Review of The Food of the Gods (1976) by Paul F — 19 Apr 2010

Where would Bert I. Gordon be today if it weren't for the miracle of forced-perspective filmmaking? The Kenosha-born Gordon made a career for himself as a maker of films in which things were either unnaturally bigger or smaller than humans (or vice versa), from [i]King Dinosaur[/i] to [i]Attack of the Puppet People[/i] to [i]Village of the Giants[/i] to [i]Food of the Gods[/i], his second attempt at "adapting" the H.G. Wells story of the same name.

Ex-child preacher Marjoe Gortner plays Morgan, a football player who goes with a couple friends on a hunting trip to a remote island. This routine exercise in frolic, however, turns bad when one of the pals is killed by giant wasps and the hunters... become... THE HUNTED!

No, wait, they don't. They leave the island with the body, after a brief encounter with Ida Lupino and her giant roosters, who claims the enormousness of her poultry is due to the "gift from God" consisting of a bubbly crude she and her husband have discovered mixed with chicken feed. But more on her later.

After an autopsy concluding that their buddy was killed by a huge amount of wasp venom (apparently the coroner doesn't find this the least bit weird and, y'know, bothers to report it to anyone) the two have the brilliant idea of going back to the island. Actually, I think it must be Morgan's brilliant idea, because every idea he comes up with during the course of the film is so unbelievably stupid that you'd swear the filmmakers were somehow paying his character off just to keep the movie going.

Back on the island, the pair are joined by the aforementioned Lupino (now sans hubby), a greedy exec whose company is responsible for the glop that's turning animals huge (Ralph Meeker), his assistant (Pamela Franklin) and a couple on the verge of having a baby (Tom Stovall and Joe Dante regular Belinda Balaski). Soon enough, the group find themselves trapped on the island and surrounded by giant rats. Or at least representations of giant rats.

Representations of giant things are about as close as you get to special effects in a B.I.G. film. You'll find no Harryhausen-esque feats of artistic merit here, only lots of scenes of (a) people arguing, (b) close-up of rats running, (c) people looking off screen somwehere (d) close-up of rats running and then, finally, (e) people running away. Occasionally there will be some on-screen interaction (these people aren't going to kill themselves, after all), and most of the time, it's edited quickly enough so you don't notice that the person is actually being attacked by a giant, dead-eyed, prop rat head, most likely on a stick.

The rats themselves are kind of cute, so you don't have to bother, well, being scared.

The cast seems to be having fun, especially Lupino, who goes from calling the mutant food a gift from the Gods to claiming that the whole incident is "the Gods punishing us for going against nature." Well, which is it, woman? You use the food God gave you, then he's pissed about it? Maybe it's time to find a new religion.

It's dumb fun, and fortunately, it never really gives you any reason to care about the characters (at one point, the greedy asshole character makes the bold suggestion that they leave, which our "hero" [i]completely dismisses[/i]!) so you don't get involved in anything other than watching "giant" rats run around tiny model sets. But Gordon did it even better a couple of years later with the hysterical [i]Empire of the Ants,[/i] and that had Joan Collins, who could out-overact Lupino any day of the week.

Still, it would have been nice to see a movie with more than just giant rats and a few oversized bugs and roosters. The ending promises giant killer cows and children, which got half-assedly delivered 13 years later with [i]Food of the Gods 2[/i], but without Gordon's, um, expert direction.

(Part 2 is on DVD, but this one isn't. What the hell, MGM? Get off your butts.).