Dir. Bert I. Gordon, US, 1977, 89 mins
Cast: Joan Collins, Robert Lansing, John David Carson
Review by Colin Dibben
Dodgy real estate developer Marilyn Fryser (Collins) takes a group of prospective suckers (sorry, investors) onto an island in the Deep South, hoping to get them to hand over their hard-earned cash.
Unfortunately, dumped radioactive waste has turned the island, including a local town and sugar refinery, into one big nest of enormous, man-eating ants. The ants are even brain-washing some of the human inhabitants.
Will the assortment of potential investors make it back to the mainland – and will devious Mariyn get her comeuppance?
The plot sounds great but the total cheapness of the special effects drags the film into the land or torpor. Gordon films ants close up on glass and then superimposes them on the scenes with the human actors. It does not look very good, and – once you have got over the actors’ vintage haircuts and clothes – the scenes showing just human actors fairly plod too.
The film is most visually engaging when the survivors are rounded up and taken to the sugar refinery for ‘processing’. But there are a lot of shots of endless mangrove swamps to cope with before and after this high point.
In one of the extras, Kim Newman says that Joan Collins was once asked why she acted in movies based on her sister’s books: “So that I don’t have to act in another film with giant ants” was her reply of record. Enough said.
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