Empire of the Ants (1977) – Review

In what would be the fourth adaptation of an H.G. Wells story, having already made three films loosely based on the novel “Food of the Gods and How it Came to Earth,” producer Bert I. Gordon would tackle the short story “Empire of the Ants” in another “In name only” adaptation, and that’s if we’re being kind.

In the 1905 short “Empire of the Ants” H.G. Wells pointed out how man’s grip on the Earth was tenuous at best and that Mother Nature could always be relied upon to show humanity just how small and pathetic we are in the grand scheme of things, which is a fair assessment but such introspective thinking would not be found within the 89-minute running time of Bert I. Gordon’s Empire of the Ants, and while both the original story and this film version dealt with ants showing an advanced intelligence, Gordon would be making a movie that wasn’t so much an adaptation of the Wells story but one that harkened back to the movies 1950 and the atomic age, an era of cinema that birthed such classic giant monster films as Them!

What could be more inspiring than James Arness fighting giant radioactive ants?

If one thing can be said about the filmography of Bert I. Gordon is that he really liked things that were BIG, making a career out of bringing the world of cinema an amazing collection of giant monster films that included such entries as The Amazing Colossal Man and the Beginning of the End, so a story about giant ants seemed right up Gordon’s alley, but the funny thing is, Wells didn’t write a story about giant ants, in fact, his short story dealt with ants that while large were only large by ant standards, about five to six centimetres in length, but in this movie, the ants appear to be about five to six feet in length, which one has to admit is a rather larger change from the source material, then again, who am I to argue with a B-Movie genius like Bert I. Gordon.

It’s not like H.G. Well is around to complain.

The movie kicks off with the arrival of real estate swindler Marilyn Fryser (Joan Collins) and a bunch of her prospective clients to a nearby island to view some ‘beachfront property’ but we quickly learn that the land is useless, even before the discovery that the island is inhabited by giants ants, and once the “big” reveal occurs the story quickly unfolds much in the way of an “And then there were none” horror flick, with various people being killed off by the giant ants on their attempted journey to safety, with monstrous ants stepping in for axe-wielding maniacs. And just how did these ants become such a large menace? Well, if this film had been made in the 1950s it would most assuredly have been caused by atom bomb testing but as this movie takes place in the 1970s we get an environmental angle with the cause being related to the illegal dumping of radioactive waste.

I think these polluters may work for the villainous organization AIM from Marvel Comics.

But this movie isn’t just about a bunch of idiots being picked off one by one by giant ants, no siree, that’s just the lead up to the real goods, because before the story proper even started the film had opened with a narrator extolling the virtues of the ant, stating “This is the ant. Treat it with respect, for it may very well be the next dominant life form of our planet” and while that statement may seem a bit extreme the narration continues with a quick lesson on some of their remarkable abilities, such as their skill at building bridges, cultivating crops and that they even herd other insects like cattle, but the most remarkable aspect of the ant is their ability communicate via pheromones, with messages that cannot be disobeyed “A mind-bending substances that forces obedience” and this narration was a less than subtle way to set up the third act “Big Reveal” that when the remaining survivors eventually reach the local island town they are shocked to discover that the queen ant is using pheromones to control the human population, forcing them to work at the town’s sugar factory on behalf of their new ant overlords.

This is the kind of setup that Captain Kirk typically kicks the crap out of on a routine basis.

Of course, for a movie like this to work the cast of characters must include people for us to root for, as well as the obligatory members who we will delight in seeing eaten by giant ants, but in Empire of the Ants, they all kind of fall in the “Wouldn’t care if these people were eaten” category. First, we have the aforementioned real estate scammer Marilyn Fryser, who constantly berates her boy-toy assistant Charlie Pearson (Edward Power), then there is the gruff and stoic boat captain, Dan Stokely (Robert Lansing), who will be this film’s heroic leader, almost by default, then there is the recently unemployed Margaret Ellis (Jacqueline Scott) who is the closest we get to a sympathetic character in this movie, then there is sexual predator Robert Pine (Larry Graham), who will get kneed in the junk before getting eaten by ants, and Coreen Bradford (Pamela Susan Shoop) as the beautiful nut kicker, next there is deadbeat dad Joe Morrison (John David Carson) who the nut kicker actually seems interested in, for some reason, and finally, we have a couple of elderly time wasters and a pair of penny-pinchers to help fill out the menu, and the loss of any of them will not cause much in the way of emotional response from you the viewer, but to be fair, I was pretty much rooting for the ants from the start.

Note: I hope you like the giant ant multi-faceted POV shots because Bert I. Gordon sure did as we get to see a lot of them during the film’s 90-minute running time.

Bert I. Gordon got his start in the 50s by producing and directing a series of low-budget science fiction flicks that were notable for using various low-budget techniques to make things appear giant, sadly, decades later his budgets remained just as low and his techniques and skill as a special effects creator not much improved – Gordon didn’t just produce and direct he was also the writer and effects man on his films – and Empire the Ants utilized the same methods of making insects appear giant as he did back in 1957 in his giant locust movie Beginning of the End, as was the case in that film, Gordon would use full-scale puppets for those rare “close encounters” moments with the actors, which would rely on the use of “shaky-cam” to hide the fact that the models looked rather motheaten and cheap, but the primary technique would be to have real insects crawling up photographs and around miniature sets which led, of course, to the problem of these little creatures seen crawling up the sky.

I cannot stress enough how unconvincing and laughable this looks.

Stray Observations:

• For some strange reason the dudes doing the illegal dumping of toxic waste use barrels that are surprisingly buoyant, allowing them to quickly wash ashore, which seems like an odd way to “secretly” get rid of your nasty byproducts.
• Charlie states that “One in three people are here just for the boat ride” but it’s more like one out of ten and as there are only nine people on this particular excursion and that seems like a very bad business model.
• Marilyn uses a megaphone to deliver her spiel about the remarkable features of Dreamland Shores, despite her “clients” sitting five feet away from her. I’m getting a distinct impression that she’s not a good person.
• The script is a little fuzzy on the timeline, the film opens with the barrels of waste being dumped and then we see little ants lapping up toxic sludge, but before you can say “Our picnic is ruined” giant ants are running a little island empire. I think the movie is missing a title stating “Six months later” or something along those lines.
• The people in this movie have terrible peripheral visions as they fail to notice scores of giant ants, who are literally a stone’s throw away, which makes the viewer quickly wonder if any of them even deserve to survive.
• The group soon realizes that the ants are forcing them in one particular direction, with one character exclaiming “Oh my god, they are herding us like cattle!” but if that’s true the ants are really bad at herding because by this point in the film the ants have killed about half of the party.

“We need to find a phone, so I can call my agent.”

With those laughable bad effects and a collection of either annoyingly bad or just plain forgettable characters, there is not a lot to recommend about Bert I. Gordon’s Empire of the Ants and the name of H.G. Wells should not be mentioned in the same breath as this film, but when the third act goes all Invasion of the Body Snatchers, with an entire town mentally enslaved by the ants, it does reach a certain level of camp fun while also the stakes a little, unfortunately, it’s a case of too little too late because when the end credit abruptly roll we are left with a rather flat feeling of “Who cares?” and that is not a good way to conclude a monster movie.