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Marilyn Fryser (Joan Collins) is professionally selling overpriced but
beautiful looking land to customers who think they have more money in their
pocket than they really do ... but what even she doesn't know about her latest
project, Dreamland Shores, an idyllic beach community, is that atomic waste was
dumped nearby, & the local ants have found one of the barrels ... & we
all know what atomic radiation does to insects: it makes them grow to man-size,
silly !
So when good Marilyn arrives with her bunch of prospective buyers/jackasses
by boat, it's only a matter of hours before the first fall victims to the ants
(who are quite hungry for that tasty human flesh), & these bloody insects
also take over our human friends' boat, leaving the group - an uneven bunch of
losers, has-beens & never-have-been - with but one alternative, to make a
getaway to the woods, where there's a little rowing boat tied down that might
take them to safety.
He-men Dan (Robert Lansing) & Charley (Edward Power) take the double
lead of the group, with Marilyn of course bitching around because ... well,
because she's a bitch, but they haven't even come close to the woods when
Charley ends up ant-food too.
The way to the boat is of course as dangerous as it sounds, with the group
soon decimated to a sextet, & after a few miles in the boat, the most
annoying charater, Larry (Robert Pine) is killed too, thank god, the boat is
sunk, & like cattle our remaining quintet - still bitchy Marilyn, still
he-man Dan, Magarete (Jacqueline Scott), who has fallen for him, Joe (John
David Carson), & Coreen (Pamela Susan Shoop), who has fallen for him
- are herded to the next village.
There they tell the sheriff (Albert Salmi) what has happened, & wouldn't
you know it, he doesn't hesitate a second & believes them every word.
Soon though they find out that the whole town is brainwashed by the queen
ant, who has set up shop in the local sugar refinery, & our quintet is next
on her to-do-list. But fortunately Dan has some light flares in his pocket,
& since ants are afraid of fire, he can distract the queen ant long enough
to lose her mental grip over the population, & they turn against their
ant-masters, while Joe has the bright idea to drive a tanker into the refinery,
the ants' favourite hang-out (because of the sugar, stupid), & then blow it
up.
All are saved, except for Marilyn of course, who, because of having always
been that bitchy has become the queen ants last victim.
Being definitely past his prime, director & genre-fave Bert I.Gordon
tried to relive his past successes by doing another one of these movies he
always did best - the giant-creature-movie. So he took the basic structures of
this genre (which he has made pretty much his own in the 50's) & inserted
it with elements of the then current desaster-movie genre (not a hard task,
since these 2 genres have pretty much in common to begin with) ... but
unfortunately he experiment had mixed results.
On one hand, most of the effects - mainly shots of life-ants blown up &
combined with shots of the actors via blue-screen, complimented by some
miniature work & good-looking man-sized prop-ants - are prettry impressive
(except for one scene at the end where the ants are supposed to head for the
refinery, but some just try to climb the painted-on blue sky behind them), on
the other hand, the desaster movie elements suffered gfrom what in general
desaster movies died suffer form: one-dimensional characters delivering abysmal
lines all the while trying desperately to give a human dimension to the
proceedings ... but failing miserably.
Still, it's a good-natured trashy 80 minutes, & the writing isn't even
half as bad as The Day after Tomorrow (2004) - if any of you even admit
to having seen that abomination.
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find Empire of the Ants at adultvideouniverse.com
