Monster of the Day #660

Updated on March 25, 2013 By Ken Begg 20 Comments

“Oh, Henry, if only there was a commercial insecticide with a pithy slogan I could adjure you to expeditiously obtain!”

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  • Cullen Waters

    I remember loving this movie once, long, long ago.

    Now all I can do is sit around wondering stuff like how the hell you could NOT NOTICE THE GIANT ANTS WALKING ALL OVER THE SHACK. Or why on Earth the ants didn’t just rip through the walls to get at the the two. Or how no one reading the script realized the thing was jam packed with unlikable characters.

    Poor H.G. almost gets it as bad as H.P., doesn’t he?

  • Flangepart

    Ah, yes. The ‘lack of mass’ effect. When huge beasties fail to leave substancial footprints when walking in soft sand, or causing object to bend under their ‘weight’.

  • sandra

    I couldn’t see any monster at first. Then I realized that what I had taken for tree roots were giant ants. Is this Food of the Gods ?

  • Gamera977

    I did call the exterminator.. but when I told him they were GIANT ants he started muttering something about aliens, government conspiracies, and demanded I call him Rusty Shackleford… then he hung up on me…

  • bgbear_rogerh

    “I thought you meant we were going to visit your Aunt’s farm.”

  • Ken_Begg

    Or when they climb up a *waterfall.*

  • EMPIRE OF THE ANTS. For what it’s worth, a much better film than FOOD OF THE GODS….

  • ‘Empire Of The Ants’.

  • “We’ll never book a vacation at Uncle Milton Resorts again.”
    This wasn’t one of HG’s best stories to begin with. If I remember correctly the ants were normal sized and WEARING CLOTHES.

  • Helz to the effin yeah on this one!

  • That’s setting the bar pretty low there.

  • Ah yes, ‘Empire of the Ants’. A movie that makes ‘Day of the Animals’ look like classic cinema.

  • Did you not get much out of DAY OF THE ANIMALS/THERE’S SOMETHING OUT THERE? I thought it was pretty good. Not GRIZZLY good, but pretty close. Far above the average of that type of film. Great cast, too.

  • Well, let’s face it, ANTS was marginally better. I’m not saying it achieved the lofty heights of KINGDOM OF THE SPIDERS, or even the passable levels of FROGS, but it was better than FOOD. For the most part, it’s a film I watch and wish they had used the material a bit better, because on the surface the concept of the town being controlled by intelligent insects has some merit.

  • Marsden

    You know a joke is old when it’s grandchildren start showing up. ;)

  • I lost my patience with it when I finally saw the subtitle version (these ears need help) and read that the whole problem wasn’t caused by extra solar radiation coming through the hole in the ozone (and hey, remember when THAT was going to end all life on earth?) frying the animals’ brains; it was caused by a ‘mutated virus’ that affected vultures, and bears, and wolves, and dogs, and rattlesnakes, and rats, and tarantulas, and raptors (birds of prey, not dinosaurs), and cougars, and New York ad execs, and who knows what else in the exact same way — giving them enhanced intelligence and turning them into insane killers. Who only killed HUMANS rather than each other.

    Okay, it has its moments, but all in all it stank to high heaven.

  • True, It’s odd to watch, say, THEM! and realize that the basic idea of the movie is insanely goofy — yet because they had competent acting and screenwriting, it works. It’s not a difficult lesson, Hollywood.

  • sandra

    I remember the title characters in Empire of the Ants as being a lot bigger.

  • Enhanced intelligence? I just remember it drove some creatures into frenzy and bloodlust. Nor do I recall a virus being mentioned. Maybe I missed something?

  • I only found about the virus part when I finally saw the film on DVD and used subtitles. At the very end of the movie, when soldiers is hazmat suits are entering the town, one of them comments on the ‘virus finally killing the animals’. That was literally the ONLY time it gets mentioned.

    And the ‘enhanced intelligence’ is my own take. It’s the only way I can explain the animals working together to hunt and kill the humans without turning on each other, like you think they would if they’d been driven insane with bloodlust.