Creature Features....Grrrr....

I recently watched…okay, I’ll admit it…I recently bought the DVD of two ‘creature features’ made in the prime of the Disco Years. Usually those two movies/one DVD deals are a bargain for a very good reason…as was certainly the case here. This DVD included ‘Empire of the Ants’, a movie so bad it’s actually really good, and ‘Tentacles’, a movie that’s just…bad.

‘Empire of the Ants’ (1977) stars none other than Joan Collins, in all her bitchy glory. She plays a shady real estate agent trying to swindle investors into buying shares of a new beach-side development (basically, Florida swampland). What evil Joan doesn’t know when she arrives at the remote ‘development site’ with a bunch of potential investors (most of whom you’ll recognize from reruns of ‘The Love Boat’ and ‘Fantasy Island’) is that an equally evil corporation has been dumping their toxic waste nearby. Ants have been wallowing in the waste and…you guessed it…they’ve turned into huge and really pissed off Monster Ants! Awesome! Joan and the gang get chased around the development, with investors being methodically picked off one by one. Later, Joan and the few survivors make their way to a nearby town and apparent safety only to realize…but I won’t spoil the ending. Safe to say, as long as you don’t get all bogged down trying to make the story logical, you can appreciate this movie as good cheesy fun.

Trivia:
- I’ve read that, as a promotion gimmick, some theaters displayed ant farms in the lobby when they ran this movie.
- Supposedly, some of the ants used in the film (instead of using stop motion, they magnified real ants to achieve the monster effect) were of a deadly Panamanian variety. I’m skeptical.

Highlights:
- Joan and the rest of the cast totally rock their polyester pantsuits and bell-bottom jeans.
- Robert Pine (one of the ‘CHIPS’ cops) totally molests Pamela Shoop (you’d know her if you saw her…so I included her pic below) and it’s blown off as a ‘boys will be boys’ thing. Man, the 70s were a very different time!

- The queen ant’s ‘zombie spray’. Excellent.

‘Tentacles’ (1976) had a phenomenal cast: John Huston, Shelley Winters, Bo Hopkins, Claude Akins…even Henry Fonda! I just don’t get it. There totally has to be some secret scoop as to why these actors would be in this movie and I’d love to know what it is. Blackmail, maybe? Evidently the movie was filmed in some developing Central or South American country, because the above mentioned actors are about the only ones whose dialogue wasn’t dubbed. It’s always painful for me to watch movies where the lip movements don’t match the voice…it’s one of the reasons I can’t stand those old Chinese kung-fu movies. Anyway, the whole thing, about a giant octopus (or squid…whatever) terrorizing a beach community a la ‘Jaws’ and ultimately being killed by Bo Hopkins’ pet killer whales, makes ‘Empire of the Ants’ look Oscar worthy.