Trivia / Night of the Lepus

• Cast the Expert: Rory Calhoun was of course quite adept at playing a rancher, after years of doing so in westerns.
• Completely Different Title: Released in France as Les Rongeurs de l'Apocalypse (Rodents of the Apocalypse). Released in Germany and a few other markets under its Working Title, Rabbits.
• Creator Backlash:
  • Janet Leigh later said of the film "I've forgotten as much as I can about that picture", noting that it failed because it was impossible to find rabbits scary.
  • Stuart Whitman only took his role after he'd backed out of another Universal film, The Candy Man, over a salary dispute and made this picture to clear his studio contract. He spent much of filming nursing a stomach illness and AC Lyles had to talk him out of walking off the set. Whitman afterwards called the movie "a piece of shit" that seriously damaged his career and reputation.
• Creator's Oddball: Producer AC Lyles had mainly done westerns, and this would mark his only attempt at a horror movie.
• Never Work with Children or Animals: The main problem in trying to make a horror film about killer rabbits is that the animals are herbivores and naturally docile, making it hard to film one and make it seem aggressive. Outside of this, the fact that they're known as Explosive Breeders meant that they started with two dozen rabbits when filming began, but they multiplied into hundreds
• Referenced by...:
  • If you look carefully, you can see a few seconds of this movie on the TV in The Matrix when Neo walks into the Oracle's apartment.
  • Bits of footage also appear in the movie Natural Born Killers.
  • Also appears in a flashback in an episode of Everybody Hates Chris, explaining Julius' rabbit phobia.
• Vacation, Dear Boy: Inverted. Janet Leigh took the role mainly because it was shot near her home, allowing her to visit her family on weekends.
• What Could Have Been: Janet Leigh's two children were offered minor roles, but she turned them down, not wanting her children to be part of any kind of horror film. And then her daughter became a 'Scream Queen' seven years later...
• Working Title: Originally called Rabbits, until the studio decided it wanted the presence of killer rabbits to be a surprise. Something which the ad company spoiled by sending out rabbit-themed souvenirs to different theaters.

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