Night of the Lepus was theatrically released on July 26, 1972.
Contemporary In a July 1972 issue of
The New York Times,
Vincent Canby wrote it was not an "especially memorable movie", that it was typical for the genre of science fiction horror, and that it failed because the rabbits, despite attempts to make them "appear huge and scary, still look like
Easter bunnies". In an October 1972 issue, fellow critic Roger Greenspun panned it for not "even reasonably try[ing]" to make the rabbits scary, its reliance on "tired clichés of monsterdom", "technical laziness" in its special effects, "stupid story", and "dumb direction that leaves the film in limbo" between a horror film and a fairy tale. In the
Monthly Film Bulletin, Tom Milne felt
Night of the Lepus had a promising beginning before moving into a "well-worn horror groove", such as the effort to trap Gerry and Amanda alone in a deserted area for a last-minute rescue. Noting that the film had "a certain overall charm and several striking sequences", he felt the film would have been more successful if it "had the courage of its convictions – and its realism". As an example, he points to the scene following the attack on the Calhoun ranch, in which Cole is walking into town, and tourists refuse to stop and pick him up because he has a gun. The tourists then go to the small town where the rabbits have killed Mildred and are hiding in the general store building. Rather than becoming the next victims, the family call it a
ghost town and leave. In the 1977 piece
Dark Dreams 2.0: A Psychological History of the Modern Horror Film, Charles Derry compared it to the earlier successful works
The Birds and
Willard, particularly the former, noting that both featured a "loveable creature". Though he felt the special effects were poor, he felt
Night of the Lepus successfully tied into ongoing fears of throwing
ecology out of balance, with the rabbits serving as an appropriate
metaphor for human fears about
overpopulation.
Retrospective AllMovie's Jeremy Wheeler felt the film was "all good, unintentionally campy fun" and "silly to its core". Noting that the special effects were "obvious", he criticized the "truly heinous dialogue" and remarked that Leigh "slums it" by appearing in the film. John J. Puccio of DVDTown.com felt
Lepus would have been better had it been an intentionally humorous horror spoof, rather than a legitimate attempt at making a horror film with killer rabbits. Stating that it was in the "so-bad-it's-good" category for only two minutes, he found the actors to be "stiff and uninvolved" in delivering their lines, and that it seemed more like an "old television horse opera" than a horror film with more slow-paced filler than action sequences, and the few bits of action ruined by the "corniest possible 'action' music".
AMC Film Critic's Christopher Null states that it is famous as "one of the worst films ever made". He heavily criticizes Claxton, feeling that he "just seems wholly incapable of making the movie remotely frightening, or even of making much sense" and that the bad special effects "make the entire film a huge joke". Reviewing the title for Classic-Horror.com, Julia Merriam gave
Night of the Lepus credit for attempting to be a "socially-conscious eco-horror", but criticized the slow pacing, bad dialog, poor editing with a heavy reliance on
stock footage that did not appear to be from the same film (the scenes with the National Guard machine gun nests were actually from the
1953 film adaptation of
War of the Worlds), and senseless character actions such as entering a rabbit-filled cave just to photograph them. She also criticized the film's obvious use of people in rabbit suits, but concluded its biggest flaw was that "fluffy bunnies just aren't scary". In
Horror Films of the 1970s,
John Kenneth Muir felt it one of the "most ridiculous horror film[s] ever conceived", with a poor blend of horror and environmentalism that resulted in it being more of a comedy. He criticized the "primitive special effects", badly done editing and laughable dialogue, and noted that while the rabbits and actors are rarely seen on screen together, the filmmakers used obviously fake rabbit paws and people in rabbit suits for the few scenes calling for human/rabbit interactions. Like most critics, he pointed out that the rabbits were "cute bunnies" rather than "fanged, disease-ridden mutated creatures", but he felt the actors did the best they could with the material, and praised them for "[keeping] straight faces as they heroically stand against the onslaught of the bunnies". ==Home media==