Review: The Food of the Gods (1976)

Sometimes, watching a movie is like going on a date.  You look at the profile (poster) and maybe read a little bit of their likes and dislikes (i.e. check out various reviews) and then take the plunge.  The Food of the Gods might not be The One as far as these sort of relationships go, but it will definitely be one that I talk about for years.

The film follows a random group of people on an island - and I do mean random: we get a married couple where the wife is 9 months pregnant, a (pro?) football player hunting with his friends, a dog food company owner and his bacteriologist assistant (for if there is one thing you need as the maker of dog food, it is a bacteriologist) and an older couple who live on the island - as various wildlife eats the titular food of the gods and grow to enormous size.  They also develop a mean disposition.

You look at that profile and you have to swipe right, you know?  There are so many red flags interesting tidbits in this that you have to go out with it at least once, to see if the crazy level is really that high.  And, my dear audience, it is.

Like The Empire of the Ants, this uses a mix of terrible special effects to display the large beasts.  Bad puppets - and maybe people in costumes, though I can't say that happens definitively - forced perspective with obviously composite shots, and I'm not exactly sure what they do during the wasp attacks, but I do know that one of them doesn't fly around so much as spin in wild circles in the same section of screen until a gunshot makes it explode.

It was during one of these early moments that I began to fall in love with this movie.  A man walks into a chicken coop and gets attacked by a giant rooster.  He fights off the fakest looking rooster head I have ever seen, yells at the owner of said rooster (completely ignoring the also-enormous chickens also in the coop) and after she scolds him for going into the coop, he drops his complaint and asks to use her phone.  No discussion of what just happened - in fact, he doesn't discuss the giant rooster at all after this point - just moving on as the plot dictates.

There's something to be said for directness, and I was already planning a second date as my passion for this movie grew.  We get to the wasp attack, the owner of the dog food company wants to market and sell the food of the gods - which, since I failed to mention, looks like a flavorless porridge that is leaking from a rock - everyone finds themselves trapped at the older couple's cabin as giant rats swarm around them - how could I not want to watch this again?

But then, cold water was thrown on me just as I expected things to heat up.  For the people fight back against the rats (which, fair) and the movie slows to a crawl as the same argument is had - with slight variations - for far too long of this film's otherwise fleet 88 minutes.  The movie eventually picks up again - the solution is to blow up a dam that in no way, shape or form able to hold the amount of water that pours from it - as if trying to win me back after a bad argument.  And it almost does.  But that draggy section forever means that this passion can only occasionally be indulged.

Would I play cupid with this film and other horror fans?  Probably, as there is so much to enjoy about it.  But far too many others would look at my relationship with this film and judge us both harshly, so I would be selective about who I would recommend it to.

4 out of 10, but what a 4 it was.