Now that I can eat pizza again and stay awake for a while, we resumed our Saturday night pizza and bad movie fiesta. This one was silly.
Plot:
Somewhere off the Florida coast, figures in red hazard suits dump barrels marked “Danger Radioactive Waste” and “Do Not Open” into the water. At least one barrel washes ashore near a rickety pier. Ants gather around, licking up some mercury- (and special effects-) looking substance oozing from the barrel.
Marilyn Fryser (Joan Collins), a sleazy real-estate developer, is gathering a tour of prospective buyers for a resort she’s building in the swamp, Dreamland Shores. Her salesman and present main squeeze is Charlie Pearson (Edward Power). Aboard the yacht that will take the marks—prospective buyers— is the captain, steely-eyed Dan Stokely (Robert Lansing).
Charlie and Marilyn take the group of eight or nine people on a two-hour tram tour of the resort that-will-be. (“The pool will be here. The tennis courts will be here…”). An alternative screen shows a black grid with a series of circles displaying the tram’s activities, like a bank of television sets in a store.
…Someone is watching our heroes. Someone who clicks…
When the group stops for a picnic under a tent, Thomas and Mary Lawson (Jack Kosslyn and Ilse Earl) wander off. Thomas is looking for something to prove this is all a scam. He finds PVC piping near a fire hydrant that he can pull out of the ground with his bare hands. “This isn’t connected to anything!” Thomas tells his wife.
“What’s that sound?” she asks.
Alas! They never make it back to the picnic.
Thoughts:
The movie bears little resemblance to the 1905 H. G. Wells short story of the same name that inspired it, outside of murderous ants. It’s hard to watch this and not see a little debt to the superior Them! (1954), a movie also involving mutated-by-radiation giant ants who like sugar but don’t mind munching people.
I was a little surprised at the PG rating. The film is quite bloody. I’d be careful about showing it to kidlets. There is no sex. One guy forces his attention on a young lady and gets kneed in the groin for his bad manners.
My biggest gripe with the film is that the characters are plot devices rather than people. The dialogue is as fresh as a carp left the counter for five days. Marilyn, for example, praises Charlie’s prowess “in the sack” within hearing of steely-eyed Captain Dan. The two biggest sleazebags abandon their respective partners to their fates with the ants.
Some minor gripes involve pacing: How long after eating the radioactive quicksilver do the ants grow to the size of milk trucks? The film doesn’t specify, but it implies all it takes is a weekend bender.
The special effects aren’t bad for the time. The ants are clearly crawling across pictures, which leads to some odd visuals at times. Less-than-perfect special effects don’t bother me.
An odd twist is the super-ants can control the minds of humans. The townsfolk must return once a week for their dose of mind-control spray. This leads one helpful farmwife to warn our heroes who have just escaped the horror of ants in the swamp, “Don’t let them take you to the sugar refinery.”
This really was a mixed bag for me. It could have been a much better film had it bothered to have more than stick figures for characters. The idea of psychological threat following prolonged harrowing physical danger is a solid one. Just when you thought it was safe—
However, if I laughed, it was more in delight than derision. Yes, it was hokey. Yes, it was silly. But it was a lot of fun. As for a recommendation—you won’t be disappointed if you go in with few expectations.
This movie can be watched (with a LOT of commercials) here on Tubi.
Title: Empire of the Ants (1977)
Directed by
Bert I. Gordon
Writing Credits
H.G. Wells…(story)
Jack Turley…(screenplay)
Bert I. Gordon…(screen story)
Cast (in credits order)
Joan Collins…Marilyn Fryser
Robert Lansing…Dan Stokely
John David Carson…Joe Morrison
Albert Salmi…Sheriff Art Kincade
Jacqueline Scott…Margaret Ellis
Released: 1977
Length: 1 hour, 29 minutes
Rated: PG
Reviews of Old and New Stories. Mostly Old 
I remember seeing some of this movie a long time ago. I think you are right. The plot is a bit silly. Someone or something eating radioactivity or poison and growing into giant because of it is a little bit too much disbelief to suspend. Not the best movie.
Yeah. A better execution of the idea was 1954 Them!. Not that it made the premise any more credible, but the movie was much better written and played on people’s fears of atomic radiation.
And the ants go marching by! The PG-13 rating came out in 1984, so I’m guessing that it received a PG because it didn’t reach the threshold for R. But it is amazing that sometimes the message is that sex gets an R, but bloody violence, well that’s a PG or a PG-13.
You’re right. I’d forgotten the later PG-13. If this had a bare boob or buttocks, it probably would have gotten an R.
And interesting point about sex v. violence. When I was a munchkin, I loved the Lone Ranger. I see some of the old stuff now, and it was really, really violent (not to mention, a bit racist). My parents let me watch it? I mean, I seem to have escaped unscathed.