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What's more terrifying giant shrews or giant rabbits? It's an age old question that we may never answer.1959's The Killer Shrews and 1972's Night of the Lepus are both bad movies and I also enjoyed both because they scratch a certain itch that I and many others have. I love terrible poorly made horror movies. Sometimes laughing at horrible plots,acting and effects is all I need to enjoy a movie and these check every box. Let's take a little dip into each.

The Killer Shrews (1959) - on a remote island a scientific team is performing experiments on shrews in an attempt to one day be able to shrink humans to half there size to end world hunger. Smaller people use less resources. Enter captain Thorne the guy who delivers supplies to the island. Thorne and his first mate are forced to seek shelter on the island when a hurricane blows in. There's some sort of love triangle with the head scientist's daughter and her drunkard fiance but it's not important. Captain Thorne finds out about something even more dangerous than hurricanes or love triangles. Giant venomous Shrews! The shrews are clearly dogs with shaggy rugs on them and its hilarious. The only thing funnier is the escape from the island but you need to watch it to see for yourself.

Night of the Lepus (1972) - Once again science backfires and instead of helping ranchers deal with thousands of bunnies scientists create gigantic snarling carnivorous super rabbits that terrorize a small town. The effects are gut busting funny with what seems like the same slow motion shots shown over and over. Bones from Star Trek is in it and also Janet Leigh. Not sure why maybe they were running a little short on cash at the time. I won't spoil this ending either but it's worth a watch.

Tiggnutz wrote:What's more terrifying giant shrews or giant rabbits? It's an age old question that we may never answer.1959's The Killer Shrews and 1972's Night of the Lepus are both bad movies and I also enjoyed both because they scratch a certain itch that I and many others have. I love terrible poorly made horror movies. Sometimes laughing at horrible plots,acting and effects is all I need to enjoy a movie and these check every box. Let's take a little dip into each.

The Killer Shrews (1959) - on a remote island a scientific team is performing experiments on shrews in an attempt to one day be able to shrink humans to half there size to end world hunger. Smaller people use less resources. Enter captain Thorne the guy who delivers supplies to the island. Thorne and his first mate are forced to seek shelter on the island when a hurricane blows in. There's some sort of love triangle with the head scientist's daughter and her drunkard fiance but it's not important. Captain Thorne finds out about something even more dangerous than hurricanes or love triangles. Giant venomous Shrews! The shrews are clearly dogs with shaggy rugs on them and its hilarious. The only thing funnier is the escape from the island but you need to watch it to see for yourself.

Night of the Lepus (1972) - Once again science backfires and instead of helping ranchers deal with thousands of bunnies scientists create gigantic snarling carnivorous super rabbits that terrorize a small town. The effects are gut busting funny with what seems like the same slow motion shots shown over and over. Bones from Star Trek is in it and also Janet Leigh. Not sure why maybe they were running a little short on cash at the time. I won't spoil this ending either but it's worth a watch.

I'll have to check these out!

Here's my review for Night of the Lepus, if I may piggyback off you:


This film isn't one of those 70's classics people often talk about. It's not an amazing movie. It's a bit silly, even. But I did have a blast seeing it again. It begins on a serious note, an almost documentary-like feeling, about rabbit overpopulation, and the negative effects it can cause for man. And the somber tone continues throughout. This movie doesn't have much going for it in terms of gore, as you can imagine, though there is one scene, showing the remains of a mangled body, that gives us something.

But we do have some pretty likable characters here. And we have (amusing) scenes of rabbits attacking people. DeForest Kelley's role was one I enjoyed, and even the sheriff was a pretty decent guy. It's a bit difficult to understand exactly why the rabbits are so dangerous, but hey, it's the 1970's. Truth be told, Night of the Lepus isn't a great movie, but if you can lay back and enjoy 70's ecological horror films, you could do much worse. 7/10.


The Killer Shrews was a pretty good movie - parts reminded me of Night of the Living Dead, actually - but I've yet to rewatch it.