#william f. claxton

[weirdlookindog]

Night of the Lepus (1972)

[rhetthammersmithhorror]

Little House on the Prairie | S3.E5 The Monster of Walnut Grove | 1976 directed by William F. Claxton, director of Night of the Lepus | 1972

[lobbycards]

Law of the Lawless, Italian lobby card (fotobusta). 1964

[gatutor]

Scott Brady-Wanda Hendrix "Diligencia a Thunder Rock" (Stage to Thunder Rock) 1964, de William F. Claxton.

[adamwatchesmovies]

Night of the Lepus (1972)

If you seek out bad movies, you’ve probably heard of Night of the Lepus. This means - I’m sorry to say it - the best part of the movie has already been spoiled for you. Even if you don’t know why this movie was doomed from the start, it’s only good for so many laughs. While you’ll have plenty of opportunities to ridicule what’s happening on-screen, I doubt this film will become a new favorite.

To humanely reduce the rabbit population ravaging rancher Cole Hillman's fields, scientists Roy and Gerry Bennet (Stuart Whitman and Janey Leigh, as compelling as a couple of lettuce heads) genetically modify the animals to make them less fertile. When their daughter, Amanda (Melanie Fullerton) releases a test subject into the wild, the state is soon overrun by giant Lepus timidus.

When rabbits were introduced to Australia in 1859, no one could’ve foreseen the damage they would cause to the continent's flora and fauna. The incident inspired the horror-comedy novel The Year of the Angry Rabbit, whose tone was completely lost upon screenplay writers Don Holliday and Gene R. Kearney. With the help of director William F. Claxton, they are trying to scare us using giant bunnies. You’d think someone would’ve raised their hands and questioned the decision. Maybe someone did at some point and to show them who's boss, this film takes the premise as if it were gospel. When the army calls for all residents to roll up their windows for fear of the giant, mutated rabbits stampeding their way, they should be laughing their eyebrows off. Instead, the people in this movie take it completely seriously, following every order to the letter without fail.

Incompetently directed, Night of the Lepus doesn’t appear to know how it could frighten audiences even if its life depended on it. Every time you see the titular monsters bounding through the tiny streets, all you can do is “awww” or laugh. There are never any ominous or moody shots. The tension is non-existent. When the film ends, you’ll be shocked. Was that it? There’s no way that was the climax. It was so easy!

Not helping the picture are the weak special effects. I can give a pass to the miniatures - how else would they have made the creatures look big? But you can clearly see the seams in several of the composite shots and whenever we get a close-up of someone fighting for their life as a giant rabbit attempts to chew their arms off, you think you’re watching a tussle between a drunken fan and the baseball team’s mascot. It’s pathetic. The actors underreact as they are about to die and when they’re calm and collected, the performances are awful.

This is one of the dullest horror movies I’ve ever seen - or it would be if it weren’t for the hugely misguided and idiotic premise. Actually, it is still fairly boring because what’s wrong about it is obvious and consistent. A true bad movie classic like Plan 9 From Outer Space keeps finding new ways to be bad. It surprises you. This movie? Not so much. After about 15 minutes, you’ve seen the range all the major actors have and after a couple of shots of the beasts chowing down on people (well, we don’t really see it, but we see the attacks and aftermath), you fully understand why this film isn't going to work. Night of the Lepus is worth seeing once so you can say you’re part of the club but don’t expect to return to this movie over and over. (On DVD, August 16, 2019)

[angelstills]

S1, Ep. 2: Country Girls (1974) Little House on the Prairie (1974-1983)

[nerds-yearbook]

In 1917, two Royal Corp pilots on patrol over France got attacked by Germans in World War I. Alexander Mackaye thought he was done for when his wing man flew into a cloud and actually disappeared. In actuality, the other pilot was transferred 42 years into the future. ("The Last Flight", Twilight Zone, TV, Event)

[l-ultimo-squalo]

Night of the Lepus (1972)

[roskirambles]

Bad Horror Movie of the day: Night of the Lepus (1972)

In a town on the West of the United States, a giant terror arises. A result of scientific experimentation gone awry, these creatures have eaten the natural predators of the area and are now out of for human blood. They’re ferocious, they’re unstoppable! They’re… giant rabbits? Look! They’re hopping over fences! How cute!

No, wait, I meant…

No, I actually meant THAT. Uh...

Where to even start with the problems? The threat of this film is “giant” bunnies running through admittedly well-done miniatures towards the camera in slow motion. They’re not really given a makeover to look grotesque or fierce, other than poorly dubbing them over with feline growls and the occasional ketchup "bloodstain" in their mouths... but that’s it. The actors might do their damndest to pretend scared by the cuddly menace, but the actual attacks are poorly simulated through a mixture of puppets and the occasional fast cut to stuntmen in fur suits tackling the cast to their demise. It gets surprisingly gory, sure, but I don’t think going on about how THAT fails too will make you take this any less seriously than you already do, nor addressing the other forms of script stupidity.

In a nutshell, you know it's bad when a Monty Python skit does a better job making a rabbit look menacing.

Director William F. Claxton might have worked on The Twilight Zone, but his true calling was Western films and it SHOWS. With a mise en scène that feels less like a monster flick and more like Bonanza, while working with a premise out of a B movie from the 1950's that they somehow tried to play completely straight, it comes as a surprise to not a single soul on the planet this ill-conceived experiment of a horror movie was a disaster that even the original scream queen Janet Leigh was never gonna salvage.

Unless you have severe Leporiphobia, the only scary thing here is the overall quality of the end result. But boy, is it fun to riff on.

[squirrelfm]

"Rub his foot while your at it, honey, and see what kind of luck that brings us. As a matter of fact, rub all four of them." ~ Gary Bennett

[lifeinasmalltowninjapan]

Night Of The Lepus (1972)

🎬 William F. Claxton

[weirdlookindog]

Night of the Lepus (1972)

[rhetthammersmithhorror]

Little House on the Prairie | S6.E14 The Werewolf of Walnut Grove | 1980 directed by William F. Claxton, director of Night of the Lepus | 1972

[lobbycards]

Law of the Lawless, Italian lobby card (fotobusta). 1964

[gatutor]

Barry Sullivan-Marilyn Maxwell "Diligenica a Thunder Rock" (Stage to Thunder Tock) 1964, de William F. Claxton.

[moviesandmania]

NIGHT OF THE LEPUS (1972) Reviews of giant mutant rabbits horror

‘There was no limit to the Horror… no end to the’ Night of the Lepus is a 1972 American science fiction horror film about marauding giant mutant rabbits attacking farmers and their families. Directed by William F. Claxton (Twilight Zone episodes) from a screenplay written by Don Holliday and Gene R. Kearney, based on the 1964 science fiction novel The Year of the Angry Rabbit. The movie stars…