Empire of the Ants is fine, but it has its problems. One is personal; I’ve gone on record many times about how I generally don’t like side stories in my sci-fi films, and that includes the “ants enslaving humans” thing. So that’s one more reason to prefer Food of the Gods; it’s about giant bugs and beasties, and that’s about it. More obviously, it’s nearly impossible to watch Empire and not compare it to Them!, and since Them! is certainly a candidate (and my personal choice) as the greatest giant monster movie ever—yes, even including King Kong—well, obviously that does it no favors.
Still, you have a game cast with a sprinkling of known actors—Joan Collins and Robert “4-D Man” Lansing, best known to me as the Equalizer’s ex-boss. Giant bugs are an easy sell for me, and I particularly like the big prop ant heads they use for the attack scenes. Other than that, it has a few more failings, such as the fact that the vast majority of the cast is pretty unlikeable.
Still, it merits attention as the very last time Bert I Gordon, the famous Mr. BIG (as dubbed by Forrie Ackerman), made a giant monster, heck, any kind of monster, movie. He continued to work sporadically, with a couple of occult horror movies—in addition to the earlier Necromancy—as well as a few more sex comedies. After 1989’s Satan’s Princess Mr. Gordon seemingly retired. However, 16 years after that, and well past the age of 90, Mr. Gordon returned to helm 2015’s Secrets of a Psychopath. And astoundingly, this wasn’t one of those shitty shot on video affairs that Ted V Mikels or Jon Erik Thor or Doris Wishman returned to make. This was an actual film. So good on him.
Mr. Gordon was 100 years old at the time of his recent passing. It may truly be said, though, that his films will live forever in our hearts, at least until our own generation has joined him in the great beyond.
