H.G. Wells was an excellent storyteller who also made many bold predictions about the future. This is a man who predicted space travel pretty accurately. What he never could have predicted was how bad his story "Empire of the Ants" would turn out once it made it to film. Now bundled on DVD with the Italian film "Tentacles," these two schlock fests are well known for breaking new ground when it comes to boring their audiences.
Radioactive waste is spilled onto a small island, soon to be developed as a resort. A few ants manage to get themselves covered in the goo, rapidly growing into human-terrorizing beasts. When a group of tourists take the trip to visit the area, the ants begin their picnic, munching down on everyone who comes too close. When it's discovered that the ants actually control a local town, it's up to the small group of survivors, including Marylin Fryser (Joan Collins), to stop the insects horrific plan before they take over the world.
Bert I. Gordon gives us this "classic," using the same effects he pioneered in another schlocker, "Beginning of the End." Most of the ants are real, hilariously magnified and superimposed onto the screen. The backgrounds between the humans and insect hardly ever match. Close-ups use full-size mock ups which were done so much better 20-years before in the undeniable classic "Them!" The plot rolls along at a snails pace, including an 18-minute scene in which some of the survivors simply row a boat across a river, occasionally spotting a swarm of the mutated nasties. It never really has a point, nor does any other segment in the movie. This is easily one of the most well remembered bad-movies of the 70's. (* out of *****)
An underwater tunnel experiment annoys a rather large ocean beast that immediately begins snacking on local residents. Reporter Ned Turner (John Huston) immediately picks up on the story, quickly pointing the finger at the president of Trojan Construction (Henry Fonda). The beast continues to feed ravenously until Will Gleason (Bo Hopkins) devises a plan that can finally put an end to the monster that took out and entire group of sailboat racers.
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