws), the
director failed utterly to convince anyone, including the performers,
that the giant rabbits were (a) frightening or (b) there. (The script,
if there was one, isn't worth mentioning.) But the attempt itself was
so audacious that I have to give the filmmakers credit; yes, it was a
failure, but what a _ballsy_ failure!
Personally, I think the big mistake (if you'll pardon the expression)
was in making the rabbits, uh, big. Aside from the fundamental problems
of getting a large population to become so, uh, large, without
attracting any notice until it was too late (a problem handled with
varying degrees of success [from "zero" to "well, OK, I'll bite"] in
other giant-critter movies), there's the basic difficulty that
cottontails, even when they're the size of tractors, don't look very
frightening. And they don't _act_ very frightening. (Unless they're
standing on the "hot grill".)
Now, as I'm sure some of our Australian friends could tell us (or, for
that matter, anybody who's tried to raise lettuce anywhere near a
rabbit warren), rabbits - perfectly normal-sized rabbits - *are*
capable of causing immense destruction. And I can personally attest to
the potential fear factor of confronting a number of annoyed
jackrabbits on a cold winter's day; they'd each picked a cozy spot
under the horses' grain trough, and they clearly intended to wait there
for the inevitable spillage, no matter how close I got. But they glared
at me with those big yellow eyes - jackrabbits have eyes like owls or
hawks, totally unlike the soft brown eyes of cottontails - and
convinced me that I didn't want to find out what they'd do if I made
them move.
So my humble suggestion to any budding movie-makers out there is, when
attempting to generate fear via critters normally considered cute and
furry, don't immediately leap (sorry!) to the conclusion that bigger is
scarier. Find out what they do that's annoying or destructive, and play
on that; induce menace via increasing numbers, not increasing size, or
via disturbing changes in behavior, perhaps a growing group
consciousness. A remake of "The Birds," for example, using lean,
muscular jackrabbits with cold yellow eyes, could have instilled an
entire generation with a terror of furry, hopping things!
But that film is yet to be made. "Night of the Lepus" is not that movie.
-b
| T.R | Title | User | Personal
Name | Date | Lines |
|---|
| 73.1 | But these were not large, they were dwarfs... | 16564::NEWELL_JO | Jodi Newell - Irvine CA | Mon Mar 15 1993 17:10 | 7 |
| RE: killer bunnies...
The producers must have read note 11.* in the
MAJORS::Small_Animals conference. :^)
|
| 73.2 | | DSSDEV::RUST | | Mon Mar 15 1993 17:24 | 10 |
| Re .1: Great pointer! <heh, heh...> So the next rabbit-related horror
movie should be "Attack of the Killer Dwarfs," in which teensy, cute-
as-a-button bunnies wreak havoc, biting ankles and shredding babies and
generally threatening Civilization As We Know It, until somebody
stumbles across the solution:
Towels, of course. (And some people think "Hitchhiker's Guide to the
Galaxy" was fiction!)
-b
|
| 73.3 | and the answer is...64 | 16564::NEWELL_JO | Jodi Newell - Irvine CA | Mon Mar 15 1993 18:08 | 3 |
| :^)
|
| 73.4 | All five thumbs and both my big toes as an added bonus | ASDG::GASSAWAY | Insert clever personal name here | Mon Mar 15 1993 22:58 | 44 |
|
Blashphemy!
Beth, how could you slag what may be the single most entertaining
film in the entire history of cinema?
Didn't you feel:
The anger we share with Rory Calhoun and Bones McCoy as their land and
livelihood are decimated by hordes of selfish and hungry Bugs's?
The urge to inject the miserable monster of a daughter with the rabbit
serum as she makes the fatal switch?
The overwhelming desire to take a knife to Janet Leigh as she heroically
wards off the legions of rabid ultra-Thumpers with a common road flare?
How could you not be entranced by the z-grade Mike Oldfield rip-off music
played over the soundtrack from "Stampede of Large Cattle" as the cottontail
army overran the town? What about the Wagnerian interlude that blared as the
hedda-hoppers jumped over the obviously very large cavern?
And how could you not be completely blown off your feet by those powerful
policemen who could interrupt the Tom and Jerry cartoon at the drive-in to
announce the imminent invasion, then get all the cars to file out in single
file, and then on top of that, get them all to make a stand in front of a
coming onslaught of Hells Bunnies?
Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaannnnnnn, I'm telling you.........
[As an aside here, the first time I was exposed to this classic celluloid
was when I was attempting to tape "some other equally hideous attempt at
horror film that only my brother and I, and maybe Beth or Ray would be
entertained by" off of early morning cable. The station ran late, and I
ended up with half of what I wanted to tape, and the end of Lepus Soup.
I had no idea that this movie even existed at the time, but as I watched
the spine-chilling denoument, I doubled over with peals of laughter,
tears formed in my eyes, and eventually I had to go to the bathroom. I
had a stomach ache for a while after, but I swore I'd tape the whole thing
the next time it was on. I did, and it was even better the second time
around because you can spot more of the painful details when you're not trying
to avoid hyperventilation.]
Lisa-Miss-Creature-Feature-1993
|
| 73.5 | | DSSDEV::RUST | | Tue Mar 16 1993 09:52 | 8 |
| Hey, I gave it a dewclaw for unmitigated gall, what more do you want?
But whaddya mean, "most entertaining film". Haven't you seen "The
Brain from Planet Arous"? "The Crawling Eye"? "Caltiki: The Immortal
Monster"???
Folks today just don't appreciate the _classics_.
-b-the-aesthete
|
| 73.6 | | 5259::SHERMAN | Steve ECADSR::Sherman DTN 223-3326 MLO5-2/26a | Tue Mar 16 1993 13:01 | 5 |
| Well, if they want to make a scary movie with something "cute" they
ought to do one with that snugly bear used to advertize laundry
detergent on TV. That thing is spooky ...
Steve
|
| 73.7 | :) | 12035::RIVERS | may this vale be my silver lining. | Tue Mar 16 1993 15:50 | 9 |
| Not quite off topic, but let us not forget "Terror from the Deep" or
whatever it was with Doug McClure as the Name Star, facing the horrors
of mutated carp. Yes, you heard me correctly. Carp.
As gentle as rabbits are, I know that I can well believe that rabbits
pose a more serious threat to mankind than carp do.
kim
|