I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Let me ask you something. Say you're at the drive-in with your family and you hear the announcement made in my summary line above. Do you immediately start your car and leave or wonder whether you need a hearing aid? Well, every car turned on it's lights and headed out the exit, apparently in the belief that a herd of killer rabbits is just one of those things you might run into every now and then. One could make a case that they really didn't care for the flick showing at the drive-in - it was "Every Little Crook and Nanny", and YES!, that was a real movie that came out the same year this one did. With Lynn Redgrave and Victor Mature in the cast, it rates a whole point higher than this one on IMDb.You know, sometimes I struggle to write these film reviews, and sometimes they just write themselves. This is one of those times where the words just gush forth in dubious admiration for a flick that's so outrageous it just had to be made. Who came up with this concept? It would have been right at home in that bizarre year of 1959 which offered up such celluloid treats as "The Giant Gila Monster" and "The Killer Shrews". Both of those pictures, along with 'Lepus', make the best use of extreme close-up shots to enlarge their title creatures to monstrous proportions against the miniaturized buildings they over run.One of the principals here is the old Texan himself, Rory Calhoun, ditching his vest and leading the charge against the giant mutant killer bunnies, along side Stuart Whitman and Janet Leigh, a nifty trio of actors who somehow managed to keep a straight face throughout the proceedings. DeForest Kelley also got roped into this thing, and for a guy who once had trouble with tribbles, I'm wondering how the heck he came along for this ride.The thing is, nobody ever got wise to the fact that it was the Bennett's (Whitman and Leigh) own daughter who was responsible for the hare-raising horror that followed when she switched places with a serum injected rabbit she liked for another one that she put in a quarantine cage. The kid got away scot-free and no one was any the wiser. Even crack sheriff Cody (Paul Fix) couldn't solve this puzzle, after all those years keeping the peace in North Fork. You'll have to forgive all my TV Western references, you can blame director William Claxton who brought along a host of former acting colleagues from prior projects.The biggest kick I got out of this flick were all those great slow-mo rabbit stampedes, ominously approaching their intended victims or descending on the next unfortunate town in their path. By this time in 1972 it seems the film makers should have eased up on the brightness of the fire engine red blood on all those poor victims. I'd understand if this was a Hammer film, but it wasn't, so next time, let's try to tone it down a bit, OK?

This could well be the worst movie ever associated with MGM. Zoologists are enlisted to help an Arizona rancher curtail the rabbit population explosion on his land, but a serum injected into one nasty bunny creates a race of leaping monsters. Not only are these giant jackrabbits angry and on the attack, they're seemingly out for human blood. As a low-budget entry in the mutant animal genre, one can expect the obvious--but nothing in the script, adapted from Russell Braddon's novel "The Year of the Angry Rabbit", prepares us for homicidal cottontails. The sound effects of the marauding enemy underground are well-accomplished, but the visual effects are laughable, the color processing atrocious, and the cast (good actors including Stuart Whitman, Janet Leigh and Rory Calhoun) looks fatigued. NO STARS from ****

After a prologue that explains how rabbits have multiplied and become a serious threat to humans, we head to the Arizona desert where scientists Roy (Whitman) and wife Gerry (Leigh) try to slow down the rabbit population problem in the area. They inject a lab rabbit with a growth hormone-altering serum, and before they could say "where did he go doc?" the critter escapes and infects all the other rabbits making them grow to enormous sizes. The over running rabbits paw and chew the population of the small nearby town as the Sheriff (Paul Fix) and concerned scientists (including a sleepwalking Deforest Kelley Star Trek's Bones McCoy) try to stop them. So the real question is how this ridiculous idea ever made it to the screen in the first place? Chalk it up to the overblown excess of some of the early 70's movies had at the time. As you might expect, everything is taken deadly serious making it even dumber. Some campy humor would have gone a long way with this unbelievable plot line. The actors try to make this convincing but the attacks are silly and the blood looks like red paint. Director William F. Claxton brings no suspense or even a scare to this limp horror film. It was bad enough making rabbits the evil in a movie, but to have them grow to the size of bears and kill humans by ripping them to shreds? This was sunk before it was ever launched.

Ranchers in the American Southwest must deal with hordes of rabbits that are laying waste to their lands. Most would prefer to use poison, but the more humane Cole Hillman (Rory Calhoun) enlists the services of a husband and wife team, Roy and Gerry Bennett (Stuart Whitman and Janet Leigh) who propose to keep the bunnies from breeding by injecting them with hormones. Unfortunately, one test rabbit who's been given an experimental serum escapes into the wild and promptly causes mutations among its kin, leading to murderous four foot tall predators that cause even more damage than they were doing before. Eventually the National Guard must be called in to deal with the problem.This scenario is amusing, no doubt about it. No matter how hard the filmmakers and animal trainers try to make our antagonists fearsome, it doesn't really work. Director William F. Claxton handles everything in a workmanlike fashion, but, much like everyone on screen, tends to take the proceedings a little too seriously. That said, there's definite camp value in hearing lines such as "There's a horde of killer rabbits coming this way!". The actors give the movie more gravitas than it deserves; Whitman, Leigh, and Calhoun are joined by DeForest Kelley ("Damn it, Jim! I'm a doctor, not Elmer Fudd!"), Paul Fix, and Melanie Fullerton. Music, cinematography, pacing, and special effects are all adequate enough; fans of B horror may be pleased by the amount of bloodletting going on.This little movie was actually a little ahead of the curve, predating "Jaws" by a few years; it may be on the cheap and cheesy side of "nature strikes back" cinema, but it's still entertaining for what it is.Five out of 10.