Meadhall of the Comitatus

Did you know that Bert I. Gordon made some movies that actually didn’t appear on MST3k?  I didn’t believe it myself up until now, when I finally got around to seeing a movie a coworker once recommended to me like five years ago.  Spoiler alert: this movie has stuff growing to gigantic sizes in it!

Oh yeah, we're in for some movie magic alright. Giant rear-projected chickens!

Premise: 2/5

For a Berty Gordon movie, this is actually not too bad.  Yes, you’re going to see some giant monsters running around courtesy of some rather shitty rear-projection special effects, but there’s actually an almost decent story to back it up that’s definitely a product of the pessimism and grit of ‘70s cinema.  Don’t believe that a Bert Igor-don movie could have some darkness to it?  At one point the hero actually says to the only other guy left from the monster onslaughts, “THAT, my boy, is what life is all about—trying to find something to do while you’re waiting to die!”  Well, OK then!

Here’s the plot in a nutshell: on an island somewhere out in British Columbia, an old rustic couple one day found this shit that looks like pancake batter oozing up out of the ground on their land.  For some reason they figured they’d try to use this stuff as a supplement to chicken feed.  It had no effect on the regular size chickens, but the baby chicks got super-sized.  Of course, they then also ate the regular-sized chickens, but you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs, right?  The husband went out to the mainland to try and find a businessman he could sell this “food of the gods” to (and of course, the only one willing to take a look at this stuff and buy it is the biggest douche in the universe).  While his wife was maintaining the homestead, some other stuff got into their FOTG supply, including wasps, worms, and, worst of all, rats.  Needless to say, the various and sundry people vacationing on this island are not going to be getting quite the R&R they might have been expecting.

I think he's walking around with his hands down his pants because he's thinking about feeding this Food of the Gods stuff to his girlfriend's boobs.

There’s a couple things this movie has going for it (and the giant monsters are pretty much NOT it).  For one, I like that they at least try to explain why some of the “tricks” our survivors are going to use will work in advance—mainly, they SPOILER ALERT end up blowing a dam on the island and flooding out all the rats.  But Oz, you say, doesn’t Big Berd Gordon know that rats actually can, in fact, swim?  Well, yeah.  His excuse is that since they’re a new size and weight, they basically have to relearn how to swim since their bodies are all different now.  Maybe that doesn’t really make a lot of sense if you think about it too long, but it’s nice that he at least threw something out there as if to say “look, just friggin’ go with it—this is a giant goddamn monster movie, ok?”  I can appreciate that.  The second thing took me a little while to realize, though.  About halfway through the movie, once everyone who’s on the island is on the island and we’ve already seen a few people get dead-ed, I got this weird feeling that even though I’d never seen this movie before, I was getting some déjà vu.  Then it clicked: he turns the later part of the second half of “Food of the Gods” into a semi-decent “Night of the Living Dead” kind of thing—only with giant rats instead of zombies.  Since I pretty much adore the latter movie, I was pleased that Gordon managed to do a fair job emulating it.

He died as he lived . . . looking alarmingly like Rip Taylor.

Cast: 2/5

Let’s set aside the “Night of the Living Dead” comparison for this, shall we?  The main character, Morgan, is played by Marjoe Gortner, who does a pretty good job with what he’s got to work with.  The thing is, he’s basically unflappable no matter what happens.  He’s a stone cold mutha, I guess—before they even realize that giant monsters are roaming the island, one of his football teammates gets stung by a huge wasp and killed by the  venom.  On their way back with his friend’s body, another friend asks him how can their teammate, who was never injured or even carried off the field for so many years, can have something like this happen to him?  Morgan’s response: “Maybe his luck just ran out.”  I guess they were never that close!  Even when his other football player friend gets eaten by rats later in the movie, Morgan barely bats an eyelash—the most he does is have a brief temper-tantrum where he breaks all the containers full of FOTG that jackass businessman was loading up in his car.  He’s, like, Clint Eastwood-ing a giant monster movie, and I’m not sure if that’s cool or not.

Om nom nom.

But let’s get back to that jackass businessman for a moment.  His name is Bensington and he’s played by Ralph Meeker.  Now this guy—this friggin’ guy.  He’s terrible.  I mean, I understand that he’s supposed to be an out-and-out bastard, but really?  He’s actually given some pretty funny lines playing on his character’s asshole nature, but he blows them.  He’s like a Z-grade W.C. Fields here.  And when he’s getting (OMG SPOILER!) eaten by rats, he never sounds like he’s in pain or being ripped apart, he sounds like he’s just pissy and put-out.  That does not work for me.

Even though she isn’t in the movie a lot, one other highlight is Pamela Franklin, who plays Lorna, Bensington’s company chemist.  He wants her there to see if she can figure out what this FOTG stuff is and how they can synthesize it, how it works, and all that.  Lorna’s best parts are when she’s opposite Bensington, pointing out with great sarcasm just what a complete bastard he is.  Really, she’s just too good at calling her boss out and kind of fulfills everyone who’s ever worked under someone’s fondest desire.  Most of the rest of the cast are just good enough to make me not hate them and not around long enough for me to care too much for them one way or the other.

Beware the GIANT ROOSTER-HEAD.

Technical: 1.5/5

Oh my god . . . the effects are . . . you almost have to see them to believe them.  It starts with the giant wasps, which are really just rear-projected and magnified shadows of wasps that are supposed to stand in for an actual effect I guess, and that’s bad enough.  But my god, there’s a scene where a giant rooster is attacking Morgan that literally almost had me pissing myself.  I think they just made a giant fake rooster head and just tried to beat the shit out of Morgan with it, and it was one of the funniest fucking things I think I have ever seen.  I don’t know why the hell the giant rats growl and hiss like cheetahs, nor do I particularly care.  They just do.   We’re in Bert I. Gordon land.

In death, this couple is finally free of society's condemnation of their love.

Now that’s all well and good, high camp cheesefactor with fakey monsters—I’m down with that.  But if I never see another scene of cars either driving onto, parking on, or driving off of a ferry it will be too soon.  It’s not an interesting scene the first time, let alone the second, third, or fourth time.  QUIT IT.

The other thing that bothers me about this movie’s effects is that they obviously use regular sized rats on miniature set pieces, no problem there.  What I’m not too sure of is the “drowning the rats” scenes—I think they actually have at least a couple actual rats actually drowning (you can almost see them being pushed back into the water from off-camera), and that is not cool, bro.  I also don’t know what effects they use when the rats are getting shot by shotguns to create the blood effect, but my guess is paint pellets fired at them.  That wouldn’t be so bad but it looks like a couple of the rats get shot directly in the eye with these paint pellets, and that is also not cool bro.

FEAR the GIANT WASPS! Just don't look at them too closely!

Popcorn Factor: 4/5

OK, I have to admit that as soon as I saw the opening credits and registered Bert I. Gordon’s name as being among them, I got worried.  So many of those other giant monster movies he made that did get the MST3k treatment were so godawful boring I figured I’d just be waiting all movie long for something, anything, to happen and then have a bullshit 5-10 minute scene at the end where the monsters actually attack and finally get defeated.  On the contrary, after the first quarter-ish part of “Food of the Gods,” there’s almost always something going on, and that’s cause for excitement in a Birdeye Gordone movie.  You actually see the monster creatures killing people, replete with goofy special effects that are entertaining in their own right.  The “farmhouse finale” part of the end is actually kind of tense and interesting.  Is the movie good?  Gonna go with “no” on that one, but it is pretty fun and wide-freaking-open for any riffing you care to throw its way.  It’s fun and (not on purpose, I think) funny, and that’s good enough for me.

It also features terror . . . born of MILK!