31 Days of Horror: “Night of the Lepus”

by Sean McTiernan

Like most things, you can link this back to Leslie Nielsen. The reason “Airplane” is one of the funniest movies ever made, and if you don’t agree I’ll kill us both without hesitation, is they didn’t use comic actors. The comedy comes from seeing serious people deliver insane dialogue with grave facial expressions. (Also: can’t wait for the time people realise “CSI:Miami” was a comedy and it gets a serious critical re-evaluation). “Airplane” would not have been the same if Gene Wilder was up in that mix, telegraphing the hell out of all 20 jokes-per-minute that movies has. No shots at Gene Wilder-just, deadpan is the only path you can take to get that certain type of laugh. The one where the joke isn’t being told by the character, it’s on them. Which brings us to today’s movie.

Unlike most of the other productions on the camp end of this list, “Night of The Lepus” has zero self-awareness and no clue whatsoever that what’s happening on the screen could in any way be ridiculous. The guys behind “Silent Night Deadly Night 2” probably knew what they were doing was pretty crazy, perhaps even a set-up to capture the sole performance of a man possessed. The dudes behind “Nightmare On Elm Street Two” probably didn’t run around in paroxysms of ecstasy after their movie was greenlit, shouting “Get me some stairs, a baby carriage and some slow motion, we’re going to make history!”

But this film seems to have been made with zero sense that anything could be either amiss or humorous about what they were trying to do.

“Night of the Lepus” is an incredibly mediocre monster movie. Aside from the really jarring gore, it could be a colourised version of the kind of 50s monster movie parodied (weakly) in the largely forgotten (and, therefore, appropriately regarded) spoof “Eight Legged Freaks.” Oh and the monsters in “Night of The Lepus” are giant rabbits. So there’s that.

I must credit “NotL” for creating a feeling of creeping dread unparalleled by almost any other horror movie. This dread has nothing to do with the characters or the story. It’s slow realisation that there are no intentional jokes in this movie and that people are playing it straight not because of some fantastically-judged fearless acting choice, it just never occurred to them to do otherwise. Had someone taken the initiative to make everyone ham things up a bit, they could have had a camp horror classic. It’s unfair though to assume people could make such predictions in just the scripting stage or that such drastic changes could have been made to a movie. People are just trying to do their jobs. Still, you know what you’d think would have tipped them off? The fact they spend the movie being pursued by a giant fucking close-up of some sweet little bunny rabbits.

This is key to understanding “NotL.” In something like “Attack Of The Killer Tomatoes,” the ridiculousness of the monster is the joke. Everything in the movie plays into that. “NotL,” not so much. You see, somebody injected rabbits with some serum and then, a bit later, people started getting murdered by rabbits. Their main method of attack seems to be using “Field Of Dreams” slow motion. You only see the aftermath of this, which for some reason involves the victims being caked in pasta sauce and having their clothes ripped apart. Massive rabbits have an almost identical method of attack to an angry Gordon Ramsay apparently.

And no, not mutated scary rabbits like the sheep in the underrated and great New Zealand splatter movie “Black Sheep.”

No effort is made to show any mutation in the rabbits apart from size. This sounds kind of petty but once you see the movie, you’ll understand how ridiculous it is. The movie regularly cuts from footage of some rabbits affably wobbling across an obvious miniature landscape to hordes of screaming people and then expects you to be okay with that.

I know I haven’t been entirely complimentary to this movie so far but make no mistake, this is definitely worth watching. I don’t usually advocate watching bad movies just cause they’re bad, unless three deadpan men are talking over it, but “NotL” is a definite exception. It’s actually amazing to sit and watch the bizarre rabbit attack and the way none of the characters exhibit an ounce of skepticism about whether massive rabbit attacks could be A Real Thing That Happens.

In this age of ironic detachment and quality television, maybe it might be refreshing to look into “Night of the Lepus” for a reminder that there was a time movies could be both terrible and ridiculous, but only by accident, and chock-full of giant, sweet-faced bunny rabbits.

Sean Mc Tiernan has a blog and a twitter. So does everyone, though. He also has a podcast on which he has a nervous breakdown once an episode, minimum.You should totally email him with your questions / insults/ offers of tax-free monetary gifts.

“The nation’s economic woes boil down to this. Compared with a healthy economy, about 7 million working-age people and 5 percent of the nation’s industrial capacity are sitting idle, not producing what they could. The economy is growing again, but at a rate — less than 2 percent in recent months — that’s too slow to keep up with a population that keeps increasing and workers who keep getting more efficient. This is the output gap, the divide between the amount the United States can produce and what it is actually producing. The gap, currently $900 billion, explains why we feel so miserable more than a year into what is technically classified as an economic recovery.” There is also a really depressing chart to go along with it.

by Ann Finkbeiner

This picture is not chicken wire or a tesselation or a patchwork quilt or a cross-section of a honeycomb-amazing how many things are linked hexagons-but a material called graphene, which is just plain old pencil-lead graphite sliced thin, sliced as thin as you could imagine thin could be. It’s thin enough that electricity flows through it effortlessly. It’s thin enough to see through. It’s one atom thin. Those atoms are carbon and their little arms hold tight and so in spite of being thin, it’s also flexible and strong. Its possible applications are making the technoratiat fall all over itself with joy and lust. It just won its discoverers, Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov, the physics Nobel Prize.

Geim and Novoselov, at the University of Manchester in the UK, made the first sample of graphene-that wasn’t made by everybody else writing with a pencil on paper-by peeling a layer of it off a chunk of graphite with Scotch tape. Graphite is a three-dimensional honeycomb; a one-millimeter chunk of graphite is actually a stack of three million layers of graphene. The layers peel off easily; all the strength is in the flat layer, in two dimensions. You can roll a layer into a nanotube; you can wad a layer into a buckyball. Graphene’s strength, plus its transparency, flexibility and ability to conduct electricity, are ideal for making transistors, touch screens, sensors and roll-up computer monitors which, being thin as paper, could-I make a wild surmise-be bound into books.

Geim and Novoselov are young, 51 and 36 respectively, giving them plenty of time to develop the Nobel effect and become so famous they stop doing research and spend the rest of their lives giving talks and having opinions. Geim says he won’t: “I’ll just try to muddle on as before.” Ten years ago, he won another prize, called the Ig Nobel, for magnetically levitating a frog.

This Nobel for physics, like most of them lately, is in a field called condensed matter, formerly called solid state, which is famous for having applications, attracting money and being completely incomprehensible. It bores me to pieces, I really can’t abide it, but something about reducing reality to two dimensions makes my inner philosopher want to jump around all over the place.

Ann Finkbeiner is a proprietor of The Last Word on Nothing, and is newly the author of A Grand and Bold Thing: An Extraordinary New Map of the Universe Ushering In A New Era of Discovery. She runs the graduate program in science writing at Johns Hopkins in The Writing Seminars.

Let’s all take a moment to enjoy the majesty of Evo Morales, the president of Bolivia, kneeing an opponent in the ‘nads during a friendly soccer game. Life is certainly full of delightful surprises sometimes, isn’t it! Okay, back to work.

Now that the temperature is finally catching up to the season, it’s the perfect time for the great cold weather meal that is ramen.

If you’re one of those sad cases who only thinks of ramen as some sort of pre-packaged nonsense that you boil for a minute or two along with a powdered soup, I hope sophomore year is going well for you so far. But also, you should go check out the Minca in the East Village. Minca makes amazing noodles. Even better: the base for most of the soups is a pork broth that stews all day in two huge barrels that you can see in the back of the kitchen. The namesake Minca ramen is great, as is the Tsukemen (but that’s more of a hot weather ramen without the warm, delicious pork broth, so hold off on that one for now). In case you don’t believe me, click here.

This content series is brought to you by the All-New 2011 Kia Sportage. Welcome to the Next Level.

Eyeglass thieves to Jonathan Franzen: “$100,000-Your glasses are yours again!” And then: “As news spread around an incredulous party, a police helicopter was tasked to search for the thieves…. One of them was apprehended hiding in the bushes.” Why has no one yet claimed this act?

by Abe Sauer

Wisconsin’s Republican candidate for governor, Scott Walker, has locked up the endorsement of an A-list star. In commercials now running throughout Wisconsin, “Friends of Scott Walker” attack Democratic candidate Tom Barrett on his record on sewage control while he was mayor of Milwaukee. Narrating the ad is none other than… Morgan Freeman? Let’s listen.

[wpaudio url=”http://tomscocca.com/wtffake.mp3″ text=”What an Endorsement!’” dl=”0″]

Curiously, what with such a big name, Walker’s team has not put the ad online, seemingly content to have it run during Green Bay Packer games and the nightly local news. We’re not political strategists, but it would seem that a relatively-unknown Milwaukee county executive candidate like Walker would want to play up this endorsement as much as possible.

Walker’s campaign failed to return numerous calls for comment. Maybe they’ll return the ones from Morgan Freeman’s agent.

Oh yes:

Abe Sauer is really upset about the Milwaukee Brewers.

Let’s all take a moment to enjoy the majesty of a pumpkin growing in a tree. Life is certainly full of delightful surprises sometimes, isn’t it! Okay, back to work.

16. Baha Men, “Who Let The Dogs Out”

15. Katrina and the Waves, “Walking On Sunshine”

14. The Vapors, “Turning Japanese”

13. Vanilla Ice, “Ice Ice Baby”

12. Kajagoogoo, “Too Shy”

11. Bruce Channel, “Hey! Baby”

10. The Proclaimers, “I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)”

9. Dr. John, “Right Place, Wrong Time”

8. The Honeydrippers, “Sea of Love”

7. The Heights, “How Do You Talk To An Angel”

6. Wall of Voodoo, “Mexican Radio”

5. Go West, “King Of Wishful Thinking”

4. Cutting Crew, “(I Just) Died In Your Arms”

3. Biz Markie, “Just A Friend”

2. Jesus Jones, “Right Here Right Now”

1. EMF, “Unbelieveable”

Maura Johnston would probably be able to tolerate this album-which supposedly proves that iTunes’ dynamic pricing did actually result in a handful of songs prices being lowered-more if VH1 clip shows and wacky movie montages never existed.

To Alaska: “U.S. Senate candidate Joe Miller confirmed Monday night that his wife — once hired to work as a part-time clerk for the same Alaska court in which he was serving as a U.S. magistrate judge — went on unemployment after she left the job. Miller is running on a self-described constitutional conservative platform, arguing that the nation must return to the principles and powers penned by the founding fathers to save it from bankruptcy. Putting an end to entitlements on a national level and empowering states has been a key message in his campaign.”