The Food of the Gods (1976)

I need to review more Bert I. Gordon flicks for the site and this is one of my favorites. I remember more than one Friday night spent staying up late to watch this on my local horror hosted movie show. It was a staple.

The opening credits roll around a football field were a team is practicing for the upcoming big game. Our main character, Morgan, tells us in a voiceover that they are given a couple of days off and decide to go hunting on a nearby wooded island. One of them is killed, we know by giant wasps, but the characters don’t. This leads to Morgan running into a lady at a nearby farm when looking for help. After taking their friend back to the mainland Morgan and the other hunter return to the island knowing that they need to take care of the problem themselves.

Here is where things start to get good. In addition to the men returning, we are also introduced to a businessman and a scientist that have come to cash in on the discovery made by the farmer. See there is something bubbling out of the ground that when mixed with feed will cause animals to grow to enormous size. We also meet up with a pregnant woman and her boyfriend who are stranded in their RV. Now that the characters are back on the island they must deal with rats, giant rats that are feeling a bit peckish. That means that the characters are now on the menu! Stuff happens, which I’ll not spoil here, before it all ends… or does it?

Director/Writer Bert I. Gordon knows how to make a movie like this. He spends little time introducing characters but instead sets up the MacGuffin that is causing all the giant critters and then gets to them right away! There is no mystery here as right away we know giant wasps are buzzing about, even if the characters don’t. But then Morgan runs into giant chickens right away and sees a regular sized wasp munching away on some chicken feed. Hell, Mrs. Skinner even points out the rat holes showing us that they also have gotten into the super food! We know what is coming and it comes quickly with lots of mayhem and oversized critters. This makes for a movie that not only is a blast, but also doesn’t allow you to overthink what you are watching.

The wasps, chickens, worms/maggots (awesomely gross), and rats are brought to the screen with all of Gordon’s old school tricks. You have regular sized animals crawling over miniature sets to set the scale. This model work is well done, especially the Winnebago. There are also some crude in camera bits to bring the wasps attacking the characters that I admittedly wasn’t too impressed with. But my personal favorite gag was how they use puppets and latex to have the monsters interreact on camera with the cast. That is some classic stuff and while not giant rabbit attacking in Night of the Lepus it still made me smile.

Got to burn them!

The cast is solid with Marjoe Gortner starring as our main character Morgan. The guy showed up in so many seventies movies that while you may not recognize you know who he is. We also get some classic star power with Ralph Meeker and Ida Lupino. The latter who was in The Devil’s Rain the year before. Lastly the lovely Pamela Franklin is Lorna, Morgan’s love interest, who also appeared in one of my favorites The Legend of Hell House. Gordon knew how to assemble a cast, and this is one of his better ones.

Sure, Food of the Gods is a bit silly. But that is what you should expect from a Bert I. Gordon flick. Giant sized creatures running around killing folks before getting killed off in the final act. This is a formula, and it works especially well here. If you are looking for a monster movie, then you can do a whole lot worse than this one. Give it a chance.

 

© Copyright 2022 John Shatzer

King Dinosaur (1955)

This is another early Bert Gordon movie. In fact, I think this was his first directorial effort. Thanks to a helpful narrator over some stock footage, we find out that a new planet has entered our solar system and taken up orbit near Earth. It is close enough that we can reach it by rocket powered spaceships, which causes a race to see which nation will be first to land on it. Of course, we, the USA, win that race and land some scientists on the planet. There are two men and two lady scientists. Once they prove the planet, named Nova, is hospitable to humans they take off their plastic space helmets and the fun can really begin.

This strange alien planet is populated with strange and wonderous creatures like… um bears, deer, vultures, and a monkey. All brought to the screen with the use of more stock footage! Well except the monkey who is part of the actual honest to God cast. This nature walk, and really for a long stretch it is them walking in the woods reacting to the stock footage, is finally interrupted when they find strange and wonderous giant creatures like alligators, iguanas, and what was either a cricket with its wings ripped off or a termite. Can’t say for sure. Explorers are menaced, shirts are torn, and the “dinosaurs” are nuked out of existence. Two days on the planet and we nuked an entire island full of the locals. Damn…

My first observation is that this movie must have had a miniscule budget. Here we have explorers flying off to another planet and they didn’t spend any time or money to show them on their ship! Seriously we see them climbing down a ladder and that is it. Hell, they clearly only had two space suits as half the crew stayed “on board” to see if it was safe. After that they change into street clothes and go hiking aka. the nature walk. This is such a low budget movie that when the are forced to camp they don’t even have camping gear, just the clothes on their back and a rifle. I know that I’m sounding very nitpicky, but I want you to understand how low budget this movie is. They basically tried to do sci-fi without any money for even a cheesy rubber suit.

Since I’m on the topic of creatures we must talk about the giant monsters. This is a Bert Gordon flick after all. You can see the early attempts at the giant bugs being brought to the screen with some old school rear projection. Gordon would revisit this in his second movie Beginning of the End with much better results. Most of the monster action are miniature sets with regular sized creatures, in this case a small alligator or maybe a caiman fighting a lizard. By fighting I mean someone was clearly throwing them on each other. There are a couple of times where the gator is doing a death role and twisting the lizard around that made me uncomfortable. I guess it was acceptable in the fifties to do this sort of thing, but it still bothered me. We get a few shots of them interacting with the cast and this is again done with some rear projection tricks.

A lot of what I enjoy about Bert Gordon’s movies are present in King Dinosaur. Giant monsters menacing the cast in goofy ways is the biggest one. But unlike The Cyclops or some of his other movies this is weighed down with a nonexistent script and tiny budget. It pains me to say this, but I would suggest skipping this and watching one of his other flicks. King Dinosaur is just plain boring.

 

© Copyright 2021 John Shatzer

The Cyclops (1957)

This bit of sci-fi horror from the fifties introduces us to a woman named Susan who is looking for her lost fiancé Bruce. He disappeared in a plane crash three years prior, but she hasn’t given up hope. Along with her are a hired pilot named Lee, a friend named Russ, and a businessman named Marty who tagged along while paying some of the expenses. Marty is looking for some uranium to stake a claim too, while the others are looking for Bruce. This becomes important later on. 

Their plane is forced to land in some forbidden territory that the local authorities refused them permission to search. They quickly realize that the area is heavily irradiated, which makes Marty happy. But Susan doesn’t care and insists that they keep looking for Bruce. They find him but along the way realize that the radiation has caused all of the local critters to grow very large. This includes Bruce who looks like he was banged up really bad in the crash. Stuff happens and they eventually make their escape. 

This is a straightforward creature movie from director Bert I. Gordon. We get giant lizards, a giant mouse, a giant hawk, a giant spider, a giant snake, and of course a giant Bruce. These are brought to the screen with a combination of old movie tricks. Composite shots are stitched together with rear projection to make it look like the actors are interacting with the oversized critters. While far from Gordon’s best work this isn’t too terrible. You do see on more than one occasion the creatures become transparent, but that is normal for the techniques that they were using. For a movie that is over sixty years old it isn’t too bad. 

I normally talk about the plot first but that isn’t why you watch a Bert I. Gordon movie. Still lets briefly take a look at it. The movie is very short, clocking in at barely over an hour with a running time of sixty-six minutes. That is a wise decision because there isn’t much to the story. They get told they can’t fly somewhere, they do anyway, Marty freaks out and the plane lands. Then giant monsters happen, someone does something stupid, and they fly away. See not much to it, but it does adhere to the “B” monster movie tropes. Again, you watch a movie like this to see the oversized assorted threats to the cast rather than an engaging story and/or interesting characters. 

Despite not having much of a story they do have a fairly strong cast. The highlight for me is Lon Chaney Jr. as the businessman Marty. He does some inexplicably dumb things, but I blame the script and not the actor for that. It was also cool to see Gloria Talbott who I recognized from I Married a Monster from Outer Space. Tom Drake who plays the pilot Lee did a bunch of television, including one of my favorite Kolchak episodes. Most everyone in this movie were working actors and do a good job. 

I like these cheesy fifties flicks. I know that they aren’t for everyone and I think that you have to be a fan of these to get a kick out of The Cyclops. Silly and gimmicky this was right up my alley but may not be up yours. With that caveat I recommend this one. 

© Copyright 2021 John Shatzer