EMPIRE OF THE ANTS Review
Filmmakers in the 70’s really had some anxieties about oversized and/or aggressive bugs, huh? Based on an H.G. Wells story and directed by Bert I. Gordon, EMPIRE OF THE ANTS appears like those giant bug movies of the 50’s just with even cheaper creature effects and hardly anything of substance found within its stumbling story.
Like other “nature vs. man” horror films of the 70’s, EMPIRE OF THE ANTS is A.) set in a sort of isolated coastal town (in this case, some island in Florida), B.) involves sleazy/greedy protagonists (in this case, Joan Collins’ shady real estate agent) and C.) centers around oversized bugs (in this case, ants mutated by radioactive material that are dumped into the ocean in the film’s opening minutes). Hitting that holy trifecta of 70’s B-movie eco-horror, the film details a timeshare tour gone to hell as the aforementioned shady real estate agent Marilyn and her unlucky band of gullible buyers fight off an invasion of giant, carnivorous ants who rudely interrupt their tour of empty lots. Indeed, EMPIRE OF THE ANTS brings up a troubling question as these violent events transpire: is it possible to have a good time fighting off giant ants with a cast of truly dull characters and their equally dull personal problems?
The answer is mostly no. While it’s always nice to see writers Jack Turley and director Gordon himself try to inject their shoddy horror ride with characters that are more than just monster food, the characters in this film miss that mark wholeheartedly. Among a core cast that involves about 12 characters, not a single one, from Collins’ nagging Marilyn to Robert Lansing’s blandly gruff ship captain Dan to even John David Carson’s nearly numb everyman Joe, makes an impressionable mark on the audience. These weak performances do little to carry a script that offers up only paper thin characterizations and a story that for whatever reason, tries to overcomplicate the simple yet entertaining notion of giant ants eating people as the film meanders to a “twist” that is surprising only because it’s really dumb. As a result, Gordon’s film never finds a solid storytelling rhythm as his characters are just jutted from one set-piece to another. But we’ll always have the giant, bloodthirsty ants, right?
Again, the answer to that would mostly be no. While the film’s attempts to bring giant ants to reality results in something that is more amateurishly charming than outright scary, ala those giant bug films of the 40’s and 50’s, the end result of the film’s central monsters is lacking. In most sequences where our protagonists encounter the blood-sucking ankle biters, Gordon (who also helped with the visual effects) and his crew use a mix of puppeteering and the meshing of two scenes stitched together, one of the actors running around on one side of the screen and the other side composed of footage of just a bunch of ants running around, to create attack scenes that are more funny than scary. Even with the assistance of some interesting, if uneven creature sound effects and some intriguing set locations, EMPIRE OF THE ANTS would probably only really scare those who are already scared of creepy crawlies in the first place.
By the time the film introduces supernatural powers involving the ants in its more surreal third act, audiences may be already checking their phones for something more interesting. To its credit, EMPIRE OF THE ANTS more or less delivers on the title’s promises: you’ll get a shit ton of ants on screen but everything else surrounding the oversized insects from hell will probably leave your mind as soon as the film ends.
2/5
