Night of the Lepus

A rabbit infestation is devastating the range land around a small Arizona town, and rancher Cole Hillman wants the animals dealt with before he loses any more of his livelihood. A zoologist, Roy Bennett, works with his wife Gerry on a hormone treatment meant to keep the rabbit population in check, but the experiment goes wrong and produces oversized, aggressive animals that spread beyond the laboratory and begin killing people in the surrounding area.

William F. Claxton directed the film, his second feature after Tucson in 1949, from a screenplay by Don Holliday and Gene R. Kearney. Stuart Whitman and Janet Leigh play the Bennetts, with Rory Calhoun as Hillman and DeForest Kelley and Paul Fix among the credited cast of twenty-six. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer released it in October 1972, and it runs eighty-eight minutes.

The ratings reflect how the film has landed with viewers: 4.2 out of 10 on IMDb from around 5,900 votes and 4.4 out of 10 on TMDB from roughly 120 votes. A critics' rating of 2.5 out of 10 from eleven reviews sits below even those modest audience scores, so the reaction has been unfavorable across the board.