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The Food of the Gods (1976)

 
Dir: Bert I. Gordon

Professional Footballer Morgan (Marjoe Gortner ) and team P.R. man Brian (Jon Cypher) take a hunting break, before the next big match, on a remote Canadian island where they are to meet another player, Davis.
But when Morgan and Brian find Davis's dead body, with a grotesquely swollen face, in the woods their break seems to be over before it's begun
When they learn that Davis died from a huge dose of Wasp sting venom Morgan and Brian head back to find out what killed their friend.
Also on the island are a young couple Thomas (Tom Stovall) and his pregnant girlfriend Rita (Belinda Balaski, “The Howling“) who are stranded their because their mobile home has broken down.

Meanwhile Mr Skinner (John McLiam) is returning to the Island after having a strange substance that came out of the ground by his farm, where he lives with his Wife, Mrs Skinner (Ida Lupino), analysed on the mainland. And he is worried.
It turns out the substance makes whatever consumes it grow to massive proportions (found out when the Skinner's added it to the chicken feed! As you do!) and seeing the financial possibilities the Skinner's have contacted ruthless food marketer Jack Bensington (Ralph Meeker) who is on his way, with his younger lover and Food Bacteriologist, Lorna Scott (Pamela Franklin) to check out the miraculous 'food' for himself.
But Mr Skinner has found out that the 'food' not only makes things big, but also makes them aggressive.
To make matters worse it seems that the Skinner's have been rather careless with their 'Food of the Gods' and it turns out it's not just the chickens that have consumed it and now the island is overrun with not only the giant wasps that killed Davis, but also a savage colony of giant rats…..

 
Ahhh…Burt I. Gordon, King of 'Giant Things Schlock'.
Before "Food" he gave us a mixture of giant Humans and giant beasties in the forms of "Village of the Giants", "Earth Vs The Spider", The Amazing Colossal Man", "War of the Colossal Beast" and "King Dinosaur".
And after "Food" he would gave us the infamy that was "Empire of the Ants" where Joan Collins is terrorised by magnified, superimposed footage of real ants crawling up a bit of glass! Class.
As with "Village of the Giants" Mr Gordon has once again made H.G. Well's spin in his grave by 'adapting' part of his novel "The Food of the Gods" into one of his Drive-In monster fests. And their sure isn't much of the distinguished Mr Well's left here!

With a skilled blend of anatomically correct model work and state of the art visual effects, where actual animals are magnified and seamlessly threaded in with the actors, Mr Gordon has created one of the most convincing…NO! I can't keep it up!
I'm sure you can tell dear reader that I am being mightily sarcastic, because in reality Mr Gordon has given us wonderfully dreadful FX that are about as convincing as a 'Playstation 2' at an antiques fair.

The first spectacle the viewer witnesses is an attack by the giant wasps as Davis swipes madly at truly dire magnified wasps, that looks almost like cartoon footage, before being set upon by a completely static rubber model that lands on his back proceeds to sit there doing nothing as Davis screams out his anguish.

But the most thrilling sight is yet to come…Chickens! Yes folks, Chickens. Giant chickens that are represented by an (immobile again) giant model head that pecks (less than) menacingly at a desperately overacting Marjoe Gortner. And if this isn't enough to floor you then the final shot in the scene of Gortner next to a couple of real, magnified, chickens most certainly will.

Throw in some suitably disgusting but rubbery looking giant grubs as well as the giant rats themselves (again a mixture of model heads, magnified real rats and real rats crawling over scale model scenery and little toy cars) and you have a veritable hodge podge of Trash movie goodness. And you just have to smile at the fact that growls and roars have been added to the rats, so they sound like a pack of leopards!
A couple of the split screen optical effects, so that actor and rat can share the same shot, are actually pretty good, a scene of Morgan and Brian in a jeep next to them by a river and the survivors on top of the farmhouse with the rats trying to climb up are memorable and pretty effective.
But in general this is classic 'so bad it's good' territory as far as the FX go.
In fact at one point Meeker’s character, on seeing the Chicken carcass, announces "How do we know some joker didn't make it out of Plaster of Paris and a handful of ostrich feathers"? Hmmm…I’m saying nothing!

"Where in hell did you get those goddamn chickens"? Indeed, a very relevant question given the situation poor Morgan just found himself in. And it’s dialogue like this that would give any schlock movie fan a warm and fuzzy feeling inside.
Silly conversations are the order of the day here in fact and thankfully all of tem are played dead straight. Essential where this type of cinematic creation is concerned.
The most bizarre moment though is when, in the middle of a rat attack on the farmhouse Lorna suddenly announces to Morgan "I want you to make love to me. See, silly isn't it"? Indeed.

Given the actors on display here you would have thought something good would struggle free of the trashy bonds the film has put around everything, but there is little here to be proud of. Those worth a mention are;
Good old Ralph Meeker energetically, and valiantly, swipes away at nothing when supposedly being attacked by magnified wasps, but looks half drunk and slurs his words for the rest of the film, Pamela Franklin (“Legend of Hell House”) is the same rather drab presence she always is, Ida Lupino (once a striking Hollywood actress in films such as “High Sierra” next to Humphrey Bogart) slums it amiably but does little but roll her eyes and preach doom, Marjoe Gortner (who was a right sleaze in “Earthquake”) does all he can really with a silly role in a silly (but fun) film and he works well with Cypher as the stoic Brian.

Gordon (or could it be H.G.!) throws in the essential ‘nature revolts against man’ speeches, despite there being no link made between the ‘food’ and anything Mankind has done, so it would seem to be a swipe at what the Skinners and Bensington themselves were going to do with the ‘food’ more than anything else.
It all screams of desperation, but this ‘mankind should beware’ message does provide a great ‘twist’ finale that, although obvious, is nicely wicked (especially the final shot) and would be picked up years later in the belated sequel “Gnaw: Food of the Gods 2”, which did almost everything wrong that this film does right as far as providing entertainment is concerned. Although “Gnaw” does have a truly warped moment during a nightmare that makes it almost worth seeking out.

Burt I. Gordon knows that ultimately we are not here for messages though, but for thrills n chills. Sadly he does not actually provide any real thrills or chills, but he does provide some nicely bloody and ferocious rat attacks, silly characters, plentiful action (with some very nasty looking ‘shotgun’ hits on the rats that look disturbingly like the poor rodents really were blasted), the odd pleasing visual, a very effective and doomy score (by Elliot Kaplan), wasps that explode in a puff of black smoke when shot, icky rubber grubs, slumming thesps, enjoyable (in a “Thunderbirds” way) itty bitty model destruction, growling rodents, a ’Queen’ white rat who takes a liking to Football players and…GIANT CHICKENS!
How could any self respecting bad movie freak not treat themselves to at least one cheeky nibble at such a tasty slice of cinematic art? Exactly!