The Food of the Gods

It's hard to criticize a movie like The Food of the Gods. Meaning, it hits every low point: bad acting, cinematography, writing & dialogue, horrible special effects and worst of all, "suspenseful scenes" that literally will make you laugh out loud. Who needs Mystery Science Theater 3000 to make fun of this – just watch it for your own personal amusement. I did. I laughed very hard in spots, from the stilled framed credits to the opening dialogue ("My name is Morgan and I play football. We'd worked our butts off trying' to get it together for the big Sunday game…") to the big COCK fight between our hero and a large COCK. Also, the film pans from close-ups of "giant" rats to an actual sized car to now regular rats attacking a toy car. PRICELESS FX. Don't forget the TIDAL WAVE and wasps. Heck, the only thing (hilariously) convincing were the enlarged worms and even them, not so much. Footballer – American that is…or is it Canadian? – Morgan (Marjoe) is headed to "the country" (or in human terms, an island) to hunt or whatever male bonding he chooses with his two mates. One of them is inadvertently stung to death by giant wasps. Well, they strike and leave, thankfully, giving our heroes enough time to investigate. They take one of MANY very long trips on the ferry back to shore with their friend's body. Stop. Okay, even at only 88 minutes, this movie drags on far too long. And most of the time was spent, incredibly, on the ferryboat. Did they rent it? And did that take half their budget? But, I digress, for very weak reasons, the two remaining buddies travel back to the island (via ferry, AGAIN) to investigate the death and meet up with both the incredibly hilarious "Mrs. Skinner" (Lupino) who speaks of her (unbeknownst to her, late) husband as "Mr. Skinner" (McLiam) and a pair of coworkers, one of which is to (GASP) profit off a white goo pumping from the ground that caused all creatures to grow to huge proportions. (To speak like the villains in the first Scream movie: Horror Movie Rule #156b – Do NOT trust any bubbling white substance coming up from the ground. The Stuff – 'Enuff Said.) The main enemy, is the rats, but there's worms, wasps and chickens to add to the tension. But, let's think about this: who's the real enemy here? Are we being punished for polluting the Earth? Eh, that's their message at any rate. Spend the rest of the movie laughing at their lines, their driving and rats climbing on a miniature house just for kicks. One of the funniest scenes in the "climax" is a rat's trying to get into the room and a character's shutting the door on its head. It almost matched the JAWS spoof, Land Shark, from Saturday Night Live. Even though this movie is only allotted one out of five stars, I will admit, the finale (end credits,) though thoroughly predictable – heck, they mention it throughout, including the opening, was rather creepy. That almost granted it an additional ½ star. I wanted to see this movie again, as I was scared as a child and always had a thing for When Animals Attack movies (SEE: Empire of the Ants and ants!) but this movie is just simply horrible. Maybe a young toddler would be a'runnin', but no adult should be subjected to this: "You know, I used to think about dying a lot. I'd lie there in bed at night in the dark; I guess I've always had a fear of it. I'd used to fantasize the most horrible deaths. You know the most frightening. None of them come close to being eaten by a rat!"

I saw this film with a friend when it first opened in 1976 and as a young teenager I thought it was just entertaining low budget science fiction. I viewed it again recently and after all these years my impression of it really hasn't changed. Script is of course inspired by the H.G. Wells story and the film takes place on an island in the Pacific Northwest where an elderly woman named Mrs. Skinner (Ida Lupino) has found this strange "Goop" oozing out of the ground and she has noticed that anything young that consumes it grows to enormous size. She has giant chickens in her barn and found large maggots in her kitchen. A football player named Morgan (Marjoe Gortner) is deer hunting on the island with friends when he discovers the body of a companion in the woods. The autopsy reveals that he was stung to death by wasps. Morgan goes back to the island and heads to the home of Mrs. Skinner and finds the giant chickens where he is attacked and forced to kill one of them. Mrs. Skinner tells him of the goop and that she and her husband have made a deal with a company to sell it. Along comes the businessman Jack Bensington (Ralph Meeker) and his associate Lorna (Pamela Franklin) and they want to find out if the story is true. Once Jack is shown the goop and witness's for himself giant chickens and wasps he instantly wants to take as much back and get rich. Unfortunately rats have gotten into it and they have grown as well and they kill and eat Mr. Skinner. The rats start to overtake the island and a young couple (Tom Stovall and Belinda Balaski) are forced to abandon they're camper and head over to Mrs. Skinners home. Everyone is trapped in her home and the rats try to get in but Morgan and the others are armed with shotguns. *****SPOILER ALERT***** They shoot as many of the rats as they can but are running low on ammo so Morgan has an idea to blast the local dam and drown them! This film was directed by the schlock master Bert I. Gordon and this is his second venture into the Wells story. The first was the 1965 camp classic "Village of the Giants" and that film was more comedic and sexy but here in this version the emphasis is strictly on horror. I know a lot of people consider this a terribly made film but I still enjoy it on a low budget level. First off the special effects are from Rick Baker and I enjoyed the giant rats that he built. Okay, they're not all great and I agree that the chicken costume pecking at Gortner looked fake but you have to consider the budget. For me the worst effects are when the dam explodes and the water comes crashing out. The water appears to be spliced in badly. Gordon had a limited budget and he does a good job of limiting the action of the film to just a central area. Most of the story takes place at the home of Mrs. Skinner and Gordon even limited the amount of actors to be in the story. I had to laugh when the rats were attacking the home and Pamela Franklin tells Gortner that she wants to make love to him and he kisses her. The scene comes out of the blue and Gortner tells her that he'll take her up on her offer when they get out of this mess! Gordon even manages to have a childbirth scene in the film. Even with these clumsy human interactions the film is still enjoyable to watch. The cinematography is actually quite decent of the area around the island. The thick and lush forest gives the appearance that these characters are in a remote place. This film is also quite graphic in its bloodletting and Gordon had no qualms about showing humans being taken apart by giant rats. The scene with Lupino squeezing the big maggot was a real grosser also. This film is silly and low budget and has some real cheesy special effects but its also schlocky fun.

Where to begin with this one? By just about every critical standard around, this is crap, getting down to almost Ed Wood levels of badness. Which of course is why it's great - it's a shame this movie is so hard to find these days; because it's a born cult classic. Jesus-fixated farmwife Ida Lupino (poor, poor Ida - what hath the entertainment industry reduced you to?) and her doomed hubbie (some guy who looks like the Gortons' Fisherman) discover some slop that looks like ranch dressing bubbling up out of the ground. Initially, they think it's oil. When this possibility is ruled out, not knowing what it is, they feed it to their chickens, and soon enough they have a barnful of giant chickens. An inspired and most definitely unique giant-chicken-assault scene is an early high point. Ultimately, wasps and rats get into the stuff, with all the usual expected bad effects - they attack and kill unsuspecting entrepreneurs, hippies, rustics and others, while our hero Marjoe Goertener (the onetime evangelist, and subject of the unforgettable documentary MARJOE) rallies his bored-looking cast to shoot their way out of a rat siege. As is typical for a lot of b-movies (Ed Wood, Herschell Gordon Lewis, et. al.), there is a great affection for the escapist and mythic possibilities of cinema on display here; I can point out the drive-in-flick cheesiness, but I should also note that this film (and stuff like it) is great, great fun, and director Bert Gordon's miniatures are well-crafted; perhaps a bit quaint (and suggestive of an innocence that might now qualify as anachronistic) in an era of technological effects. If you love movies, you owe it to yourself to not miss this one.

Various animals eat radiated animal food and grow to mammoth size. This is one of those enviromental horror pictures. You know the kind, nature gets even on evil mankind for pollution blah blah blah. This film isn't even funny bad. Not campy bad. Just horrible bad. The "special" effects are not even CLOSE to special. The acting is atrocious. And it oh so VERY boring. If you really Have to see a 70's "environmental pollution" horror film, do yourself a favor & rent "It's Alive!" instead. My Grade: D-

This is a terrible movie with one questionable virtue: the spectacle of dozens of real rats really shotgunned. It looks like they used a 20 gauge. It could be some kind of stunt, but nobody told the rats. Suggestions that the production used pellet guns on the rodents seem unlikely to me, as in my experience it takes a little more than .177 caliber to knock a rat off his feet. It is of course possible that there is a special effect involved; if so it's a technology I've never seen. Certainly these rats react violently to the projectiles that hit them, and they don't seem to like it. They are knocked end over end by bloody impact. Meat flies off the wounds, even. They seem hurt, and they squirm pretty convincingly. Perhaps they are good rat actors. But I don't think Clyde Beatty and Siegfried Sassoon together could train 100 rats to pretend to drown, then play dead while floating underwater, a trick employed here with great verisimilitude. There is lots of bad process photography, and the puppet rat heads are more impressive than the awful script and underutilized all-star cast. Bert Gordon never did less with so much. But the real rats are filmed in slow motion against miniatures in medium and long shots, and they die there, with more realism than is achieved by any other part of the picture. Wholesale slaughter of furred creatures seems unlikely so late as '76, but I doubt the FOTG set even saw a licensed caterer, much less OSHA or the Humane Society.

A rare food taken by an old woman (penultimate film for Ida Lupino) provokes the excessive increasing on animals and bugs . Then killer beasts , gigantic flies , huge chicken , wasps , worms and enormous rats strike tourists on a secluded island . Football team players (Marjoe Gotner , John Cypher) enjoying vacations have to fight the giant monsters that are attacking people (Ralph Meeker , Belinda Balaski as an unperiled pregnant woman and Pamela Franklin's last film although she would continue to work on TV in guest). This is an entertaining movie from expert Bert I. Gordon and freely based on H.G. Welles novel , being AIP's most successful film of the year . Although it suffers from average special effects and regular performances . The flies reproduction are quite badly made but the rats are better staged by means of true bugs increased by optics effects . Over-sized reproduction of massive worms , bulky chicken were utilized to incarnate the enormous creature effects and were also used various diverse mechanized rats . As six different mechanized rat heads and four human-motivated rat costumes were also employed . The miniature design and special props were made by Von Buelow , titles and optical effects by Universal title ; plus , the visual effects by coordinator J. Richardson and , of course , Bert I. Gordon who usually makes his own FX , he's a real craftsman . The movie gives special thanks to football team of Frazer University and the children of Sir John Franklin Community of Vancouver ,British Columbia , where it was filmed. The film was produced in little budget by Samuel Z. Arkoff who created along with James H Nicholson the American International Pictures in which during the 60s and 70s produced several monster movies and the prestigious Roger Corman-Edgar Allan Poe series . The motion picture was professionally directed by Bert I Gordon. Bert is a B series producer/director , known as Mr B.I.G. He's a monster movies expert in which animals and men suffer voluminous shapes change caused by food or radioactivity. As occurs in ¨The cyclops¨ when the protagonist becomes a giant human monster,as well as a soldier converts in ¨War of the colossal beast¨, the immense insects of ¨Begining of the end¨, a monstrous spider in ¨The spider¨, giant ants in ¨Empire of the ants¨. Other his works in fantasy-terror are : ¨Picture mommy dead¨ and ¨ Necromancy¨, among them. It's followed by a lesser sequel titled ¨Food of gods , part 2 (1989)¨ directed by Damian Lee where the huge rats strike again and maim beautiful women.

If you don't know who Bert I. Gordon is let me give you the jist of his movies: big things attack people. What's with this guy. Just about every movie he does has a giant something or other attacking people. And this is no different. This film is unintentionally funny and feature giant rats, bees, maggots, mosquitoes and funniest of all: giant chickens! You haven't seen a bad movie till you see a movie that has a man fight a giant chicken and still take itself seriously! This is one of those movies that should have appeared on MST3k but didn't (a darn shame). With really fake gunshot wounds (rats are "shot"... shot with red paint and look perfectly unharmed) this movies good for heckling with friends.

I am glad I've seen this movie in the sense that survivors of disaster are often grateful for the life experience, but I felt the need to warn others who may be considering it. I won't attack the acting as a movie this low budget often has to pull winos off the street, and I do make due allowance for the effects budget too, though there are some effects which are just inexcusable in a movie intended for release. The famously bad giant chicken scene I'll gloss over, not just because it's famous but because the rest is much, much worse. The most unforgivable effect is surely the "giant wasps" which are motionless, brown silhouettes of some sort of crushed insect, possibly a butterfly or moth, certainly not a wasp of any kind. Probably the same brightly coloured lepidoptera to which our hero points, as it perches on a jar of Food Of The Gods, and proclaims "wasps sure seem to love it" To be fair the giant rats are quite realistic, but they're actually too realistic in that they haven't been given exaggeratedly evil features, or even shot from an angle that makes them seem sinister as in The Unknown. The result is that they're just gosh darn cute, like being attacked by giant hamsters or gerbils. So when the head of one comes smashing through a door, the audience isn't inspired to jump, just to go "aaaw, hello!". There's one point where they blow up a dam in an effort to drown the giant rats, even though real rats can swim because "giant rats with that weight won't be able to" this is true but it also unnecessarily raises the point that they wouldn't be able to move at all, and would probably break off their own feet. But what is far worse is that the "dam" they decide to blow up is in fact just a wall, hastily built across a small track which is not low enough to be even a very small river bed. And the wall is made of wooden planks. Yes wooden planks. Held together with nails. As a dam. To hold back water. But the worst thing about this movie by far is the script. Expository dialogue is sadly common enough these days, but this writer attempts expository dialogue, without even actually explaining anything! Our hero: "How did you come to feed it to the livestock?" Farmer's Wife: "well when we realised it wasn't oil, there weren't nothing for it but to feed it to the animals" Audience: "WTF? so anything that isn't oil gets fed to the livestock on your farm? Pebbles? Children? Discos?" And then there's the inevitable attempt to come up with a group plan. Coward:"we can't stay here, I'm leaving, come with me" Girl "but we'll die and get eaten!" Coward: "have you got a better plan?" Girl "I guess not" Audience: "so you're going along with the plan of dying and getting eaten because you haven't got a better plan?" I love low budget cheese, but seriously take my advice and just don't.

~Spoiler~ Food of the Gods is more borderline-enjoyable big insect/animal camp from Bert Gordon. This time a food-like substance turns farm animals and rats into giant monsters who commence to eating the cast one by one. So basically it's like all his other movies. I usually dislike these types of films, but Gordon at least makes them fun. The miniatures they built for this film are great, but anytime a cast member and a rat are on screen at the same time, it looks pretty bad. The funniest moment for me was that the jars containing "the food of the gods" were conveniently labeled "f.o.t.g." It eventually breaks down into a Night of the Living Dead/trapped-in-a-house fight for survival. If you like this one, check out Empire of the Ants as well.

I first saw this movie at the local drive-in theater when I was about 13yrs old. It scared the you-know-what out of me back then. I just rented the DVD and sitting there on my sofa, in my mid 40s I enjoyed it all over again! Sure, it's silly....very "B-rated" type film....but if you just accept that going into it, you won't be disappointed. In this day of Computer Generated garbage, it's refreshing to see REAL special effects. The rats are still scary some 30 years later! Rent it, enjoy it for what it is: a campy, silly scary movie. I just love it! It saddens me to see that it's made it's way onto several "worst movie" lists. Relax people, enjoy it! I've gotta go....I think I hear rats coming.....