Villian(s)  Giant rabbits

Actor(s):  Stuart Whitman, Janet Leigh, Rory Calhoun, DeForest Kelley

Brief Description  Night of the Lepus is a 1972 American science fiction horror film about a swarm of giant, flesh-eating mutant rabbits terrorizing an Arizona town. Directed by William F. Claxton and adapted from Russell Braddon's satirical 1964 novel The Year of the Angry Rabbit, the movie is widely celebrated as a cult classic for its campy, deadpan execution of an inherently absurd premise.

Plot:
Arizona rancher Cole Hillman (Rory Calhoun) is facing a devastating rabbit infestation on his property. Because his team previously killed off the local coyotes, the natural predator balance was broken, causing the rabbit population to explode. Refusing to use lethal cyanide poison, Hillman asks university president Elgin Clark (DeForest Kelley) for help. Clark recruits eco-researchers Roy Bennett (Stuart Whitman) and his wife Gerry (Janet Leigh). Roy decides to test a new hormonal serum on a small batch of rabbits to safely disrupt their reproductive cycles. The Bennetts' young daughter, Amanda, falls in love with one of the test subjects. She secretly swaps it out with a normal rabbit from the control group to save it. The mutated rabbit quickly escapes into the wild, where it breeds with the local population, passing on the altered genes.

The resulting offspring grow into bloodthirsty, 150-pound, wolf-sized monsters. The giant rabbits begin brutally attacking livestock and slaughtering local townspeople. As the horde of giant bunnies stampedes toward a nearby town, the National Guard, the police, and the surviving scientists devise a desperate strategy. They herd the rabbits onto a stretch of electrified railroad tracks and open fire with a barrage of gunfire, successfully destroying the mutant swarm. The filmmakers constructed highly detailed miniature towns and landscapes. Regular-sized domestic rabbits were filmed running through them to simulate giant monsters trampling buildings. To give the rabbits a heavier, more ominous gait, the scenes of them running through sets were filmed and played back in slow motion.