The Food of the Gods (1976)

Director: Bert I. Gordon

Starring: Ida Lupino and a bunch of actors you've never heard of.

More Info: IMDB

Tagline: Welcome to the Bottom of the Food Chain!

Plot: Morgan and his friends are on a hunting trip on a remote Canadian island when they are attacked by a swarm of giant wasps. Looking for help, Morgan stumbles across a barn inhabited by an enormous killer chicken. After doing some exploring, they discover the entire island is crawling with animals that have somehow grown to giant size. The most dangerous of all of these, however, are the rats, who are mobilizing to do battle with the human intruders.



My Rating: 5

Would I watch it again? I'm movin' on...

What a great tagline! What a great premise! Too bad the film doesn't live up to it. It's an OK cheesy-ass sci-fi/horror movie but it's toooooooo slow for my taste. Now, when the giant rats come into play, THEN it starts to kick into high gear and I started to have some fun. The trouble is sitting through some dreadfully boring acting and story waiting for giant bugs and animals to start a'killin' folks.


The absolute best part of the movie are the giant rats. It's obvious that you're looking at rats climbing on models in slow motion but there's something about that cheesiness that makes it so damn fun to watch. Even better are the scenes of the humans shooting at the rats. And when you watch the rats step-by-step you see that they're being hit with spit wads to knock 'em down. Fucking classic. We laughed so goddamned hard it hurt. We must have spent a good 10-15 minutes watching that shit in slow-mo.

"Nooooooooooo!"

Ah hahahahahahahahahahahaha

Considering the budget, I think they did a pretty good job with the special effects. Great location shooting on Bowen Island, BC, Canada. Oooooh, the scene with the guy fighting the giant chicken was really neat although it didn't go down like this...


THAT would have been cool as hell.

The director, Gordon, has 21 films (as director) to his name. Looking at them by the IMDB ratings, his highest rated film is THE BOY AND THE PIRATES (1960) at 4.52 out of 10. Woof. Not good. Regardless, he's got some great titles like ATTACK OF THE PUPPET PEOPLE (1958), PICTURE MOMMY DEAD (1966) with Zsa Zsa Gabor (!), EARTH VS. THE SPIDER (1958) and NECROMANCY (1972) starring Orson Fucking Welles!!! I'm definitely going to have to check them out. After this, I'm prepared to eat shit but hopefully they won't taste like the food of the gods.