The Food of the Gods is a strange film with a bona-fide B-movie pedigree.
In the 1970s, there was a rash of “nature strikes back” films. These films typically featured nature exacting some sort of revenge against humanity for poisoning the planet. Others were just animals attacking people for no real reason. After Jaws hit box-office paydirt in 1975, the number of these films in production really accelerated. In 1976, The Food of the Gods, a film partly based on the H. G. Wells novel of the same name, was released to theaters with a tagline, “One taste is all it takes!”
The titular delicacy in question is a strange liquid bubbling out of the ground on land owned by The Skinners (John Mcliam and Ida Lupino). When they discover it, their first instinct is to mix it with chicken feed and serve it to their birds. (Who wouldn’t feed an untested chemical to animals meant for human consumption?) Unexpectedly, the birds don’t drop dead. They grow to four times their normal size and become carnivorous.
Football player Morgan (Marjoe Gortner) and his pals, Brian (Jon Cypher) and Davis (Chuck Courtney), decide to take a quick hunting vacation on land near the Skinner farm. Davis is separated from Morgan and Brian and gets stung by giant wasps. Morgan goes to the Skinner farm to call for help and gets attacked by a giant rooster. Once he dispatches it with a pitchfork, he asks Mrs. Skinner how the birds got so big. (The logic flow in this film is pretty realistic.) She shows him the liquid in containers marked “F.O.T.G.” and explains that they fed it to them. Together, they make the discovery that rats have burrowed into the Skinners’ house and fed on their supply of the special food.
An entrepreneur, Mr. Bensington (Ralph Meeker,) and his assistant, Lorna (Pamela Franklin,) arrive at the Skinners’ to make a deal for the rights to the food. A couple, Thomas (Tom Stovall) and a very pregnant Rita (Belinda Balaski), also make their way to the Skinners’ after their RV breaks down nearby. The rats, now instantly larger and too numerous to count, strand this rag-tag group of people in the Skinners’ house. It’s up to Morgan, the football player, to figure out a way to save them all.
Written and directed by Bert I. Gordon, The Food of the Gods is a strange film with a bona-fide B-movie pedigree. Gordon is known for such movies as King Dinosaur, Village of the Giants, and The Amazing Colossal Man — all of which deal with large-sized animals or people. (Gordon was known as “Mr. BIG” by Famous Monsters of Filmland‘s editor, Forrest J. Ackerman.) Marjoe Gortner, the leading man, was a preacher at the age of four. Ida Lupino once starred with Humphrey Bogart in High Sierra. To say the talent pool this film had to draw from is quite diverse is an understatement.
Unfortunately, The Food of the Gods never really sets itself apart from the many other “nature gone wild” movies of the 70s except in the special effects department. The techniques used are, for the most part, fairly well done for their time. (Although a giant rooster puppet at the beginning of the movie is unexpectedly hilarious.) But, sadly, the use of live rats that seem to have suffered animal cruelty for the sake of a few “action” sequences puts a damper on my enthusiasm for the movie overall.
A lot of the 88 minute running time is literally filler. A hunting scene with Morgan, Brian, and Davis chasing a deer on horseback goes on far too long. There are several lengthy sequences depicting vehicles boarding and departing the ferry that travels to the island where the movie takes place. I lost count of the number of scenes where Morgan recklessly drives his Jeep at high speed on the island’s narrow dirt roads. Needless to say, there’s not a lot of character development present here.
For what it is, The Food of the Gods isn’t terrible. It’s an average B-movie about giant animals preying on humans in predictable situations. If you’re looking for a mindless way to kill an hour and a half, you could do much worse. If you like monster movies that massage your grey matter, this definitely won’t do the trick.
2.5 out of 5.0 stars
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