Empire of the Ants (1977) Review

WEEK 3: CREEPY CRAWLY CRITTERS 

Empire of the Ants (1977) Review

Back in the late seventies, every possible animal was being tapped as a potential movie villain, thanks to the success of Jaws. In 1977, Hollywood producers must have thought the next hot ticket would be ants. Two movies featuring killer ants were released that year, and one of them, It Happened At Lakewood Manor (also known as Ants) was a made-for-TV feature, and is one of the most god-awful films I have ever seen (for more on that, check out C.C.C. Issue 15). I held out hope that the other killer ant film from that year—Empire of the Ants, which is based on a story by legendary sci-fi writer H.G Wells and directed by the guy behind The Food of the Gods—would be more in-line with one of the greatest killer insect films ever, 1957’s Them! As it turns out, Empire of the Ants has more in common with Them! as far as content goes. As far as quality, it’s in a whole other league.

The film opens with a voice-over and close up stock footage of ants going about their business. The voice explains some dull information about ants and pheromones they give off, which forces them to do tasks, whether they want to or not. A radioactive disposal unit dumping barrels of toxic material into the ocean is shown next, with one barrel washing ashore and leaking silvery liquid onto the beach, covering a bunch of ants. Cut to a whole bunch of people showing up at a harbour and boarding a boat to go tour Dream Shore Homes—pieces of property still in development in a remote marshy area, where the toxic waste happened to spill. There are lots of potential victims—I mean, potential home buyers—on the boat, and the first part of the film devotes itself to introducing them to each other and to the audience. There’s an old couple who aren’t really interested in buying and just want a nice day out, there’s a guy trying to cheat on his wife even though his wife is with him on the tour, there’s the Dream Shore Homes land developer, a co-worker, the boat driver, and some other forgettable characters. The tour hits a speed bump when giant, vicious ants attack the group. Their boat gets destroyed, everyone becomes stranded, and the ants herd the escaping humans to their doom.

Empire of the Ants has a decent concept (much better than the concept for Ants), which isn’t surprising, given it’s from the mind of H.G Wells, but unfortunately, the execution is spectacularly awful. The characters spend what feels like a long time interacting, and the first 25 minutes are completely devoid of any ants. Instead, all we get are sporadic shots of the ants’ point of view, as if to remind us they’re still out there, lurking, waiting to attack. Finally, the ants attack and are shown, but it’s incredibly underwhelming to discover they’re just regular-sized ants projected in the background with the actors in the same shot, giving the flimsy appearance of being big. It’s painfully obvious the ants were filmed from behind glass—at one point, an ant climbs onto the sky. The first attack uses both full shots of the regular-sized-ants pretending to be big and close-ups of an animatronic, which doesn’t look that bad to be honest, but it’s ruined by the camera shaking around so badly you can’t even focus on what’s happening. It’s as if the director thought the animatronic looked bad, so he felt the need to hide it by getting really close up and moving a bunch to make it scarier, when all it did was make it nearly impossible to look at. The shaky cam obscures the gore and death scenes, which is disappointing, but even worse, every time the ants are shown, they’re accompanied by a screaming sound effect. I don’t mean an animalistic scream, I mean like some girl was asked to scream as loud as she could into a microphone and the sound guy went, “yup, got our ant sound effects.” It’s incredibly annoying and simply a weird choice.

The actors take the whole film very seriously, which severely clashes with the sub-par visual effects. Their responses to the ants come off as funny more than genuine. There are a couple instances of people looking all around for the ants, then stopping and screaming when they see them, and then in the next shot, it shows the ants no more than a few feet away, leaving me to wonder, how could they not see them? People are looking in all different directions all the time, and it completely destroys any suspension of disbelief that viewers might be able to achieve. However, the acting in the scenes with just humans present is passable, especially considering some of the cheesy dialogue.

As I was watching this movie, I noticed it has an odd resemblance to Jurassic Park III in terms of its plot points. A group of people becomes unwittingly stranded in a dangerous location, people are pursued by vicious creatures, the group decides to split up, they eventually end up on a boat going down a river to reach salvation, etc. I doubt very highly Jurassic Park III’s screenwriters used this movie as inspiration, but hey, crazier things have happened. Speaking of crazy things, I better touch on the ending. The first two acts are plodding and predictable, but it takes a left turn in the third act, and things become marginally more interesting. All the talk about the controlling pheromones in the opening narration becomes relevant, and the title also becomes relevant to the situation.

 

Despite switching gears near the end, Empire of the Ants is largely a failure. Is it as bad as Ants? No, but that’s like saying getting hit in the stomach with a hammer is better than getting hit in the face with a hammer (okay, maybe that’s a little too harsh of a comparison). The visual effects are not impressive in any way, and it loses almost all elements of fright as a result. The only way I can recommend this film is if you find yourself time-travelling back to 1977, and you have a craving to see a killer ant film, see Empire of the Ants over Ants. Or better yet, try and find a re-screening of Them! instead.