If you want mindless entertainment, "Empire of the Ants" is just what you need. This 1977 science fiction/horror film is no classic, but it is at least entertaining for what its worth. The cast does as well as they can with the script they have. Joan Collins does a decent job as a con artist posing as a real estate developer Marilyn Fryser. I will admit it was nice to see veteran actors in early roles. Especially a pre-"Chips"" Robert Pine as a horny prospective customer of Marilyn's. The late Robert Lansing does the best acting job in the cast as the boat captain Marilyn recruits to take her prospective guests to a remote island for a tour of the property she plans to develop or so she says. Again the movie is worth seeing for some early performances by well known actors starting their careers. Aside from that there is not much of a reason to see "Empire of the Ants" It is not a terrible movie, but is is not all that great either.

Bert I. Gordon loves to blow everything out of proportion. He made an entire movie career out of it. Something is intriguing about this 1970's creature feature. Sure, it has a few cheesy special effects, such as the split-screen optical effects, but I still had a bit of fun watching the movie. Just throw back a few cheap beers and enjoy a viewing of mindless good fun.

Its not Troll 2 standard but it also ain't citizen cane fans of Joan will like it and fans of creature features.will also.

Pure Nostalgia fun! Loved it!

The shots with the giant ants are darker than the reality shots they're matched with, giving them a strange, dreamlike quality. The writing and acting are like something you'd have seen on Love Boat or She's the Sheriff. The one genuinely creepy shot, I thought, was when the old couple stepped out of the abandoned out house.

The audio in Empire of the Ants is infuriating to the point of being nigh unwatchable. But on mute? By jingo you might just be onto something there.

I was entertained by this movie, I also enjoyed the earlier ant horror movie called Phase IV

Six-legged Celluloid Presents... A review of Empire of the Ants: "Ant Misbehavin!" Directed by Bert I. Gordon, Empire of the Ants is one of many films among Gordon's giant/mutated/deformed abominations against humanity genre. It is based on a short story of the same name by H.G. Wells. Gordon has also filmed 2 other movies based on Wells' works including Village of the Giants (starrring Beau Bridges and Ron Howard) and one of my childhood favorites, The Food of the Gods (starring literally no one you have ever heard of), both based on "The Food of the Gods and How it Came to Earth". Interesting side note: The Food of the Gods was unfairly awarded the title of "Worst Rodent Movie of All Time" by the Golden Turkey Awards. Though in all fairness this was before the release of the highly overrated Pixar film Ratatouille (Yes I said it, Food of the Gods is better than Ratatouille). However, I digress. Empire of the Ants was released in 1977, and starred sqeeky-voiced helium addict Joan Collins (of Dynasty fame), poor man's Grizzly Adams Robert Lansing (of Gunsmoke fame), and man with the onscreen presence and emotional complexity of a corn flake John David Carson (of absolutely no fame). Having not seen this movie since I was a very small child, I went into this viewing expecting your typical Big Vertebrate progaganda film, like what Birth of a Nation would have been if D.W. Griffith had been a vertebrate supremacist rather than a white supremacist. However, upon further examination, I realized it is actually a biting invertebrate commentary on many of the worst evils of vertebrate culture like pollution, greed, hubris, and realtors of beach front property. The opening sequence begins with a narrator delivering a pro-invertebrate message, "This is the ant, treat it with respect. For it may very well be the next dominant life form of our planet." The narrator then proceeds to rattle off a list of reasons why ants are awesome, many of which you may have already heard of thanks to the intrepid journalistic efforts of The Daily Ant (fungal foraging, aphid herding, ant societal roles, high intellect, communication via pheromones, etc). The film takes place in Florida (illustrating yet another reason not to live in that Godforsaken place), and the main body of the film begins with humans being terrible and dumping toxic waste into the ocean, which cause the native ants to grow to enormous size and become highly aggressive for reasons we as the viewers are not privy to. Then we are treated to several sequences of the main cast of antagonists (for the sake of this review all human characters will be assumed antagonists unless otherwise specified) demonstrating why they deserve what is about to happen to them. The real thorax kicking comes around the 23-minute mark, when our formic heroes start sinking boats, hunting down their vertebrate oppressors, and culling the herd. The film includes pretty standard fare for the genre as people scream, run, get eaten - rinse wash repeat. Director Gordon even made sure to include the classic woman-breaking-her-ankles-whilst-running shtick. Much of the film utilizes truly awful visual effects that amount to someone recording ants walking across a polaroid of the setting, or superimposed over a screen shot of the actors, an effect so poorly done that at times ants can be seen crawling through thin air. This is a shame, as the practical special effects are not the worst I have ever seen, and there is even a short sequence filmed in a swamp that has a certain claustrophobic element to it and some frenetic camera work that manages to build an inkling of suspense. However, most of the film is laughable scenes of people running from unseen threats with the special effects leaving you longing for the days of Ray Harryhausen's stop motion monsters (See Mighty Joe Young, Jason and the Argonauts, etc). At around the 52-minute mark, Gordon makes a sharp right angle into a sort of Vertebrates of the Corn storyline when (*spoiler alert*) the ants use their heightened pheromone powers to induce mind control over the local yokels. I will not ruin the rest of the film for those Daily Ant readers who missed it during its initial run in the theaters, but this one does have a sad ending (somewhere along the sadness continuum between Old Yeller and The Mission). So is this a good film? No, no it is not. But does it add something new to the genre? Also, no. In the end, Empire leaves more questions unanswered than answered. For instance: Are ants vicious carnivores? Can they perform cross-species mind control with their pheromones? Do they make high pitched squealing noises to warn would-be victims of impending attacks? Can they climb vertically through thin air? Nobody knows, and there is no way of finding out. If only there was a specialty field of science that dealt with ants and ant behavior... In conclusion, Empire of the Ants is neither the best formic-centered film I have ever seen, nor the worst. We here at Six-Legged Celluloid (really, it is just me) give Empire of the Ants a rating of 2.5 oral-anal trophallaxis out of 5. https://dailyant.com/2017/06/07/theatre-thursday-empire-of-the-ants/

Over-the-top, goofy little monster movie, but I had a blast with it. Much more than some others of its ilk. I liked the core group of characters, and the effects are surprisingly decent, especially considering its age.

this movie is so scary and awesome

In the ways it works, it works good, but otherwise it's a lacking monster film with bland characters and a loose story-line. The composites are sometimes decent and sometimes bad. The practical effects are pretty cool, and used plentiful for closeups. Nothing remarkable.

Improves towards the end, but by that point it's too late.

While there is little put into plot and character, the terrible special effects make this almost a "need to be seen for yourself" kind of movies. Superimposed footage of ants fighting the humans can at times be hilarious and you'll likely be scratching your head at how ants can crawl up the sky in the background. The plot gets a bit more interesting towards the end, but in a classic b-movie sort of way. It's so dumb it's actually kind of fun, but I couldn't recommend it.

s/b called 'empire of the angst'

Unintentionally bad, but that's why I loved it. The effects were horrible and I was laughing more than anything through this movie. That it was meant to be taken as a serious horror makes this movie a great comedy!

Pretty dull. A few chuckles but not enough camp to hold my attention.

A very bad movie for numerous reasons that never goes far enough into so-bad-it's-good territory. 23/100

Watched this cheesy gem last night and loved every minute of it! I had the opportunity to talk to Bert I. Gordon a few years ago. He told a story about Joan Collins refusing to go into the water so he just shoved her in while the camera was rolling!

Food Of The Gods was a success for AIP and so, Gordon was back the following year with another giant creature feature from yet another H.G. Wells story, this time Empire Of The Ants. And this one works slightly better with it's story of radioactive waste dumped in the ocean and making it's way to the shores of a small island where it is consumed (why?) by the local ant population. Enter Marilyn Fraser (Joan Collins), a greedy real estate developer who takes a boatload of potential scam victims to the island to show then where their future homes aren't really going to be built. Obviously they get stranded on the island with the large and highly intelligent ants who not only have an appetite but, use pheromones as a form of mind control to make humans into slaves. Now it's up to boat captain Dan Stokley (Robert Lansing) to try to get this beleaguered group to safety, battling both the ants and their human drones. Again flick is directed... but, this time co-written with Jack Turley... by Bert I. Gordon and once again with a somber and serious tone despite the silliness of giant, mind controlling ants. But, this film seems to work a bit better then Food Of The Gods as giant ants are a bit more effective then giant chickens and the cast is a bit more subdued, especially hero Lansing, so, we don't get the glaring contrast of serious tone and over the top acting... though there is still some of that. Once again Gordon gives us cheesy moments of real ants photographed and superimposed to look giant and plastic heads and limbs for close-ups though, ironically, the ants make a shrieking noise like a school girl who has just found an ant crawling on her arm. We also, again get characters making some really stupid decisions like an elderly couple who, while fleeing the ants, see a doorless shack and proclaim "We'll be safe in there!"... and there is some really bad dialog recited with straight faces by the cast. And again, like the previous Wells adaptation, this one just should have had more fun and more energy for a B monster movie. Sure there are some sequences which work and give chills but, Gordon's earlier films were a lot livelier, where these two Wells-based flicks are taken far too seriously considering the subject matter and the SPFX, which were cheesy even in the late 70s. No one is saying to make a joke out of it but, recognize that it is a Saturday Night Sci-Fi flick and have a good time with it, like Gordon did with his films of the previous decades. After doing more seriously toned movies like Picture Mommy Dead and Necromancy, Gordon seems to have lost his sense of fun. Empire and Food lack the charm that made Gordon's earlier films a delight. The cast are a bit more dialed down then Food Of The Gods' Lupino and Gortner, especially with leads Collins and Lansing. Joan Collins plays the manipulating, bossy bitch she made a career out of and keeps a very straight face despite acting with plastic ants. Lansing plays the soft spoken hero very well and it was refreshing to have an older man as the hero instead of a young jock or soldier. The supporting cast features 70s/80s regulars Pamela Shoop (Halloween II), Robert Pine (CHiPs, father of Chris "Captain Kirk" Pine) and Albert Salmi (Superstition) and there is a some cheesy over-acting here but, it is a movie about giant ants so, we'll cut them some slack even if it butts against Gordon's too serious tone. Overall, much like Food Of The Gods there is some fun to be had here but, certainly not enough as we'd like or, to make it a real B-Movie treat. Sure there is cheesy FX and dialog to laugh at, as well as, the added nostalgia of the 70s stereotypes that make up the film's characters but, the film forgets to have a little fun and Gordon doesn't give it the charm of his earlier works. An amusing watch that would definitely be helped by a few brews and a visit from the MST3K gang.

Empire of the Ants (Bert I. Gordon, 1977) In the late seventies, I was at a friend's house and I caught a few sequences of It Happened at Lakewood Manor on television. I had no idea what it was, and I spent years, decades actually, tracking that movie down. This, of course, brought me into contact with pretty much every ant-related movie that was made in the seventies. Once I found out Empire of the Ants dealt with monster-sized ants, I knew it wasn't the movie I was looking for, but when I found a listing for it in the mid-eighties and saw Joan Collins' name attached, I had to wonder what sorts of shenanigans this movie held in store. Now I have seen it, and I know the answer, and I wish it was 1985 again and I was just stumbling upon this movie and still wondering how ridiculous it could be. You know that old saw about having prime real estate in Okefenokee Swamp to sell? Well, this is where it came from. Collins (Dynasty) plays Marilyn, a shady real estate agent who's trying to pass off a little island in the middle of a swamp as paradise that's just begging for a resort to be developed on it. She takes down a passel of prospective buyers, and they discover the area infested with ants. Now, that's not usually enough to get people to not buy land, but you see, these ants are about twenty feet long, as tall as elephants, and need a few tourists to help out with their plan for intergalactic domination. Or something. While you're watching this, if you're an aspiring filmmaker, just keep saying to yourself "someone greenlit this." Of course, in the direct-to-video age, if you end up making Empire of the Cockroaches, it's probably not going to open on a thousand screens...but you never know. Put together a bunch of non-actors, head them up with some fading TV character types, add the cheapest script and special effects money can buy, and, well, you've just created an American International Picture, really. My guess is that if you caught this back in the day, and were very young at the time, it may hold a good deal of nostalgia value, the same way It Happened at Lakewood Manor does with me these days. But for everyone else it can safely be avoided. * 1/2