Review of The Food of the Gods (1976) by Eric K — 17 Feb 2008

As soon as the name Bert I. Gordon flashed across the screen, I knew I was in for something bad. Swarms of badly-superimposed giant wasps, a man fighting a giant rooster in a barn, terrible acting...I found myself wondering just why this film had never appeared on MST3K. (The "giant cock" jokes alone kept my friends and I rolling though most of the film.) And then I found out.

There are "giant" rats in this movie, which are portrayed in turns as either hand puppets, or shots of real rats next to tiny models. Numerous of these "giant" rats got shot, but in most of those scenes, it was the normal-sized rats that took the brunt of it. At first, I thought they were just being hit with paint pellets or something, but as the movie went on, I got the sinking feeling that the filmmakers were actually killing these rats just to make a movie. Especially judging from the way some of them flew after being shot, and the fact that there was no disclaimer saying "no animals were harmed during the making of this film" at the end. Whether they were killing these animals or not, the presumption that they were really ruined my enjoyment of this film.

If the entire thing had kept with the harmless cheese of the giant rooster fight, the b-movie lover in me would have probably given this 4 stars or so, for the riffing factor alone. But every time a rat got shot, the animal lover in me felt disgusted.