Yes, they really made a horror movie in the 70s about giant man-eating bunny rabbits. And yes, they called it Night of the Lepus, which was just another blatant attempt by Hollywood to use a dead language (lepus means hare in Latin) to make something cute and lovable seem dangerous and scary. How could something so absurd be any good?

The simple answer: It couldn’t. The fun, instead, comes from pondering how the fuck the filmmakers responsible were able to ignore this simple fact and make the movie anyway.

Stuart Whitman and Janet Leigh play a “young” couple of scientific researchers who have been asked to find a way to slow down the breeding cycle of the local rabbit population, which has grown vast enough to devastate much of the county’s farmland. Inevitably, their research fucks up the ecology and allows the rabbits to grow to the size of Volkswagens and much mayhem ensues until the adorable monsters are finally vanquished — at least, for the moment …

Lepus has a decent cast, but its members are hobbled by the script’s stubborn refusal to acknowledge that its plot is more appropriate for a spoof than a serious horror film. The ludicrous effects are achieved by filming regular-sized rabbits on miniature sets and — in some shots — by a guy in a hilariously freeze-frameable Easter Bunny suit. Director William F. Claxton tries to make up for this with some gore, but all that does is remind you how ridiculous the whole concept is in the first place. —Allan Mott

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Originally shown in 3-D, the “old dark house” thriller The Maze should be called The Castle, or The Castle with a Maze, if they wished to be more specific. Directed by William Cameron Menzies (Invaders from Mars), it follows bachelor Gerald MacTeam (Richard Carlson, Creature from the Black Lagoon) called away to his ancestors’ Craven Castle for reasons most mysterious, just as he is about to be married.

When Gerald sends a letter to his fiancée, Kitty (soap star Veronica Hurst), to break their engagement, she gets suspicious, packs her bags and her aunt (Katherine Emery, Isle of the Dead), and heads off to said Scottish castle uninvited. There, the staff is notoriously tight-lipped; the ladies are locked in their rooms at night; and strange noises emanate from the hallway.

On the grounds stands an elaborate, visually pleasing maze, but don’t expect it to play much of a part in the story outside of the “shocking” climax, in which we learn the lord of the castle is really a 200-year-old giant frog. Yes, the revelation is quite outta nowhere.

The film’s sets are something to behold, but The Maze treads its territory fairly slowly. Seeing it in 3-D may have given it an extra kick, but it would hardly explain the amphibious twist; the plague of frogs at the end of Magnolia made more sense. —Rod Lott

You can’t really blame Frogs’ producers for their blatant deception. I mean, there are frogs in Frogs, but they alone aren’t the only animals who turn against the various unlikable characters who inhabit the story. In reality, the film more accurately should have been called Traditionally Harmless Animals Which Suddenly Decide to Attack People Because of Pollution, which I will concede would have been a lot harder to market.

The people in question are a bunch of rich assholes who live under the thumb of patriarch Jason Crockett (Ray Milland, X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes) and who have gathered together on his private island to celebrate his latest birthday. You know Crockett is a bad guy because:
a) he’s rich, and
b) is in a wheelchair, so it’s only natural that he has no problem keeping the bugs away from his estate with a very eco-unfriendly pesticide.

It’s only a matter of time before the local animal population (which admittedly includes a lot of frogs) calls “Bullshit!” on this and starts attacking everyone, including the studly, tree-hugging photographer played by Sam Elliott (Tombstone), whose lack of a mustache is eerily discomfiting.

Frogs manages to avoid being as ridiculous as that same year’s Night of the Lepus, but that’s not a good thing. While watching giant bunny rabbits stalking Janet Leigh is just stupid enough to hold your attention, the same can’t be said for people being hunted by normal-sized fauna. Despite the goofy promise inherent in its concept and infamous poster, Frogs is just plain dull. —Allan Mott

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Whereas 1986’s Sorority House Massacre was serious, Sorority House Massacre II takes the self-aware, scream-queen route. That’s bound to happen when you put Jim Wynorski (1988’s Not of This Earth) at the helm.

So will abnormally large breasts, which makes him the perfect director for such an imperfect project. Who else would have the foresight to place all the cops’ expository dialogue in a strip club?

Five sorority girls buy a new-to-them house for their chapter. They’re able to afford it because the abode has been on the market for five years, what with being the site of multiple murders and all. When they’re informed by the creepy neighbor what went on there, Wynorski cedes screen time to clips from a previous movie … but not the previous movie. Instead of footage from the film to which SMHII is ostensibly a sequel, we see a condensed version of 1982’s The Slumber Party Massacre. Slumber, sorority — slutty all the same, right?

After the girls take showers (Stacia Zhivago, who kind of looks like Laura Dern with double Ds, soaps herself up to squeak-toy noises on the soundtrack), they don lingerie to play with a Ouija board, which reawakens the evil of the home; ergo, the “massacre” portion of the title can come into play.

None of the actresses can act; they’re here to scream and let the camera leer over their bodies. For example, for a simple shot of three of them ascending a staircase, Wynorski chose a lower-than-low angle for maximum ass-cheek exposure. More than the blood that squirts like a ketchup dispenser being squeezed too hard too fast, skin is the most special effect of all in SHMII, from Melissa Moore (Repossessed) to former porn star Gail Harris. Wynorski didn’t need much more that that, except the same ol’ crashed-lightning stock footage producer Roger Corman has used since his Edgar Allan Poe pictures. —Rod Lott

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To the surprise of no one, I Spit on Your Grave 2 tells essentially the same story as its 2010 predecessor (itself a remake of the notorious 1978 grindhouse classic): Pretty girl gets kidnapped, raped and left for dead; pretty girl doesn’t die; pretty girl gets revenge on her captors/rapists. And yet, returning director Steven R. Monroe improves upon it. Who knew this tale was worth franchising?

Just another struggling, aspiring model in the jungle that is New York City, Katie (newcomer Jemma Dallender) is lured to a shady photography studio with the promise of a free portfolio shoot, only to find that the three brothers running it want nudes. She politely declines. Later, one of them makes his way into her apartment, where Katie’s grueling ordeal of degradation begins.

Things get worse when she’s shoved in a box and wakes up handcuffed to a pole in a dingy basement in the siblings’ home. In Bulgaria. Eventually, but not soon enough, the tables turn and an unrated, gory vengeance is hers — the only reason viewers stick around for such exercises in brutality.

Although undeniably unpleasant, I Spit on Your Grave 2 emerges as a stronger film in all respects, with the exception of Dallender’s performance in the third act. Until then, she sells it; at that point, she veers on parody. Whereas the first film pasted elements of Saw atop Meir Zarchi’s original, this sequel borrows liberally from Hostel, culminating in an ending that’s nuts — pun definitely intended. —Rod Lott

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