- Directed by William F. Claxton
- Written by Don Holliday, Gene R. Kearney, Russell Braddon
- Stars Stuart Whitman, Janet Leight, Rory Calhoun, DeForest Kelley
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 28 Minutes
- Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AA910vCNRe4
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
Despite the monsters being supercharged and super sized rabbits, this manages to be a serious and decent horror movie. They don’t play it for fun or for laughs. The effects aren’t super effective, but they help tell the story. We’ve certainly seen worse, and this was pretty entertaining.
Spoilery Synopsis
We are told by a newscaster about the population explosion. “Will there be enough room to live in?” He talks about nature’s changing patterns. He shows a video about an Australian plague of rabbits and the “rabbit war.” The same thing is happening right now in Arizona; the rabbits’ demand for food is increasing. Credits roll.
Cole Hillman rides a horse that steps into a rabbit den and breaks a leg. The man wastes no time in shooting the horse, and he doesn’t seem very shook up about it. He notices that there are a lot of rabbits out in the field. He calls Elgin Clark, the college president, who wants to send a couple of insect specialists, Roy and Gerry Bennett, who know how to deal with vermin.
We cut to the Bennetts, who are catching bats in a cage with their daughter Amanda. He wants to use the bats to kill mosquitoes. Elgin drives up and tells him about Cole’s rabbit explosion. Cole wants to avoid poison, but if they get to other ranchers, there’ll be cyanide all over the state. Poison kills birds, insects, and causes more trouble than the rabbits. Roy suggests trying hormones so they can’t breed anymore.
Cole shows the Bennetts his rabbits and they take samples. One of them bites Cole, so they aren’t nice rabbits, but they aren’t anything special. Little Amanda loves the cute little bunnies. Cole injects one of Amanda’s favorite rabbits with some kind of substance that will affect the rabbit’s DNA. It won’t take long to affect the entire population. Amanda switches her “friend,” the injected rabbit, with another one so she can keep it as a pet. Cole’s son Jackie hates rabbits and makes her release it back into the field.
Roy and Gerry ride with Cole to inspect the land and find a weird, large paw print in the mud. What kind of animal could that be?
Amanda and Jackie go to visit his friend Captain Billy, but they find Billy dead, and there’s a giant rabbit in the mine. Jackie doesn’t see it, but Amanda goes into shock at the sight.
That night, a truck driver encounters a herd of giant rabbits who quickly eat him. The police find his body in the morning; then they get a call about Captain Billy, who died the same way. The doctor who investigates says they were animal attacks; he jokes that it might have been a saber tooth tiger. Then a whole family is killed.
Elgin brings in an expert who thinks these are giant rabbits. That matches with what Amanda saw, but Roy is still not convinced. The scientists all converge on the entrances to the old mine. They set explosives, but Roy wants to go inside and try to capture one alive. They soon find them, and they’re as big as wolves. They take pictures but then get lost on the way out.
Meanwhile, a rabbit comes into camp and attacks Gerry’s helper, but she drives it away with her shotgun. The men finally get out of the cave, and they detonate all the explosives.
Roy wants to make the whole thing public, but Elgin wants to go back in the morning to make sure the rabbits are all dead.
The rabbits are not dead, they’ve just had their home destroyed, and they’re not happy about it. Back at the ranch, something has the horses spooked, and they all run away. The rabbits pounce on the horses and quickly eat the herd. Farmhand Jud gets eaten as well, so Cole and the family hide in the cellar.
Homeless now, the rabbits run into town, killing people right and left. Roy, Elgin, and the sheriff use a helicopter to find the animals. Meanwhile, Gerry and Amanda drive to a campground but the truck gets stuck. Gerry holds them at bay using roadside flares.
The sheriff calls in the National Guard for help. Roy comes up with a crazy plan to electrocute the rabbits using the railroad tracks just outside of town. They use a bunch of cars and a train to “fence” in the rabbits as they wire up the tracks. The rabbits get electrocuted, shot, or both.
A few months later, Cole visits Roy and says things are all fine there now. We see a few perfectly normal looking rabbits on the farm.
Commentary
It’s very cheaply made, with red-smeared bunnies filmed over miniature sets. Except for the man in the bunny suit.
This is another one of the legendarily bad films that really isn’t so terrible today. Back in the day when films were difficult and expensive to make, films like this were considered turkeys. In today’s low-budget environment, it’s not really so bad compared to a lot of other low-budget films.
Yes, the idea of giant killer rabbits is silly, but it’s no worse than a thousand giant killer ‘blank’ films.