Empire of the Ants (1977) Pressbook
The ants invading your summer picnic didn’t come from It Came From Hollywood, but this pressbook did. AIP unleashes Joan Collins–I mean the ants, in this bargain basement production directed by Bert I. Gordon (Earth vs. the Spider, The Amazing Colossal Man, The Magic Sword). The last film in AIP’s H.G. Wells run, which also included The Food of the Gods (1976) and The Island of Dr. Moreau (1977), the ants may be big but the special effects not so much. More thrilling for the female actors than the giant ant props used to attack them was the half-hour trek to the restroom. Filming took place in the Florida Everglades and St. Lucie and Martin Counties during the fall. Wikipedia mentions that actress Pamela Susan Shoop had to go to the hospital after her jaw dislocated during a scream due to the cold weather. Bert I. Gordon took charge of the spfx, but using footage of regular ants against photographic backgrounds and mini-sets, process shots, and static, giant ant, handheld props pummeling the actors, detracted from the movie. IMDb notes this interesting tidbit: “According to Pamela Susan Shoop, the film’s sound man had a fight with director Bert I. Gordon towards the end of the shoot and threw all of its audio tapes into the swamp. They lost everything, so the entire film had to be looped. Because of this, their voices and actions never quite mesh.”
Although Gordon came in for criticism because of the aforementioned shots of bugs crawling over pictures in Beginning of the End, he does worse in Empire of the Ants. As the big ants head for the open door of the refinery [sugar], some of them begin climbing the building–where there is no building. To be charitable, one could suggest that the ants were merely standing on their hind legs, but of course it makes no sense that they would scratch their legs against open air. To represent the ant’s-eye view of things, Gordon simply places a plate with several circles cut out of it over the lens. Needless to say, this is not too impressive. (Creature Features: Nature Turned Nasty in the Movies, Willam Schoell, 2008, McFarland & Company)
Now me, I’d watch the movie just to see that! And Joan Collins getting pummeled by a giant ant prop, of course.
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