‘Night of the Lepus’ with Jordan Hoffman

What's more terrifying than giant rabbits? Well, just about everything. Nevertheless, this film still exists. Longtime pop culture writer Jordan Hoffman joins the show to discuss a film that regularly turns up on the list of all-time worst movies. Does it deserve to be there? We'll try to figure it out.

Released in the summer of 1972, Night of the Lepus was an attempt to make a 1950s-style giant monster movie for the 1970s. Instead of radiation, it's an ecological error upsetting the balance of nature that causes rabbits to balloon in size and terrorize the American Southwest, represented here by a cast that includes Janet Leigh, Stuart Whitman, Rory Calhoun, and Star Trek's DeForest Kelly.

It's Kelly's presence that inspired me to invite Hoffman, a longtime Star Trek expert who once ranked every episode of every Trek series, but that proved to be just a jumping off point for a digressive but ultimately rabbit-focused conversation. But before Hoffman hops on, I get into the film's background, including its unlikely origin as the satirical Australian novel The Year of the Angry Rabbit, published in 1964. All that and more awaits you in our latest episode, part of a five-episode run devoted to movies about giant animals.