Night of the Lepus

The movie opens showing a news report about how overpopulation is not just a human problem, but exists in the animal kingdom as well, using the rabbit population explosion in Australia in the 1950s as an example. There was a similar plague of rabbits getting out of hand in the American Southwest, especially in Arizona, where the rabbits were devouring crops, destroying property, and out-competing livestock for a finite supply of food and water.

Moving to the action in Arizona, our first view is of rancher Cole Hillman, riding his horse. The horse steps into a rabbit hole and injures itself, and Cole must shoot it and walk home. He instructs one of his ranch hands to take the truck to go get his saddle, then makes a phone call to the university in Ajo, hoping to find a cure for the rabbit infestation. He meets Dr. Elgin Clark, but his first suggestion is for the same person who killed all the coyotes that were keeping the rabbits in check. Cole is hesitant to make the same mistake twice, but agrees to visit the Bennett family, scientific researchers who are looking for more ecologically friendly ways of controlling wildlife.

We meet the Bennetts, father Roy, mother Gerry, and daughter Amanda. Roy was capturing bats for an experiment. They want to control the bats' flight pattern, hoping to use them to kill mosquitoes, without the nasty side effects of DDT and other insecticides. Elgin Clark comes to see him and asks him to visit Cole, to see if he could come up with an ecologically friendly way to solve the rabbit problem. On the way there, they see ranchers desperately shooting at rabbits trying to preserve their livelihoods.

At Cole's ranch, Cole explains his problem. Although hardly an environmentalist, Cole has reasons of his own for not wanting to use poison to kill the rabbits. The poison would harm his cattle, so he would have to sell them at distress prices, and eventually his land would become toxic and barren. He can hold out only a few more weeks before using the cyanide, and the other ranchers are anxious to use it sooner. Roy suggests interfering with the rabbits' hormones, or introducing a disease that affects only rabbits, and takes several rabbits with him to begin experiments. Meanwhile, their daughter Amanda becomes friends with Cole's son Jackie.

Back at the university, the experiments are not producing any useful results. They will never have a solution in time to save Cole's ranch. He tries one last injection, in an untested rabbit, over the objections of Amanda, who has become attached to the rabbit in question. While her parents' backs are turned, the mischievous little girl switches the rabbit with another one from the control group, hoping to protect it from further harm. Then she pesters her parents into letting her adopt it as a pet. They think that the rabbit is from the control group and thus has had no injections.

They return to Cole's ranch to pick up more rabbits for experimentation, but Jackie does not like Amanda's new pet, since the rabbits are a menace to his family and they killed his chickens at one point. He seizes the rabbit and releases it, and it runs away. Amanda forgives him and they go off together to talk.

At the university, the experiments have failed. Some of the rabbits have grown enormously, but are otherwise unaffected. Roy, depsite his misgivings, calls Cole to tell him to do what he needs to do. Cole has one more try, though. He sets part of his range on fire, sacrificing some of his land in hopes of creating a strip of charred land that is completely devoid of food and water, that the rabbits will not be able to cross. Some of the other ranchers are skeptical, but they trust Cole's judgment enough to delay their own use of poisons a little longer. The fire drives away the rabbits, for awhile.

While inspecting the land, the Bennetts and Cole find an unusual animal track. They don't know what the animal was, but they know that it was big. Meanwhile, Jackie takes Amanda to meet a friend of his, Captain Billy, who has a gold mine in the hills. Arriving at the mine, they find no one home. He sends Amanda into the mine to look while he looks outside. Jackie finds more animal tracks, while Amanda sees the shadows of enormous rabbits. Then she sees a dead body, presumably that of Billy. She screams and runs out of the mine. We next see her being examined by a doctor, who determines she only had a shock and will be fine. Jackie describes what he could remember, but everything happened very fast; he doesn't remember much.

At night, a driver with a refrigerated truck stops to check his truck, and hears the thunder of paws and heavy breathing nearby, but it's too dark to see what's going on. He fails to get back in the truck while the getting is good, and is attacked by the rabbits. The next morning, a policeman finds the abandoned truck, its cargo of vegetables scattered over the ground, and then finds the driver's body. He calls for the sheriff to examine the body. While he is there, he gets a call. The body has been recovered from the mine, and it is Captain Billy, looking as badly mutilated as the truck driver.

Back in town, the coroner determines that the bodies and boxes of vegetables were not chopped with an axe, but were chewed or gnawed. He can't think of what animal could cause so much destruction, except maybe a saber-toothed tiger. Meanwhile, another policeman finds more mutilated bodies nearby.

At the university, Roy and Elgin realize that the huge rabbits that Amanda saw are likely the cause of the destruction, and are probably the result of their experiment. They debate calling the sheriff, but Elgin, fearing the bad publicity that it would draw to the university, talks them out of it until they can gather more evidence. Roy tells Gerry to go call Cole, intending to go see him the next day to look for the rabbits, and try to destroy them.

The next day, Elgin, the Bennetts, Cole, and his ranch hands Frank and Jud, arrive at the mine with cyanide and dynamite. Elgin and Frank go up into the hills to look for more holes and plant dynamite, while Jud and Cole plant dynamite at the main entrance. Elgin drops a rock into one of the holes and listens to the noises the rabbits make in reaction, holding out his radio microphone so that Roy and Gerry can hear it too. Roy and Cole go into the mine, hoping to capture a rabbit, or if that isn't possible, take a picture. They go in, camera and shotgun in hand. The others are apprehensive as Roy and Cole remain inside the mine, out of reach. Finally, Roy and Cole reach the chamber where the rabbits are holed up, and realize that using the gun may cause a cave in. They see them clearly for the first time, describing them as big as wolves and just as vicious. Roy takes several pictures, but the rabbits start to chase them, and they must escape. They didn't mark their way, so they are in danger of making a wrong turn and becoming trapped. Meanwhile, another giant rabbit burrows out of the ground outside and attacks Jud, and Gerry must save him by shooting the rabbit, and treat his injuries. Time passes, and the groups outside become more worried for Roy and Cole's safety. Finally, they reach the entrance of the mine and run out, and Elgin sets off the dynamite, collapsing the mine and burying many rabbits.

At the university, Elgin examines the photographs, and he realizes that it is time to inform the sheriff. They plan to go back to the mine the next day, to make sure all the rabbits are dead. Roy, realizing that the press will be all over the place soon, advises Gerry to take Amanda and go to another town, for their privacy, until the whole thing blows over. Next, we see rabbits leaving the mine; obviously the cave-in left a significant number of them to escape and raise more havoc. The thunder of paws panics Cole's horses, waking him up. The horses soon escape. Cole gets his family together in the storm shelter under his house, while the rabbits attack the horses. Jud, still panicked from his encounter with the rabbits earlier, runs to the truck and flees. He encounters the herd of rabbits and quickly turns around and drives back to the ranch. In his panic, he crashes the truck, knocking out the phone lines to Cole's house, just when Cole was trying to call for help. Jud runs from the truck, but the rabbits have arrived and they pounce on him. Cole shoots at them, but it's too late to save Jud. He joins his family in the shelter. There is a tense moment as the rabbits try to scratch through the door, but they are driven off. The rabbits get into the house's main floor and destroy everything inside. Cole and Frank keep them from scratching through the floor by shooting at them.

At the store in the town of Galanos, the switchboard operator Mildred is unsure what to think of Cole's telephone line going out suddenly, while Cole sounded agitated. It's late, so her husband and a friend take off to go home. Soon, she can hear the thunder of paws, too, and she looks out the window to check. The rabbits have arrived and they jump through the window to pounce on her. The rabbits also reach her house, where they catch and kill her husband before he can get inside.

In the morning, Cole and Frank go outside; the rabbits have holed up somewhere for the day. They mourn Jud, and Cole tells Frank to stay with Jackie while he goes to town. The horses are gone and his truck is wrecked, so his only option is to walk, shotgun in hand. Meanwhile, Roy sends Gerry and Amanda off in their RV to Wooddale. She promises him to call him when she gets there. Roy and Elgin contact the sheriff, who has already been informed of the rabbits. They get into a helicopter to check the area around the mine. Meanwhile, Cole has a long walk. He tries to flag down passing motorists, but traffic is light, and few people are going to pick up a man with a shotgun. Perhaps realizing this, Cole ditches the gun and continues. Gerry's RV becomes stuck in the sand on the way to Wooddale, leaving her and Amanda stranded.

Hours later, Cole finally makes it to town, and finds the store that was attacked by the rabbits the previous night. The rabbits are still inside, feasting on the food as they wait for the sun to go down. Finding no help here, Cole takes off again on foot, needing to find help, or at least shelter, before dark. During the day, Roy, Elgin, and the sheriff arrive at the mine, and they find it empty. The sheriff calls the National Guard. In the afternoon, Cole finally is able to get a ride with a priest.

The sheriff gets authorization to use the National Guard, but he is unable to contact Cole, since the switchboard at Galanos is out. Cole, riding with the priest, finally reaches a phone and calls in, and tells the sheriff where the rabbits are. The sheriff sends a deputy out to pick him up, but it will be dark soon, and the National Guard will not be able to arrive in time to catch the rabbits before they start moving again. They will likely move toward Ajo, so the sheriff decides to evacuate the town. Meanwhile, Roy is getting worried, since he has not yet heard from Gerry. It gets dark, and the rabbits start to move again, leaving the ruins of Galanos behind. The policemen get more reports of death and destruction from the areas in the rabbits' path and proceed with the evacuation as best as they can. His deputy, who has picked up Cole, reports that the rabbits are right behind them, moving fast and coming in a front about two miles wide, and they have but 50 minutes to prepare before the rabbits reach Ajo.

The National Guard major realizes he doesn't have enough men to handle a front of rabbits that long. Roy has an idea involving using the railroad. He calls the railroad dispatcher, and asks him to isolate a siding near town. The deputies can then hook electrical power up to the isolated section of railroad, and the rabbits will be electrocuted as they cross it. The National Guard will use its men to funnel the rabbits onto this section of railroad. However, there is a freight train on the tracks, and they will have to wait for it to pass before implementing the plan.

Needing more help, the sheriff goes to the local drive-in movie theater, and enlists the help of the patrons. He has them line up their cars with the lights on to help drive the rabbits in the desired direction. Roy still hasn't heard from Gerry, and he asks the sheriff to check. There have been no calls, and Elgin has called Wooddale and Gerry has not yet arrived. He asks the sheriff to being the helicopter back so that he can go look for her.

Meanwhile, Gerry and Amanda are still trying to free their RV from the sand. It's dark now, and they have made no progress. Hearing the noises from the rabbits in the distance, Gerry sends Amanda into the RV while she gets the emergency flares from the glove compartment. From the air, Roy can see lots of rabbits on the road that Gerry was supposed to take. The rabbits arrive at the RV, and Gerry holds them at bay with the flares, but she has a finite supply of them. Finally, the helicopter arrives. The noise and lights drive off the rabbits, and the family is saved. The rabbits attack a herd of cattle instead, causing a stampede.

The sheriff has the deputies ready to electrify the railroad, but the train still hasn't cleared the tracks, and the rabbits are getting closer to town. Roy and his family return in the helicopter and the deputy turns the power off just as the train starts passing, amid more reports of death and destruction from the area. When the train passes, the men set wooden stakes in the railroad to keep the section of track isolated, and then turn the power on. The trap is set. Soon, the rabbits come into sight, and the National Guardsmen start shooting at them. The lights from the cars repulse the rabbits just as hoped, and they run straight for the railroad. When they reach it, the electricity does it work, killing the rabbits that reach the tracks. Sparks fly from the overtaxed transformers overhead, but the power stays on. Few rabbits make it past, and the men have no trouble shooting them with their guns. Eventually, the ground is covered with thousands of dead rabbits.

Some time later, Cole reports that life is getting back to normal and he has repaired his ranch. Better still, some coyotes have been heard nearby, keeping the normal rabbits in check naturally. He invites them to visit the ranch some time.