Review of Empire of the Ants (1977) by Randy T — 10 Jul 2010

Based on a H.G. Wells novel of the same name, Empire of the ants offers what would seem an insect version of Godzilla. What's responsible for the enlargement of these ants isn't very original because it comes in the shape of the good old toxic waste leakage although some may argue this is original in its own rights if the novel was wrote in 1905 before the idea had been used before. A group of people touring an island in search of buying plots of land stumble across the beasts but can't escape because their boat is already infested with ants. After the party travel through the jungle to reach safety they realise that the human inhabitants of the island are also in league with the ants but have to pay them a tribute of vast amounts of sugar to insure their survival.

The acting was seriously atrocious but for me that was about as bad as it got, contrary to what allot of people think about this movie I loved the special effects. The effects themselves mainly contained actual footage of real ants edited into filmed jungle and any close up shots are plastic ants covering the helpless individual, I never really look at the effects of films much because I believe it leaves more room for the imagination and story unlike films like Avatar which do everything for you. You can really see the story is the work of H.G. Wells, the idea was superb and the only other time I have seen giant ants is in films where people have been shrunk as opposed to the ants being enlarged.

A concept I admired allot is how the movie points out how smart ants are and how much of a threat they can pose, it's a fact ants herd Aphids like we herd cattle and they grow fungus deep underground much like we cultivate crops, in my opinion they are much more intelligent than Dolphins and actual have been classed as ' Nomadic ' by experts. Some bad points I couldn't help but laugh at were the scenes that included the ant vision and in most of the stock footage you could see the ant's put their legs on the side of the glass tank in which they were being filmed. As this is a rather original story then it must be considered fresh in a sense but I would sure like to see a remake of this.