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Empire of the Ants (1977) - Bert Gordon


Empire of the Ants is a celebration of old 50's Monster Movies and how the genre was absolutely terrible. You have ants that are blown up and superimposed in the background and actors that have to "fake it" the entire time. The movie is really awful and got progressively worse through out its duration. Some of the scenes with the monster ants are painful to watch, really, they are that horrible.

How does this happen? How can you cast veteran actors like Joan Collins (Dynasty) and Robert Lansing (Kung Fu: The Legend Continues) to star in a huge piece of crap like this? Well I guess its not hard, just offer them most of the money that you have been allotted to make the picture. Other than Joan and Robert the rest of the actors are laughable at best; to the point where I was actually relieved when certain cast members were killed. But, that's just one of the problems with the movie.

The movie is loosely based on a short story by H.G. Wells. It's main focus is on a group of tourists on a timeshare tour when they run into a bunch of radiated and mutated ants. Funny thing about the movie is that the ants are never the same size; they grow and shrink depending on the scene. In some cases Ants are as big as dump trucks, in others they are about the size of an average man. The director had trouble controlling the ants so in some scenes you have ants crawling on the sky or trying to climb up the sides of a tiny set. Its pretty eff'ng hilarious.

There is nothing in this movie that makes it actually scary, it is just a terrible film. I dare anyone to watch this movie and tell me that it was amazing! You couldn't! Its hard to fathom how this movie even made it to the big screen. And so I give this movie a 2 out of 10. It made me chuckle, and if you want to fit this one into a movie marathon I would sandwich this in between Eaten Alive and the original The Crazies.

I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords

S!D

  • For promotion for the movie, theaters would have ant-farms in their lobbies. 
  • The special effects are all just magnified shots of Bullet Ants.
  • There is a scene with ants walking on a pier to destroy a boat that is used in “It’s Tough to Be a Bug!” at Disney’s Animal Kingdom in Florida and Disney’s California Adventure in California.
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