Empire of the Ants (Blu-ray Review)
- Review Date: Oct 07, 2024
- Format: Blu-ray Disc
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Director
Bert I. GordonRelease Date(s)
1977 (August 27, 2024)Studio(s)
American International Pictures (Kino Cult #11)- Film/Program Grade: C
- Video Grade: A-
- Audio Grade: A
- Extras Grade: B-
Review
Bert I. Gordon, who died last year at the age of 100, was a director of nearly two dozen features between 1954 and 2014, none of them good. The majority were science fiction, with plentiful special effects Gordon also directed, also badly. Among his better-known films: The Amazing Colossal Man (1957), Earth vs. the Spider and Attack of the Puppet People (both 1958), Village of the Giants (1965), and The Food of the Gods (1976).
Yet, despite their mediocrity, the better Gordon films have a dogged naïve charm. His pictures typically featured good actors (Glenn Langan, John Hoyt, Gloria Talbott, Ralph Meeker, Ida Lupino, etc.) whose performances often rise above the material, and sometimes the basic concept of Gordon’s films isn’t bad. And as generally terrible as Gordon’s special effects were, in almost every film there’s a spfx shot or two that actually works.
A dozen years after abandoning such films and experimenting in other genres, such as the mostly awful The Mad Bomber (1972), Gordon returned to his area of “expertise” with The Food of the Gods (1976) and Empire of the Ants (1977). These were essentially throwbacks to Gordon’s salad days with AIP in the late-1950s, while incorporating current genre trends like eco-horror and the huge mainstream popularity of Jaws (1975). In Empire of the Ants, composer Elliot Kaplan’s music blatantly emulates John Williams’s iconic Theme from Jaws.
As with other Gordon films, Empire of the Ants works from a not-bad premise. Crooked land developer Marilyn Fyser (Joan Collins) takes a bunch of prospective buyers across the Florida Everglades to a small island, aboard a boat captained by surly Dan Stokely (Robert Lansing), plying them with food and drink, hoping to sell them worthless plots of undeveloped land. (Signs everywhere promise “Future Marina,” “Future Beach Club,” etc.)
They include bitter Joe Morrison (John David Carson), recently divorced; Margaret Ellis (Jacqueline Scott), loyal, career-long secretary recently fired; married couple Larry and Christine Graham (Robert Pine and Brooke Palance); elderly retirees Harry and Velma Thompson (Harry Holcombe and Irene Tedrow), looking for free grub; and Coreen Bradford (Pamela Susan Shoop), who is sexually assaulted by Larry upon reaching the island and soon after falls in love with Joe. Also on the island are wolf-sized ants, the result of leaking barrels of radioactive waste that wash up on shore.
Though trashy, and by summer 1977, even anachronistic, Empire of the Ants is undeniably watchable. A third act twist, that ventures into Invasion of the Body Snatchers territory, is just the shot in the arm the narrative needs. The means for this is positively ludicrous yet, admirably, somehow it almost works and generates a little unexpected suspense.
The screenplay by prolific TV writer Jack Turley relies on genre clichés and broad characterizations, but in workmanlike fashion establishes the character types in the opening scenes, i.e., Marilyn and Larry as unlikable jerks the movie audience is eager to see eaten alive by the oversized ants, while pairing off Joe and Coreen and Dan with Margaret.
Beetle-browed Robert Lansing, a uniquely talented actor is so underutilized no explanation is ever offered for his surliness; he was put to better use in the similar if little-seen Island Claws soon after. Conversely, I suspect Jacqueline Scott, a respected fixture of ‘50s-‘80s television and the occasional movie, fine-tuned or maybe extensively rewrote her dialogue. Her character is the only one in the film with any depth, that isn’t cardboard, and her sweet attachment to grumpy Dan rises well above the material, providing a little human interest. Collins and Pine are also pretty good; in retrospect one can only admire Collins’s tenacity and survival skills navigating through the worst phase of her impressively long career.
As for the special effects, what stands out most is Gordon’s poor use of full-size giant ant props, of which it appears at least three were built for the picture. In still photographs they actually look fairly convincing, certainly no worse than the fake shark built for Jaws. Yet, whenever they’re on-screen, Gordon’s approach is to shake the camera so violently the audience never once gets a good look at them. Even as a teenager in the 1970s I recognized this as an outrageous cheat.
In other scenes, Gordon’s go-to effect are stationary mattes, composites of live action first unit footage with photographically-enlarged ants inserted into the frame. A couple of these are modestly effective: the big ants running along a pier toward the only boat off the island, the ants entering a sugar mill. In most scenes, though, Gordon seems to have squeezed his ants into a kind of ant farm, between sheets of glass with photographed cutouts behind them. The cramped ants sometimes have nowhere to move but up, resulting in some effects shots where ants seem to be crawling up the sky.
The 1.85:1 widescreen transfer provided by MGM is mostly very strong, weak only in its title elements and opticals, which show some damage and have noticeably tepid color. (Original prints were by the long-defunct Movielab.) The DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono is fairly strong for this kind of picture, supported by optional English subtitles.
Empire of the Ants on Region “A” encoded Blu-ray from Kino Cult sits in a blue Amaray case with reversible artwork, featuring the US theatrical poster artwork on the front and the Italian theatrical poster artwork with the English language title on the reverse. Everything is housed in a slipcover featuring the same US artwork. The following extras are included:
- NEW Audio Commentary with David Del Valle and Michael Varrati
- Audio Commentary with Bert. I Gordon and Kevin Shawn Michaels
- Radio Spot (HD – 1:04)
- Trailer (HD – 2:19)
- The Food of the Gods Trailer (SD – 1:01)
- Frogs Trailer (SD – 2:12)
- Squirm Trailer (SD – 1:56)
- Kingdom of the Spiders Trailer (SD – 1:53)
- 1,000 Convicts and a Woman Trailer (SD – 1:55)
In the audio commentary with director Bert I. Gordon, moderated by Kevin Shawn Michaels, Gordon is curiously reticent, answering many questions with a “Hmm-hmm” or nothing at all; Michaels struggles to get anything out of Mr. B.I.G. A typically hyperbolic AIP trailer and radio spot are also repurposed.
The new commentary track, this time by film historians David Del Valle and Michael Varrati, is rather meandering if chatty, like being trapped at a screening with two talkative film buffs (for those that like that kind of thing). The rest of the extras include trailers for other Kino titles.
The 2015 Scream Factory Double Feature Blu-ray paired with Jaws of Satan also featured a photo gallery, which hasn’t been carried over.
Crude but watchable, Empire of the Ants was a throwback even when it was new, released as it was two months after opening engagements for Star Wars. Yet it has a kind of quaint, ruddy charm and thus the disc is recommended.
- Stuart Galbraith IV