The Food of the Gods

The Food of the Gods (1976)

Runtime: 88 minutes

Directed by: Bert I. Gordon

Starring: Marjoe Gortner, Pamela Franklin, Ralph Meeker, Ida Lupino

From: American International Pictures

Finally, I’ve returned and here’s a rather odd film to talk about. It’s a low-budget film in the mid 70’s from AIP, a studio legendary for making low-budget B-movies back from the mid 50’s to 1980 and had guys like Roger Corman working for them, producing fare for the drive-in circuit, amongst other places. Director Gordon spent much of his career working with AIP, and did films with “rear projection” special effects where regular people/items were made to look much larger than they actually are. I saw this more than 10 years ago back during the brief time that I had some HBO channels*. Yeah, this was on an HBO channel, because they had absolutely nothing else to show.

The movie-which was “based on a portion” of the novel of the same title by H.G. Wells; it’s true) takes place on a random island in British Columbia (and that British Columbia scenery is scenic, if nothing else) and concerns a rural religious family (with Lupino, whom we see here much more than her ill-fated husband; Ida was slumming here as she had been acting since the mid 30’s and appeared in renowned movies with the likes of Edward G. Robinson, John Garfield, and even Humphrey Bogart) who finds a mysterious substance that causes rapid growth to the animals that consume it. So, it’s man vs. nature in what must be PETA’s wet dream as you see giant animals run wild, kill people, and cause destruction to Lupino, some random tourists on that island, and some members of a football team, including Gortner.

The special effects are what they are and in current times you can at least laugh at them but what makes this movie not good (despite a message of ecology and being nice to the environment) is that the story is pretty laughable and doesn’t make much sense. I mean, how haven’t the giant animals migrated off the island, especially, you know, the giant wasps? And, the climax doesn’t really make much sense at all, especially with how it was filmed and portrayed. Some parts of it PETA wouldn’t like, that’s for sure.

So, it’s not too boring of a movie so you can get entertainment out of it and laugh at the flick, but it’s definitely not something worth trying to look for on DVD. If you see it on TV somewhere and want to laugh at something, then maybe so.

• I saw it this latest time on THIStv, available on certain cable packages as part of digital; it’s usually in the HD channel area, even though the channel broadcasts standard definition stuff.

By the end of the weekend I hope to have at least one new review up.