The Empire of the Ants (1977)
Directed by Bert I. Gordon
Starring Joan Collins, Rob Lansing, John David Carson
This is another dubious entry in the ‘oh-crap-we-screwed-up-the-environment-and-now-we-are-under-attack-from-mutants’ genre that is entertaining all the same .The local community of ants are exposed to toxic waste and in about five minutes, they morph into gigantic, super intelligent buggers, literally. Hey, you’ve rented a movie called Empire of the Ants, so the finer points of biophysics amount to nothing. Just sit back and enjoy the daftness of it all.
The story centers on a group of mismatched, badly acted characters (i.e. the crusty old couple, the hot blooded stud, the rumpled hero, the floozy, the coward, the screaming bimbo etc), who set sail off the Florida Keys to check out real estate prospects in some dodgy swampland or other. Super-bitch Joan Collins is the sour-faced real estate agent trying to sell off the dud land to this deserving bunch of saps, but all this falls by the wayside when they are suddenly under siege from a marauding bunch of insects.
You can’t help but barrack for those six-legged behemoths as they swiftly dispatch the fleeing group in various silly ways as the plot follows a by-the-numbers ‘escape the monster’ scenario.
Visually it is surprisingly adept given the era. Apart from the use of some clumsy rubber models in attack scenes, most of the ant footage is of real ones in extreme close-up. This footage has then been pasted into scenes to give the impression that they really are clambering over houses and attacking boats. Simple but effective and something those CGI nerds can learn from.
Like so many films of its time, fans of the genre had come to expect some sort of ‘devastating revelation’ ala Soylent Green at the end of the film, and it is at this point, Empire of the Ants, stands out, providing an awkward, kind of ‘shocking’ ending that is perfect fodder for sci-fi spoons and horror buffs alike. For a genuinely frightening ‘nature outta control’ movie try the superior, Phase IV (Yes, it too features super-intelligent ants), but for big dumb fun, get a copy of this hokey gem.