Empire Of The Ants (Wide Screen) > Reviews > H.G. Wells Would Turn In His Grave

Author's product rating:   

Did you enjoy it?	Hated it
Story	Very weak
Characters / Performances	Weak
Special Effects	Weak
How does it compare to similar films?	Weak

Advantages:	It ends
Disadvantages:	The list is too long

Recommend to potential buyers:

no

Full review

Empire Of The Ants begins with a lesson on Ant’s the narrator tells you things about ants that you might never have known, and probably did not want to either come to that. All the same this creates the illusion of structure to this 1977 movie, often dubbed as the worst movie of all time. A sad fact when you consider the tales author is none other than H.G. Wells.

Marilyn (Joan Collins) is a con artist, her way to secure her future is to con a group of prospective buyers into purchasing property on a new island development, and of course the development will never be built because by the time building should start she is hoping to be long gone with the cash in hand. In order to ensnare buyers Marilyn tempts people to the idea of a cruise style vacation, unbeknown to Marilyn however the group with the exception of maybe one party has absolutely no intentions of buying, and most are freeloaders. As Marilyn shows her potential buyers the location of the future marina, pools, golf course, tennis club, and housing they are all unaware that they are being watched by creatures with many eyes.

At the start of the movie you witness chemicals being dumped into the sea, these chemicals wash up on the shore of Marilyn’s island. The chemicals obviously have an effect on the islands inhabitants, which basically are ants causing mutations of giant 8 foot variations of their former selves. As the group discover the ants it’s a battle for survival as all their exits are cut off one by one.

I first saw the movie about 20 years ago, and had little memory of it at that time I was probably easier to please and as a result I think I quite enjoyed it. This time round it was not dissimilar to having ones teeth pulled without anaesthetic. From the appalling special effects, to dreadful action scenes where the victims literally stand still waiting for the ants to kill them; this movie is a total wash out. Factor into this a sound issue so annoying that its painful, and this is in the form of the ants shrills, its difficult to tell the difference between the ants shrills and the women’s squeals, while you might not initially consider this a problem I promise you its a big one; poor editing combined with this at times leave you to believe that characters have died off-screen, so when 5 minutes later they turn up very much alive your sat scratching your head.

On top of this you have the very awful ant effects, while seeing through the ants perspective you basically have a piece of black card with a variety of holes in it, each hole is a duplicate image of the vision in the next hole. The biggest menace of the first 30 minutes is a combination of this “effect” and a variety of squeaking noises that the ants make to communicate; SCARY! Add to this the great visual effects of real ants being filmed and enlarged then superimposed onto the film, or black scratches being put onto the film to create ants in action. But the best special effect of all is the ants attacking their victims’, giant papier-mâché ants covered in the fibres that cover coconuts literally being thrown on top of people, before being picked up and thrown on again.

All the characters in the movie are completely lacking in backbone with numerous scenes where you just want to sacrifice them to the ants yourself. The script is just awful with every free moment allowing the group to focus on the “I wish, I hope” conversations where they try desperately to appear sympathetic to the loss of their fellow companions. Nine times out of ten however they just stood back at the time and which the said per son being devoured by the giant ants. All of the movies characters are totally lacking in backbone, which annoyingly leaves you without a lead actor to give your allegiance too.
When you think plot wise the story has nowhere to go it actually turns out that the ant situation is much more widespread than first thought, as the remaining members of the group escape back to civilization they discover that the ants seem to have total control. And this aspect is the only real redeeming area of the movie, as at least you realise that H.G. Wells vision is not being totally trod in the ground and quite literally defecated on.

With a runtime of 89 minutes this movie is just too long there is only a certain amount of time you can reasonably sit and watch the same dire tat being reproduced time and time again. And when you see images of the ants brainwashing humans you just know that the sooner either you or the movie are put out of their misery the better.

Empire Of The Ants retails on the High Street at about £5 if you really want to submit yourself to this fresh hell, I’d advise checking Ebay where I saw one fail to sell this very afternoon at 1p.