Shepperton Screams (Part IV): The Deadly Bees (1967) dir. Freddie Francis

For sixteen weeks, Jose Cruz of The Grim Reader and I will be delving into the complete horror filmography of Amicus Productions and regaling you with our spirited discussions. Below is our mutual consideration of Amicus's THE DEADLY BEES (1967). Check back every week for more dialogues and (naturally) more nightmares.

GR: Okay, sir, I hope you're ready for this: we're about to have opposing opinions! In our correspondences prior to me watching today's feature, THE DEADLY BEES (1967), you intimated to me that you believed it was a right old dog, and that in your words it "really stunk." And as I said myself, I had not heard the best about this programmer from Amicus and Freddie Francis--riding on his fourth consecutive feature for that company--namely that it was horrendously cheesy. Cheesy it most certainly is, but I'm definitely not inclined to call it horrendous. Why, you ask? Why on Satan's green earth would I receive any sense of enjoyment from a movie that tries to generate suspense from subpar superimposition work and has a story that moves at the speed of honey? Well, I guess it all comes down to--as does everything else--a simple matter of taste. And once I had a taste of the peculiar nectar that THE DEADLY BEES had to offer, I found myself buzzing with delight.

My diminished expectations curdled a little at the sight of the "original songs" that were featured in the film's credits, but come the swinging 60's jam session where the two ditties were utilized, it turned out that they actually weren't all that bad. But just when you think that you're going to be settling in for a kitsch-fest with more full-fur clothing than you can shake a can of red paint at, our pop star heroine Suzanna Leigh is whisked away to the quiet English countryside to recover from a case of vague nervousness. And once we pulled up to the dirt roads and weathered farmhouses in the film's first act, I knew that me and THE DEADLY BEES were going to be alright. The tone of this film compared to the others felt much more intimate to me and the stakes charmingly low. There's no implication of a world-wide invasion by the bees or even a "race against the clock" pace; it's literally about a couple of people who get stung to death in the country and the general alarm that that generates amongst the handful of citizens who are even aware that it's happening in the first place. I mean, how is that not a breath of fresh air when stacked up against other films of its ilk, both classic and contemporary, that pump up their narratives with so much sound and fury and apocalyptic hellfire that it all becomes so much white noise? Having all the "action" in THE DEADLY BEES take place in a town that looks to be inhabited by five people actually allows the strangeness and horror to seem that much more poignant.

And yes, of course those superimposed images of the bee's swarming look terrible (Tess, the Hargrove's dog who, naturally, is the first victim of the bee's wrath has this look on her face when the first superimposed shot of the bees shows up that is basically the canine version of "Uhhh... what?"), but in my eyes they are redeemed by the one real onscreen death that manages to be uber-creepy and unsettling. I'm willing to give Amicus the benefit of the doubt with the special effects, in all their scratchy, penny-ante glory, but Francis really does his best with the material he has to work with, proving that he was a craftsman as well as a workhorse. The death of the character played by Catherine Finn (who is clearly the Ghost of Charlotte Rampling Yet to Come) is extremely well-played. The shots of her seem hazy under all those laid-over bees, but what you do glimpse looks like the bees on her face are stuck there, as if they were burrowed in her skin. The closeups of the insects barbing real human flesh do much to sell that idea, their spurs leaving behind little noxious balls of bee-goo. And when Finn shakes her head up and down, her scalp looks positively bedazzled with writhing bees. It's just nasty, and personally I'm fine with having one death scene as memorable as that in a killer bee movie than a repetition of the same old stunts. Because, really, how diverse can killer bee murder sequences be?

Okay, I think I've babbled on enough for the moment. We know some of the reasons that I think this movie is the bee's knees (he said, hating himself), but now I'm interested in knowing how all of this was interpreted by you. Try not to be a buzz kill. 

NT: First, I would like to amend my previous, pre-discussion assessment of today's film, as I feel that my comment, in its brevity and curtness, belies the thoughtful analysis I was reaching for. What I should have written was that "THE DEADLY BEES [yawn] really stinks." About the nicest thing I can say concerning Amicus's fourth horror outing is that it made for an uproarious episode of MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000. But as much fun as Mike and the 'bots have skewering the film, they repeatedly point out an essential truth about THE DEADLY BEES that I'm trying to get at: this is a dull and dreary piece. Marital strife, petty rivalries, and cute dead dogs in the lifeless English countryside. Oh, joy.

You list a few aspects of the film that you found enjoyable, and I couldn't quibble with most of them too much. The groovy musical numbers are just fine, though I question the narrative logic and necessity of their inclusion, along with that behind making the heroine a fragile pop starlet in the first place, beyond a misguided stab at capturing the interest of England's youth (which would then be promptly lost the moment the glitzy, fast-paced music world is traded in for the small town arts of beekeeping, tea-time, and passive aggressive matrimony). The shoddy projected VFX of the bee attacks are pretty far from what you or I could reasonably call 'great,' and the plastic bees glued to the actor's faces don't help sell much either, but these scenes don't fatally sting the film's chances at success. I also agree that the small scale of the story is preferable to a hysterically pitched, overly ambitious beepocalypse. (For evidence of why this is so, sit through all two and a half hours of THE SWARM [1978] and then rock restlessly back and forth as you ponder giving up on cinema.) Yet, THE DEADLY BEES' small scale approach is also responsible for the majority of the film's problems. This is a mystery with no mystery. We're stuck in a Two-Beekeeper town, and it doesn't take much brainpower to figure out which one's responsible for the deadly stingings. (Never trust a kindly old beekeeper; eat the honey of the scowling ones.) Moreover, we don't much care about the killer's motive (not to say there's much of one), or about those who have died (who will quietly fume and smoke all those cigarettes now that Mrs. Hargrove is gone?), or about those who might (come again, how did a pop star end up in the middle of all this small town aggression?). We care only about watching the time clock tick up to the closing credits, and that's a damning feeling to hold against a film scarcely eighty minutes long.

I'm not certain what went wrong here. As noted, the stellar creative team behind our last few films is once again present, and yet Freddie Francis's direction turns out nothing but flat and uninspired performances, John Wilcox's cinematography finds few ways to make the village visually engaging when not bogged down by those lousy swarm VFX, and Bloch's script is as confused as it is thematically bereft. For all three to have screwed up this badly seems unlikely. For whatever it's worth, Bloch-- in his autobiography-- washes his hands of the script, claiming it was tinkered with by Francis and another scribe before shooting. So maybe he wasn't responsible for the whole pop star angle (though who's to say?), but the mystery-mongering feels like a product of his bag of tricks, so I'll lay blame for that aspect's poor quality on him. I haven't read the film's source material, H. F. Heard's Sherlock Holmes homage A TASTE FOR HONEY (though I do own an attractive vintage paperback copy), but the foreword to a recent edition reveals the basic fact that it's not a mystery of the whodunit variety, but instead one of motive and resolution. The novel, featuring only four (!) characters, realizes how silly staging a whodunit would be with such a small cast of suspects, and so diverts its attention to more interesting matters. Bloch's script fails to do the same, while only incrementally increasing that number of warm bodies worthy of suspicion. This sort of animal attack whodunit can prove effective and surprising when handled with intelligence-- heck almost the same scheme would work a handful of years later in the poisoned-claw-cat-in-a-wicker-basket giallo THE CRIMES OF THE BLACK CAT (1972)-- but there's a decided lack of filmmaking intelligence on display here, from all involved. In that autobiography, Bloch also states that the film was written for Christopher Lee and Boris Karloff, and I think it says a lot that imagining their presence in the film doesn't improve it much. I wish THE DEADLY BEES were a horrendous film, because a true atrocity-- unlike a crushing mediocrity-- is something to admire.

GR: It's one of those indescribable feelings that I have for THE DEADLY BEES. I acknowledge and understand all of its intrinsic shortcomings and yet there it is, that damnable attraction to it that flies in the face of conventional good taste. Some may call that love, but I certainly don't feel that strongly about it. And yet I'm still willing to posit that almost all of the film's inanities are in fact positive points for me. Who can make sense of the curious and illogical draw we all subjectively have to art? I'm sure that you would not say that THE DEADLY BEES gets anywhere close to a semblance of art, but for me it's a simple and humble vehicle that I can't help but smile at even as it makes adorable missteps like a toddler learning how to walk.

Grant you, I will readily admit that the film's pace seemed a little lagging; during the inquest scene, I happened to glance at the run time and said to myself "Holy crap, we're only halfway through?" It's certainly true that a genuinely entertaining movie wouldn't normally elicit this kind of reaction, so that lackadaisical quality to THE DEADLY BEES does end up hurting it a bit. And my comment before about the film thankfully not having that Hollywood disaster-blockbuster feel doesn't necessarily mean that THE DEADLY BEES couldn't have used at least one show-stopping set piece. A homage to Hitchcock's THE BIRDS (1963) with the swarm of bees attacking a charming countryside schoolhouse full of screeching British kiddies, perhaps? But again, I'm perfectly fine with the movie retaining its small town drama, in all its daytime soap opera glory. 

I sense from what you mentioned of Heard's novel that this overall theme is more in tune with his original story. Bloch's attempts to cast the tale as a mystery does hamper the narrative--and as you said, that approach has his fingerprints all over it--but for me the "whodunit" aspect presented here is the same kind of mystery that you see in ROSEMARY'S BABY (1968). WE know that quiet Mr. Manfred (Frank Finlay) is up to no good (his reveal of the record tape that controls the bees with a high-frequency ring is basically him saying "Hey, it's me!"), just like those crafty Castavets from Polanski's film, but that doesn't make their respective schemes any the less engaging simply because of the intuitive knowledge we have of their true motives. Well, at least for me. (On a somewhat related note, I'm sad to say that THE DEADLY BEES does fudge on properly selling the beekeeper uniform as a new and distinct garb for its killer in the same fashion that black leather gloves and veils were utilized in the Italian gialli.) Finlay himself makes a lovely villain in the final moments. He may not be a Lee and definitely not a Karloff, but his stodgy, tweeded presence has its own unique charm. His dull-eyed admission to Suzanna Leigh of "I have to kill you" is chilling in its banality. Though I can see how you might say that his nonchalant delivery of this line might be an indication that even he is bored by all the stingy shenanigans.

I can see how THE DEADLY BEES would be perfect MST3K fodder if only for some of the bizarre lines and non-sequiters that pop up. Take for instance Mrs. Hargrove's unfortunate wording of the query "The dog's meat, have you seen it?" or Leigh's agent calling her up to lay on an inadvertant poetry jam when he says "Nothing to do work work, baby. Just seeing if you arrived safely." or the brooding Mr. Hargrove getting stuck on his line: "Don't repeat your visits... to Mr. Manfred." Not to mention Ms. Leigh finishing up one of her numerous toothbrushing sessions with a mouth full of paste only for her to put her electric toothbrush away one cut later with a perfectly clean mouth, insinuating that she enjoys swallowing toothpaste as much as she loves running away from bees in her bra and slip. Such is the weird and inept world of THE DEADLY BEES, and such is my mysterious enjoyment of it. 

NT: All I can say in conclusion is that you've been very kind to these deadly (tiresome) bees, Jose. I'm certain you'll make a fine beekeeper one day.

Next Week: TORTURE GARDEN (1967)

Meltdown 07: Found Footage Rewind (Part VII)

  The Bay (2012) dir. Barry Levinson

For competent directors, populist horror trends tend to serve as the launching points for Hollywood careers, allowing these filmmakers to prove themselves capable of wrangling a successful product out of an easy formula while under the constraints of a limited budget. Not totally screwing up-- or, even better, displaying a bit of creativity-- in these early genre projects can open up some significant studio doors for aspiring filmmakers. (See, for instance, the careers of most of the young directors who first worked making horror films for Roger Corman (and then went on to become people with names like "Coppola" and "Bogdanovich") or, more specifically to the topic in question, gander at the upcoming projects of successful FF directors like Chronicle's Josh Trank and Paranormal Activity's Oren Peli.) With this in mind, it's curious to see a horror trend like FF being used as a shelter for a faltering career instead. Academy Award-winning director Barry Levinson (he of Diner (1982), Rain Man (1988), and Wag the Dog (1997)) has had a rough past decade in multiplexes, and after a few successful TV projects we find him returning to feature films with The Bay, a modest FF/mockumentary horror that in many crucial ways is indistinguishable from other modern efforts in the subgenre made by less seasoned filmmakers. That isn't necessarily a dig at Levinson's skills, as it's actually quite impressive to witness how seamlessly he integrates The Bay into the FF movement's current trends and aesthetics, but-- simultaneously-- it's also disappointing to see how little his four decades of experience behind the camera adds to the film. While in many way an enjoyable film, The Bay still suffers from the same tried and true deficiencies that so many other FF films are afflicted with: terrible amateur acting, preposterous plot points, and themes with the subtlety of wrecking balls.

Like so many animal terror movies, The Bay positions itself as an ecologically conscious critique of the level of pollutants we allow into our environment by demonstrating the effects of an exaggerated consequence (in this case, the appearance of a freakishly large, water-based, tongue-eating mutant parasite, the Cymothoa exigua, in the eponymous polluted zone). Yet, more so than nearly any animal terror film, The Bay appears to fancy itself a totally earnest and, in essence, truthful ecological tract against the abuses of industry, using its horror elements merely as visceral support for its claims (rather than the usual track these films take: legitimizing the horror with an ecological context). This might have been a successful track to take if the film were more thoughtful and accurate than the alarmist fairytale it is, depicting, as it does, a comically evil mayor who colludes to pollute the town's water for profit (and then attempts to prevent panic when townsfolk start becoming infected: another animal terror film trope) and a wildly incompetent and disinterested CDC who really can't be bothered to deal with the alleged "outbreak" in some small town in Maryland. Regardless, the infrequent bits of horror that the film includes are admirably done, and the film's conceptual mutant critters are so squirm-inducing that it would have to try pretty hard to screw them up (it doesn't). In terms of its aesthetic approach to FF, the film is also of interest for its higher-than-average number of footage sources, including that from TV news crews, Skype sessions, FaceTime chats, home videos, scientific research video logs, and police cruiser dashboard cams. How all of this government-suppressed footage of The Bay's disaster winds up in the hands of an amateur-in-every-respect reporter (as seen in the film's wraparound segments) is unclear because the film has no good answer for its conceits, but the variety is appreciated nonetheless.

 

Area 407 (2012) dir. Dale Fabrigar & Everette Wallin

One could suppose that if a person has no other frame of reference, Area 407 might resemble a movie. But that might also be stretching it. Rather, it more closely resembles a belabored string of arguments and reaction shots captured through the lens of a camcorder, sprinkled with ADR'd noises off in the distance and the occasional blurry clipart velociraptor being dragged across an open window. Area 407 is sort of like the pilot episode of LOST, if it were set on New Year's Eve, if the plane had crashed in a field in California rather than an island, and if the shaking trees had indeed turned out to be dinosaurs rather than a mopey smoke monster. It's a poor enough excuse for an FF film (there's no motion towards an explanation regarding how we're seeing this footage (and if we have only the last shot to go on, it was swallowed by a dinosaur); the C.O. more often aims her camera at the faces of other characters when a dinosaur is howling away in the woods directly behind her), so what's even worse is that it can't manage to be at all interesting on any other level. The dinosaurs, which even in a bad movie would be reason enough to power through it, are obscured until a brief final shot (the very expensive camera conveniently malfunctions during all previous attacks), so what else could there even be to latch onto here? A big nil. If two things can be said in Area 407's defense they would be that the majority of the acting is not atrocious and the arguing-- though taking up an unfortunate amount of the running time-- is at least convincingly derived from a stressful and dangerous situation. Yes, the actors who run away from a CGI velociraptor's tail don't embarrass themselves too much. Would they like a noisemaker or a glittery party hat for their trouble?

 

The Dinosaur Project (2012) dir. Sid Bennett

I'd like to think that the directors of Area 407, Dale Fabrigar and Everette Wallin, tucked their velociraptor tails between their legs in shame after seeing The Dinosaur Project, released in the same year as their negligible dinosaur FF film and in every way surpassing it. Granted, the folks behind The Dinosaur Project obviously had a bigger pot of funds to pull from (we actually see dinosaurs!) and there's no denying that the film is aided by some gorgeous, if geographically confusing, location shooting in South Africa. But the film also bothers to anchor its story by establishing a believable central relationship between its estranged father and son protagonists, and the mere effort (so often lacking in FF films of this sort) convinces us to connect to it on a basic level. Moreover, the film cultivates a sense of wondrous adventure commingled with very real terror, resembling a sort of contemporary version of  Doyle's The Lost World and leaving the film feeling more fun than horrifying, much like the similarly successful Chronicle (2012). Also much like Chronicle, with its mind-controlled floating cameras, The Dinosaur Project attempts some snazzy innovation of the FF aesthetic (by way of zooming velcro micro-cameras and a dino neck collar cam) while at the same time pushing or ignoring the boundaries of camera coverage verisimilitude. But small chinks in the armor of the film's FF conceit are not enough to fell the whole. If nothing else proves the film's good intent, witness its denouement, which both satisfyingly hints at the further adventures its protagonist will have in dinoland and actively avoids the easy set up for a sequel by literally dismantling the camera. Much appreciated. Director Sid Bennett is responsible for another FF oddity, the recent Discovery Channel mockumentary Mermaids: The Body Found (2011), and if The Dinosaur Project represents his desire to continue playing around with the form, then let him at it.

The Frankenstein Theory (2013) dir. Andrew Weiner

Andrew Weiner's The Frankenstein Theory is one of the first major FF releases of the calendar year, and if we were to anticipate the rest of 2013 in FF on it alone then the prognosis wouldn't be entirely grim. Conceptually, the film is near ingenious, positing that Mary Shelley's novel was based, in fact, not on then current Romantic-era scientific conjecture but on an actual story of a scientist, here a Dr. Venkenheim, who reanimated a hulking corpse in his spare time to disastrous results. The discovery of this long-buried truth inspires a descendent of Venkenheim to hire a film crew to accompany him on a journey to the Arctic to substantiate reports of the Creature's continued existence. With this focus, the film aims for some literary cachet (there's a passing mention of a Justine-like character who is hanged for the Creature's crimes, and the tireless Arctic quest of the descendent of Dr. Venkenheim and his film crew's threats of mutiny echo the foolhardy pursuit of the novel's Walton) but one can't escape the feeling that the writers were working off the CliffsNotes (the Creature is a lumbering, wordless beast who eats meat, huh?). Still, the effort spent carving out some light themes and literary allusions is welcome, considering the rest of what's here is, at best, middling. For much of the film, little happens, and we're treated to a wealth of landscape beauty shots as our characters traverse the winter wasteland (plus, whoever edited together this-- again-- miraculously recovered footage was kind enough to splice in a few establishing shots). 

Besides a predominance of tedium until the final act, the film's most obvious issue is its deliberate avoidance of FF verisimilitude. Sure, the FF conceit of a film like The Dinosaur Project has a few holes, but The Frankenstein Theory's is a gulch. For awhile, the viewer may not realize that there is a cameraman, as he makes not a peep for most of the duration (there are, in fact, two camera operators at certain points, only adding to the confusion). But the primary C.O.'s professional silence makes the FF aesthetic feel abnormally artificial in the film, as if the filmmakers wanted to make their scenes more "cinematic" by removing the human operator while still having the film broadly conform to the FF trend. What this results in is the camera cutting to different shots and camera angles within a single scene that would be impossible with the crew's established documentary camera setup (and again raise questions about our mysterious footage editor). I noticed at least one glaring instance in which the camera jumped from in front of two characters to behind them without any passage of time or a cameraman visible in either shot, but I recall smaller bits of camera confusion as well (like a plethora of scenes featuring inexplicable shot-reverse-shot editing). Why bother creating an FF film, with all the form's inherent limitations, if you've decided to violate those very limitations for ease and convenience of storytelling? The only occasions in which the filmmakers use the aesthetics of FF are when they desire to obscure the Creature from our view during attacks, which always feel like a cheap shot in these sort of affairs to begin with, but are doubly unearned here in a film that wouldn't otherwise hesitate to cut to clearer footage from some other magical floating camera. Perhaps it's a small quibble, but it seems to be one that matters as FF films shift ever closer to resembling traditionally filmed cinema and begin to lose their unique spark. The Frankenstein Theory isn't the only offender on this count, and probably won't be the last. And, even then, the film redeems its transgressions in its enjoyable final act, in which the Creature plays a game of Occupy Yurt and meets (the descendant of) his maker. This conclusion presents a clever play on the novel's depiction of the Creature's desires, acting as a sort of wish fulfillment for the poor guy and (perhaps unintentionally) laying the foundation for a sequel I wouldn't mind seeing. Let us patiently await Bride of Frankenstein Theory.

Meltdown 07: Found Footage Rewind (Part IV)

Eyes in the Dark (2010) dir. Bjorn Anderson

For a godawful film, Eyes in the Dark sure does manage to pack in an inordinate amount of entertainment value. It features everything that you'd expect from a bad FF film (shockingly childish dialogue, characters who hate one another but vacation together regardless, long stretches of nothing, constant squabbling), but then it also manages to transcend these glaring flaws through what I can only describe as a helping of scruffy, no-budget abandon. An unremarkable (if typical) first hour suddenly gives way to some of the flat out corniest monster movie mayhem I've ever witnessed. Watching a pack of shoddy monsters with glowing red LED eyeballs suddenly decimate our cast while burping and slurping in ADR corrects any perceived faults. The wolf-like creatures' mythology is surprisingly well-conceived (a pack of ancient beasts that have roamed the remote area in question every 365 moons since the Earth's creation), but the most marvelous things about them is that they are portrayed on screen by actors wearing costumes below the quality level of the discount rack of a suburban mall's Halloween store in early November. They appear to share a faint kinship with Sabre, the monster puppet from the Goosebumps episode "Welcome to Camp Nightmare," but devolved several notches. (One character sums up probably exactly the instructions given to the film's costume designer: "Here's what we know: They're big. They have teeth.") The fact that the filmmakers not only decided to use these cheap-o costumes, but also to display them in all their pitiful glory as frequently and as clearly as they do is beyond admirable, as well as comprehension. These decisions (while bad ones on any artistic level) make for an endlessly amusing final act, and even helped to warm me to the film overall. I feel like there may even come a time in the future when I'll want to watch it again, to marvel once more at its deeply flawed, gleefully stupid, and totally earnest attempt at creating frightening monsters on the screen. Also of note is the film's novel (if brainless) presentation style, in which footage from various sources is accessed from a DOS command line on a FBI terminal. Who exactly in the FBI is documenting and reviewing evidence of ancient wolfish moon beasts is never made clear, but it does inspire one with a couple ideas.

Last Ride (2011) dir. James Phillips

One couldn't accuse James Phillips's Last Ride of being slow to fire off the starter pistol. Within the film's first ten minutes, the forest ride of a group of high-spirited cyclists is interrupted by a woman having her throat ripped out by some unseen creature, who then proceeds to chase down the survivors of this initial attack. It's a bold and sudden way to begin the film's main action. (Some clever misdirection, too: from what little we'd already seen, we'd expected the relationship between the soon-to-be-dead girl and our C.O. to be one of the film's main concerns.) But pressing the button on the action and horror so soon into the film is also, perhaps unavoidably, its downfall, when considered in conjunction with its primary aesthetic conceit: we watch this frantic pursuit from the camera strapped to the headgear of our lead cyclist, allowing us to view, in real-time, only that which he sees. This adds a touch of suspense during moments in which the creature gurgles and growls somewhere out of sight, but more than that it makes the next hour and change exceedingly dull. Our lead cyclist and his few surviving pals (the number of which decreases steadily over the course of the film) wander endlessly through the forest with no clear goal besides finding a major road. I don't recall seeing any cuts (and if there were, they were well enough concealed), so what's possible to be filmed by a group of amateur filmmakers and actors without shutting the camera off is precisely what we receive. It is not riveting material. The actors spend large swaths of the film either in silence or arguing without conviction about which direction to aimlessly chug along in. (The closing credits inform us, "All dialogue performed was improvised by the cast." Would never have guessed.) Every death, without exception occurs off-screen, with a character screaming and then stumbling into frame clutching a bloody throat or being found lying on the ground all torn up. Similarly, with regard to our creature, gurgling and growling added in post-production is all we receive, its identity remaining a complete mystery up to and including the final scene. This absence of any direct view of the creature, coupled with all the off-screen deaths, makes fairly apparent the peanuts in the budget that Phillips & Co. had to work with in fashioning their horror. They most likely couldn't afford anything that looked any good, so the only other options would be to toss in the cheap stuff (a la Eyes in the Dark's Goosebumps costumes) or avoid it all together. I believe they chose wrong. An entire FF film conceived and filmed in a single take is a novel idea and in fact feels like a totally natural fit for the handheld verite horror aesthetic (so much so that I'm surprised this is this first time it's been attempted, to my knowledge). But making the conceit work requires more than the duct tape needed to strap your camera to your helmet.

7 Nights of Darkness (2011) dir. Allen Kellogg

What is it about the FF subgenre that makes so many of its films averse to narrative? The recent flock of practitioners appear to have derived their storytelling abilities from low-end reality television, imagining that what film audiences are craving is episodes of Ghost Hunters but if, like, the ghosts were real, man. In these formless blobs of handheld footage, characters are incidental, subtext is nonexistent, and plot only exists to bridge one "boo" to the next. You might imagine that this makes these less narrative-minded FF films more accurate to the format in which they're presented (for example, delve through your own home movies and cell phone videos and attempt to construct a coherent narrative). But your argument would fall flat when considered against the sheer amount of deliberate construction that goes into these films when attempting to make their audiences gasp. They are, in essence, long form versions of those videos your friends link you to on Youtube in which the frame is calm and lulling before an image of a demon or Linda Blair pops up on screen and screams at you. This isn't story; it's a gag. 7 Nights of Darkness-- whose alternate title could be The Real World: Ghost Asylum-- is hardly the worst offender when it comes to neglecting any semblance of story or character in favor of presenting a dire string of poorly constructed jump scares, but it's not at all innocent. (Those worst offenders, excepting the uniquely terrible Greystone Park (2012), are still to come later this month.) Exactly everything that 7 Nights of Darkness has to offer is present in the above poster: it's a reality show-influenced, Grave Encounters-esque abandoned asylum flick that hits all of those predictable notes, and if by "It's The Blair Witch Project meets The Ring" the writer means that the film blatantly rips off defining images from both films within minutes of each other at its conclusion, then yes, it is like them. It is also (and this the poster fails to mention) a negligible film, about nothing whatsoever.

Re-Cut (2010) dir. Fritz Manger

Of the four films looked at today, Fritz Manger's Re-Cut is easily the most technically accomplished, sporting decent production values and a professional sheen without totally sacrificing verite verisimilitude. In brief, it's a decent film, with some arresting imagery, a simple mystery plot, and likeable (if shallow) protagonists. But, considering its total absence of supernatural entities, we must read Re-Cut as a thriller, and as a thriller it's unfortunately deficient, adhering far too closely to a lingering FF convention that sucks away tension. In fact, Re-Cut gives us a perfect opportunity to consider one of the foremost staples of the FF horror film outside of its camcorder aesthetics: the opening Revelation of Fate. Innumerable FF films feature an opening text screen that informs us, right from the word "go," that the characters we will spend the next hour and a half watching will die horribly. The origin of this convention in the subgenre isn't difficult to pinpoint (Blair Witch), but its preponderance in most recent descendants is puzzling. Of course, The Blair Witch Project's opening text doesn't tell us that Heather, Josh, and Mike all died, simply that they'd gone missing and only their footage was recovered; viewing the footage, then, would give us the opportunity to unravel the mystery of what happened to them on their fateful documentary shoot in Burkittsville. This creates suspense. What does not-- and what the majority of FF films using the Revelation of Fate text screen fail to grasp-- is knowing that our characters don't stand a chance. Revealing as much from the film's beginning makes whatever comes after an exercise in pacing: how long until each character's inevitable demise, and how entertaining is it in the interim? The Revelation of Fate, handled without care, is destructive to horror, obliterating the one thing absolutely necessary for it: a sense of the unknown. At this point, we have to assume the Revelation of Fate keeps cropping up in these films simply because it's become an established convention, an easy and recognizable tactic that requires the least amount of work on the part of the film's audience. This is distressing. (The Revelation of Fate also ties in to one of my main points of grief in re: the films covered thus far: the plethora of time-wasting post-incident interviews with family members, friends, and authorities, which again spoil the ending and drive me to tears of boredom. See: The Bucks County Massacre (2010), The Tapes (2011), In the Dark (2004), The Bake Street Hauntings (2011).) Re-Cut's approach to the Revelation of Fate is unique, though no less destructive: the linear progression of the film's story (concerning a team of news reporters/documentary filmmakers investigating the deaths of two young girls) is intercut with handheld scenes of this same crew being graphically murdered in Saw/Hostel-lite industrial torture chambers. Sure, these horrific sequences don't explicitly reveal the identities of the slabs of human meat being strung up on meathooks and stabbed to death, but there's never any real doubt. Our heroes were doomed from the start, and thus so was our attention and appreciation.

Next up: Long Pigs (2007), 100 Ghost Street: The Return of Richard Speck (2012), & Paranormal Entity (2009), Invasion (2005).

February 2013's Footstones

Being a List of the Assorted Horrors I've Consumed During the Month of February, 2013

Though quite the understatement, it would be fair to say that I watch a few more horror films in any given month than I find the time to cover here on the blog. I began the blog almost a year ago with the intention of it being a screening diary, in which I hoped to more or less write about every horror film I watched. This was almost immediately stifling: not only was I forcing myself to write a developed entry about everything I happened to see (no matter how difficult or uninteresting that task may have been), but this dictum actually began to persuade me against watching as many horror films as I generally do, knowing that if I watched fifty or so horror movies in a month I'd feel that nagging compulsion in the back of my mind to write about them. The switch to monthly themes in the last half year or so of this blog's life has both given the blog a novel organizing principle and liberated me from the its initial mission.

Nevertheless, this decision has prevented a wealth of good (and execrable) films that I've been watching from being included here on the blog, so from here on out I'm going to split the difference by presenting a new monthly feature called Footstones. These Footstone entries will be the first of every month and will be a collection of brief-ish capsule commentaries on those odds and ends that I've watched but that didn't fit the previous month's theme. With any luck, these entries will soothe my writerly conscience and provide you, gentle reader, with some bite-sized thoughts for mastication.

For more capsule-shaped reading fun, make sure to check out my freshly published Favorite Film Discoveries of 2012 list over at Rupert Pupkin Speaks.

Urban Legends: Final Cut (2000) dir. John Ottman

Jamie Blanks's Urban Legend (1998), with its adoption of a clever but never cloying metanarrative, adherence to the bombastic and ludicrous tenor of slashers past, and utilization of Rebecca Gayheart's massive hair, rests unquestionably in the top tier of post-Scream slashers. John Ottman's follow-up can't claim the same heights. It's a decent entertainment, featuring likeable enough characters and some moderately cute (though ultimately underdeveloped) methods for connecting this followup to the first film. But its insane jumps in logic and storytelling (moves which felt organic in the first film) here seem overly calculated, as if they're missing the wit they think they possess (see: most of the jokes, the twin twist). Moreover, its film school setting is about as nauseating and false as such fictional depictions tend to be (see: resources as good as any Hollywood production and Joey Lawrence on his cellphone calling up his Tinseltown connects). It sounds like a snub to say that the best part of Final Cut is its closing credits, but if you've seen the film you'll understand: oh, what it could have been! Though I can't remember any compulsion to see it at the time (which is nearly unthinkable considering my affection for the first film), this sequel was not a direct-to-video release. It received a genuine theatrical run and even made a profit, though it only wound up taking in about half of the business that Blanks's film did. Indeed, a second sequel, Urban Legends: Bloody Mary (2005), which breaks away from the series' slasher roots on a supernatural tangent (Hello, Mary Lou), was released direct-to-DVD. Maybe someday it will haunt my television set, but Final Cut didn't leave me champing at the bit for more.

Bait 3D (2012) dir. Kimble Rendall

Yet there was, to no surprise, much ch[o]mping in this Australian "Sharks in a Supermarket" flick. The concept does not stretch much further than that, nor would we want it to. (Though, a case could be made for it bravely venturing outside its comfort zone by also including a "Shark in a Parking Garage Beneath a Supermarket" subplot.) This is director Kimble Rendall's first film after careers in rock music and second-unit direction, and perhaps in consequence of this the film seems as if its been whittled from the creative hands of an entertainer rather than an artist or storyteller. It is, in a couple of words, idiotic fun. Bait 3D's melodramatic dialogue and broadly sketched characters often left me rolling in laughter. Admittedly, the shark action (the raison d'être for this sort of spectacle) is subpar, creating not a lick of genuine tension-- especially in contrast to another recent Australian shark attack flick, The Reef (2010)-- but one cannot help but admire the genuine enthusiasm with which the filmmakers approach their sublimely goofy scenario.

Shark Night 3D (2011) dir. David R. Ellis

I was quite thrilled with the insanity-fueled high Bait 3D had left me with, but I happened to be snowed in on this particular night so followed it up with this gem from the late, great schlockmeister David R. Ellis (helmer of the two best films in the Final Destination series, parts II and IV). The buzz I'd heard from folks upon its release was none too kind, with most harping on its neutered PG-13 style. But I wonder if those reviewers walked in biased because of the ludicrous pretense that PG-13 horror can never be good, because what's here (perhaps in spite of or maybe even because of its self-imposed restraint) is extremely entertaining. Such restraint forces the film to create appeal in its other aspects, which Shark Night does. The risk that runs with total gore freedom is dreck like Silent Night (2012) or even Piranha 3D (2010), the latter of which is a decent film but still rests on its "Gore is entertaining/funny, huh?" laurels and can't bother to be appealing otherwise. (Like, if this movie were made by the director of Silent Night the sharks would have slowly eaten Katharine McPhee's boobs for 10 minutes while Donal Logue poured beer on the wounds and belched.) Shark Night is blankly likeable characters doing silly things in a preposterous situation. I suppose a lot of its appeal for me is it's odd wholesomeness, which is a rare trait in the Grunge City that is '00s-'10s horror. I mean, just look at this. This is the kind of stupidity we need more of in this genre. The villains in Shark Night hate college kids so much that they decide to populate a salt-water lake with various species of sharks and feed said college kids to them so that they can then sell the footage they film of this chomping to the Discovery Channel for Shark Week. Fantastic.

Screamtime (1986) dir. Michael Armstrong & Stanley A. Long

First Maxim: Horror anthologies are intrinsically enjoyable viewing experiences-- a lousy segment or two won't prevent at least one of them from capturing your fancy. (Even the abysmal V/H/S (2012) managed not to disappoint on this count.) Second Maxim: British horror anthologies are best of all. (View all of the Amicus anthologies and then try to mount a counter-argument. You have been dared.) With these general truths in mind, I'm happy to report that Screamtime, a low-budget slasher-inflected British horror anthology from the mid-80s, is certainly a pleasure, if not particularly the strongest example of the form. Though its third and concluding segment (about some sentient killer garden gnomes) is a bit deficient in its execution, the first two segments (the first about the bloody family problems of a beleaguered Punch & Judy show proprietor; the second about a woman receiving disturbing visions of the future after moving into a new house) are excellent slices of thrill 'n' chill. The wraparound segment, about a couple of oafish thieves watching the pilfered segments on their VHS player only to find those segments' antagonists appear in reality, is as much of a flat note as it sounds, though it does provide us a brief but utterly tantalizing glimpse inside of a UK-based video store in the pre-Nasties 1980s. What we see: a veritable wonderland.

The Kindred (1987) dir. Stephen Carpenter & Jeffrey Obrow

The Kindred is one of the best (if not the best) low-budget/high concept/higher effort creature features ever forged, and it's a crime that it's not talked about more often. Part of the problem, one imagines, is its unfortunate relegated-to-VHS status, but allegedly Synapse Films has been formulating a long-gestating remedy to this issue that will hopefully come to pass one day soon. The Kindred boasts an elaborate pseudo-scientific premise that allows for much monster carnage, including (among its greatest hits) a tentacled creature living under the porch and a woman metamorphosing into a fish. The practical effects are as gooey as they are gorgeous, managing at times to be jaw-dropping in intensity and ambition. And the film doesn't settle for visual splendor alone: it also features a group of (relatively speaking) intelligent and mature scientist protagonists who are likeable enough that the film can't bring itself to kill them all. The Kindred is by the same writer/director team who, just a few years prior, assembled the wonderfully gory and grim college slasher The Dorm That Dripped Blood (1982). As good as that earlier film is, The Kindred is leaps and bounds better in formulation and execution, foreshadowing great future genre efforts from this duo that (sadly) never came.

House of Dark Shadows (1970) dir. Dan Curtis

Walking into Dan Curtis's colorful big-screen adaptation of his own daytime black and white soap opera without being at all familiar with the source material was, I'd read in countless reviews, a mistake. The film necessarily condenses plotlines that ran for months on end over countless hours on television, and because of such takes some rather abrupt and jarring narrative leaps. Turns out, I adored House of Dark Shadows specifically because of its refusal to hold my hand while shifting through its dense array of characters and motivations. An astute viewer will have little trouble reconciling all of the film's bits and pieces, and will soon thrill to its sumptuous atmospheric pleasures and its refusal to slacken its mad dash to its gory finish line. This is an American Gothic in the grand and garish Hammer style, and anyone who cherishes that sort of spectacle knows how rare a bird it is. Thank you, Tim Burton, for making this film and its sequel's digital video debuts possible.

Night of Dark Shadows (1971) dir. Dan Curtis

The second Dark Shadows film, Night of Dark Shadows, features the notable absence of first film and series' star, Jonathan Frid, as the vampire Barnabas Collins. It instead features some later Collins descendants at the old Collinwood estate, dealing with seductive ghosts and witches. This does not at all feel like a step down in quality. Unlike House of Dark Shadows, Night is leisurely paced, and that's actually a benefit to its much less visceral concerns. Its manifestations of its haunting are occasionally more subtle than its soap opera origins would lead you to assume, and all the more effective for it. (Of special note in this regard is its wonderful final sequence, which plays for both subtlety and bombast one after the other and pulls off both with class.) Simultaneously, its emphasis on documenting a decaying domestic relationship feels much more in line with typical soap opera subject matter than House's opulent vampire drama, and becomes (as soap operas tend to) rather engrossing over its hour and a half running time. (I'd love to see its long-lost extended cut, which is said to be fuller and more coherent, though I had no trouble at all following or appreciating what was left after the editor put down his scissors.) Night reminded me, in many ways both broad and specific, of a film director Dan Curtis would soon direct, the Oliver Reed and Karen Black haunted house drama Burnt Offerings (1976). Perhaps the later film was an attempt to right the wrongs perpetrated on the former in the editing room? In any case, Curtis provided us two of the very best American-produced haunted house films in only five years back in the 1970s, and that's no small feat.

Death Ship (1980) dir. Alvin Rakoff

Death Ship isn't as good as its poster, but then that's a tough image to live up to. Nonetheless, it's a decent maritime thriller with an imposing haunted Nazi warship as its primary location. George Kennedy is his usual fantastic self as a beyond-cantakerous retiring ship captain who, upon shipwreck and ghostly possession, takes command of the titular ship and sets his fellow survivors up for blood sacrifice. No matter how you cut it, a haunted ship that runs (figuratively if not actually) on human blood is pretty nifty, and if the Nazi angle adds an exploitative angle to it all, well, all the better for this sort of venture. There's some decent horrific imagery (like when one of out heroes falls into a watery cargo hold full of decaying corpses) alongside equally clunky ones (a bloody shower is treated by its screeching recipient as The Most Horrific Thing of All Time while we scratch our heads). To its credit, Death Ship also prominently features two young children among its cast, and their performances (along with a recurring joke about how the little boy has a clearly defective bladder) somehow didn't inspire me to thunk my head repeatedly against the wall whenever they were on screen. So, kudos. The recent blu-ray release of the film from Scorpion Releasing is a fine one, with a rather sharp transfer and some fun supplementary materials.

The Video Dead (1987) dir. Robert Scott

Excellent mindless trash. Its perplexing central conceit (a haunted television set bound for a paranormal research institute winds up in a suburban home and begins spawning vain, life-envying zombies) is so earnestly accepted by the film's characters that, in its own non-logic, we actually come to accept it. The Video Dead knows that it's funny-- most of the time, at least-- and when it doesn't, as in the case of lead actor Rocky Duvall's gee-whiz performance, it's delectable for reasons of amateurish gung-ho. Its wonderful final act, in which our heroine plays housekeeper and hostess to our confused zombie horde in order to avoid being attacked, feels as if it would fit comfortably in Peter Jackson's early genre work. The Video Dead was released for the first time on a digital format in February by Scream Factory as one half of a monsters-in-the-television-centric blu-ray double feature, the other half being the glorious and long-sought-after Terrorvision (1986). To call this the release of the month would be a gross understatement: seeing these neglected films so lovingly preserved and supplemented is enough to warm the cockles of the most jaded of genre fans' hearts.

The Nest (1988) dir. Terence H. Winkless

Another Scream Factory release from last month was Terence H. Winkless's mutant roach flick The Nest. Before a delay of this release, I had scheduled myself to cover it during January's Nature's Grave feature here at the blog. The film fits snugly into the confines of the Animal Terror genre, sporting all the distinguishing features: reckless scientists, mutated wildlife, unconcerned/complicit local authorities, and a half-baked ecological message. Among its peers, it's an unremarkable effort, despite some occasional flashes of Slugs-level gory brilliance and the presence of the ever-adorable Lisa Langlois (who also starred in the much superior but equally scrappy killer rat flick, Deadly Eyes (1982)). Perhaps the film's biggest issue is how little screentime the cockroaches actually have. For a film explicitly about the insect's ick factor, more could have been gained by keeping their physiology grounded in quasi-reality (or maybe taking the exaggerated Creepshow (1982) approach) rather than by promising flesh-eating mutant roaches (see the above poster) that it can't deliver. We're gifted some nifty looking cat-roach and human-roach hybrids, but it says something that the film's best squirm-producing moment is one in which our protagonist fails to notice the roach swimming around in his coffee cup.

The Night Stalker (1972) dir. John Llewellyn Moxey & The Night Strangler (1973) dir. Dan Curtis

More Dan Curtis goodness in the form of two television movies that spawned a later abbreviated series. Kolchak, a perpetually down-on-his-luck crack investigative reporter, is a fabulous character, and Darren McGavin plays him with all the easy underdog charm that's required and then some. Besides the fun creature plots (a bit more interesting in The Night Strangler, with its inverted Frankensteinian overtones), the most enjoyable aspect of the films is Kolchak's explosive friendship with his weaselly editor, Tony Vincenzo (Simon Oakland). The two are akin to an old bickering couple who can't seem to get rid of one another, despite the constant betrayals and disappointments. Considered together, the films are formulaic (they possess essentially identical plots, with different creatures and locations subbed in), but because it's such a satisfying formula it's difficult to complain about. (My understanding of the later Kolchak series is that it continues the basic formula established in these films, in essence creating the Monster of the Week plot adopted in-part by later series like The X-Files and Fringe.) My hope is to return to the world of Kolchak, and soon.

The Swarm (1978) dir. Irwin Allen

Logline: African killer bees attack a small town and then the world, declaring all-out insect war on the human race. Assorted big name actors hem and haw over a course of action. People hallucinate giant bees hovering over their beds.

Animal of Choice: A swarm of African (or Brazilian) killer bees that have migrated to the United States.

Thinking Ecologically: Ecological concerns are present, but also conveniently brushed over whenever the plot dictates. For instance, Michael Caine's character must convince the military not to airdrop liquid poison on the bees, as it will kill all normal honey bees as well, and hence kill crops (due to a lack of fertilization) and then humans (due to a lack of crops). Makes sense, but then Caine resolves to drop poison in pellet form on the bees (which doesn't work). How exactly does he know that other creatures won't gobble up the pellets by mistake? Another moment when the film neglects the ecological consequences of an event if when the bees-- somehow-- blow up a nuclear power plant. We're told the number of people who died in the blast, but we're not told (nor do any of the characters appear concerned) about the lingering environmental effects of having a goddamn nuclear power plant blow up. The remaining military-affiliated survivors ultimately kill the bees by pouring oil on the ocean and lighting it (and the bees resting on its surface) on fire. Success!

Thinking About Animals: For the most part, the African killer bees exist as a "moving black mass," deliberately attacking all in its path. (Its first appearance, kamikaze buzzing its way into the cockpit windows and the engines of two helicopters, reminds me of a very similar scene from the Japanese film Genocide (1968), which is as a bit like The Swarm on the whole except that it was made a decade earlier and isn't terrible). But calling them a migrating "black mass"-- one that has infiltrated the United States, patiently waiting to rebel against humankind (particularly small town America) while reproducing and shifting the demographics of the dueling populations-- takes on an off-putting connotation when Richard Widmark's character, General Slater, repeatedly growls and calls them "the Africans," like when he exclaims, "No more Africans!" Richard Chamberlin's character attempts to explain that the bees should actually be called "Brazilian bees," considering their genetic heritage stems from the crossbreeding of African and Western honey bees in that country, but this factoid doesn't deter anyone from pondering how to kill all them "Africans." I don't know if there's much to be made from this observation. Then again, in a cast as large as this one I was only able to spot a few black actors, all of whom were background extras. But then, the bees also reenforce their hives with chewed up plastic cups, so if they exist in the film as some sort of nefarious metaphor, then it's a pretty weird one. Yes, there is so little of interest transpiring in the film that I'm reduced to imagining it as a racist fever dream.

Evaluation in Brief: Producer and director Irwin Allen, known for his work spearheading big-budget big-star disaster films of the 1970s like The Poseidon Adventure (1972) and The Towering Inferno (1974), decided to capitalize on the Animal Terror genre by combining it with the slackening genre that he helped create. The result, 1978's The Swarm, is a perfect storm of boredom. A box office flop upon its initial theatrical release, one can only really find the film these days in its extended cut, which clocks in at an excruciating, nearly unfathomable 156 minutes. One feels every second of the endless sequences of its near-geriatric stars (Richard Widmark, Henry Fonda, Cameron Mitchell) standing around bickering in the same cheap sets and the belabored tangent of a subplot concerning a folksy love triangle between three more (Olivia de Havilland, Ben Johnson, Fred MacMurray). The action bits, though not always poorly filmed, are sparse in comparison to the rambling exposition and emotionless character development. Most of the actors seem as bored as we are. There are a couple laughs to be had (three children hiding in overturned trash cans to escape the swarm; Michael Caine giving Katharine Ross a brief "Life May Survive" speech as a raging firestorm is rear-projected behind him), but take away a couple and you still have 154 grimaces and watch glances.

Empire of the Ants (1977) dir. Bert I. Gordon

Logline: Land developer Marilyn Fryser (Joan Collins) carts a group of prospective buyers over to her worthless island property. What remains unclear is if the land's value increases or decreases upon the discovery of a colony of gigantic mutant ants that have taken up residence.

Animal of Choice: Sometimes horse-sized, sometimes elephant-sized mutant ants.

Thinking Ecologically: Over the opening credits, a group of men in radiation suits stand on a ship out at sea and roll barrel upon barrel of radioactive toxic waste into the ocean. One of these barrels washes up on shore, begins to leak, infects ants. There you have it. What's notable about this ecological disaster is how forthright and uncomplicated it is. Generally the disaster or pollution in this sort of film is caused through ignorance or accident, which creates a sense of unease as it forces the viewer to question what sort of unknown pollution could be affecting their own world. Here, the pollution is deliberate and unambiguous, sucking some of the real world dread out of things. We never discover who these polluters are or what their game is. What a loss. (One other small point: it's fitting that a sleazy land developer and her clients end up as the mutant ants' victims, though the film never bothers making this connection as wickedly clever as it might.)

Thinking About Animals: Some opening narration over stock footage announces that ants will be the "next dominant life form of our planet," taking pains to draw parallels between the actions and behaviors of ants and humans. Upon concluding, the narrator asks, rhetorically, "Scary, isn't it?" Maybe, until we actually meet the mutant ants. They're big, hairy, clumsy brutes who mostly scream like insectile banshees and appear to walk on hind legs. For most of the film they're a disappointment: where's the strategy for world domination fueled by the collective mind of the colony, as our narrator promised? We don't see much of this until the end, when the survivors discover that the ants have taken over the minds and wills of the occupants of the island's town through use of their queen's pheromones. The townspeople are dosed with the pheromones weekly, convincing them that they must work to serve and protect the queen (primarily by keeping the colony well fed by way of the local sugar refinery). This is a fun idea, though its execution reeks of lazy 1950s science fiction motion pictures. The ants are never threatening or interesting. The odd ways in which the real-life ant footage is cut into the film makes it so that the ants hardly even ever act like ants. The film's best scene is one in which the survivors stumble across a conflict between some black and red ants in the middle of the forest. It works because, for a moment, we can pretend we're watching a nature documentary and not Empire of the Ants.

Evaluation in Brief: Director Bert I. Gordon's late career is a holdover from the 1950s' science fiction monster fad. During that decade and part of the one following, he developed a dubious reputation for making films about super-sized monsters, like War of the Colossal Beast (1958) and Attack of the Puppet People (1958), with rear projection and trick photography techniques. They were dreadful films, existing solely for their visual gimmicks, and popular appraisal has not treated them kindly (eight of Gordon's films appeared on Mystery Science Theater 3000, eclipsing the contributions of any other director). Though still making films throughout the '70s, he hadn't made a giant-sized film since 1965's Village of the Giants, and it appears as if the Animal Terror boom of the latter part of the decade encouraged American International Pictures to give him the opportunity to flex his meager talents once again with The Food of the Gods (1976) and Empire of the Ants (1977), both of which purport to be adaptations of tales by H.G. Wells (they're not). Suffice it to say, Gordon's bag of tricks does not translate particularly well into the context of the late '70s. Empire of the Ants is simplistic, hokey dreck that would perhaps seem charming if it didn't already appear so desperate to connect with a modern movie-going audience by throwing in some halfhearted attempts at sex and gore. It's so out of step in its generic storytelling that it feels as if it's been brought to the '70s in a time machine and left with the instructions that it should-- in order to avoid influencing the future-- inspire the interest of absolutely no one. Not even Joan Collins could save it.