Main Cast: Marjoe Gortner, Pamela Franklin, Ralph Meeker, Ida Lupino, Jon Cypher
Release Year: 1976
Country: US
Run Time: 88 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG
Plot
Based on a novel by H. G. Wells, a group of bloodthirsty, oversized creatures (including rats, chickens, wasps, and worms) have taken over a remote island after ingesting a mysterious growth known as "Food of the Gods." It is up to an unusual group of people to put an end to this animal threat. ~ Iotis Erlewine, All Movie Guide
Review
Bert I. Gordon, the king of the oversized-monster movie, updated his formula for the 1970's with this absurd yet totally straight-faced effort. Don't let the "based on H.G. Wells' novel" tag fool you: the script owes more to Irwin Allen's disaster movies, slapping together a group of hastily-drawn characters and hurling them through a barrage of cliff-hanger setpieces. Gordon adds his own spice to the mix in the form of several oversized chickens, wasps, worms and rats. These choices are silly to begin with but the whole enterprise goes into unintentional-laughs overdrive with threadbare special effects that combine real animals running over miniature sets, rubbery-looking dummy heads and cheap matte shots in an unconvincing way. Thankfully, Gordon keeps his narrative moving quickly and packed with events: no one over the age of 10 will be able to take it seriously but anyone with a yen for trashy b-movies will find it amusing. The cast is also pretty decent for this kind of flick: Marjoe Gortner and Pamela Franklin make solid heroes and show an admirable ability to play this goofy material straight. However, the big scene-stealers are Belinda Balaski, who brings an unexpected dramatic charge to her scenes as a pregnant woman trying to protect her unborn child and Ralph Meeker, who offers a delightfully tongue-in-cheek turn as a sleazy businessman. In short, Food Of The Gods represents the monster movie at its most brain-dead. Whether that is a condemnation or a recommendation will depend on how much you love cinematic junk-food. ~ Donald Guarisco, All Movie Guide
Belinda Balaski - Rita; Tom Stovall - Tom; John McLiam - Mr. Skinner; Chuck Courtney - Davis; Reg Tunnicliffe
Credit
Graeme Murray - Art Director, Flora Gordon - First Assistant Director, Bert I. Gordon - Director, Corky Ehlers - Editor, Samuel Z. Arkoff - Executive Producer, Elliot Kaplan - Composer (Music Score), Reginald Morris - Cinematographer, Bert I. Gordon - Producer, John Stark - Set Designer, Keith Wardlow - Special Effects, Rick Baker - Special Effects, Thomas Fisher - Special Effects, John Thomas - Special Effects, George Mulholland - Sound/Sound Designer, Bert I. Gordon - Screenwriter, H.G. Wells - Book Author
The film was not very successful. Michael Medved gave it the Golden Turkey Award for Worst Rodent Movie Of All Time.
Interestingly, Bert I. Gordon had earlier written, produced, and directed (for Embassy Pictures) Village of the Giants (1965), which was also very loosely based on the book.
Plot
The film reduced the tale to an 'Ecology Strikes Back' scenario, common in science fiction movies at the time. The food mysteriously bubbles up from the ground on a remote island somewhere in British Columbia. The couple that discover it (McLiam and Lupino) consider it a gift from God, and promptly begin feeding it to their chickens. Soon, rats, wasps, and worms consume the substance, and the island is crawling with giant vermin.
A professional football player (Gortner) and his buddies are camping on the island, and one of them is stung to death by wasps. Also thrown into the mix are an expecting couple, the owner of a dog food company (Meeker) hoping to market the substance, and his assistant (Franklin), a "lady bacteriologist." Eventually, the survivors are trapped in the farmhouse with the rats swarming around outside and Lupino promising God that she'll never sin again. The football player eventually blows up a nearby dam, flooding the area and drowning the rats.
The food survives and is consumed by cows, who give tainted milk, which is then drunk by schoolchildren.
