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Excellent but underrated film

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

Stuck for something to help the Yellowtail go down (although it goes down quite well anyway) we selected 'Empire of the Ants' on Amazon. Two things told us it was not going to be a riveting experience: it was made in 1977 and its big star was Joan Collins. Still, we'd paid the not inconsiderable sum of £3.99 and we were going to stick with it. Apparently a spill of nuclear waste has caused ants to grow to alarming proportions, and they get their mandibles stuck into a group of no-hopers, con-men and assorted make-weights as they tour an isolated island looking to buy real estate. It's pretty poor stuff all round, with many of the actors (including Ms Collins) apparently saying whatever the script says without bothering to understand or mean it. We turned to each other as the final credits rolled and uttered words that cannot be used on this fine forum. Be warned. If you want a much, much better giant ant film, the 1950's THEM is the one to beat. I was going to say '...despite the crude effects', but it seems nothing had improved during the 20 years between that film and this one.

Based very loosely on the short story "Empire of the Ants" by H. G. Wells, the film involves a group of prospective land buyers led by a land developer, pitted against giant, mutated ants.This was one of Bert Gordon's final films, and from a technical standpoint it is among his best. The production value looks much higher than his earlier work, and the star power of the cast is evident. The ants, while still relying on a few cheap effects, are overall pretty effective -- though why must they be screeching the entire time? But really, what makes this only a "good" film rather than a "really good" film is the length. This is clearly a 60 or 70-minute film stretched out to 90 minutes, and that allows for the ultimate sin to creep in: boredom.

The movie starts with radioactive wastes being dumped into the ocean and washed ashore onto the Florida coast. A toxic leak turns simple ants into giant monsters. Unscrupulous real estate agent Marilyn Fryser (Joan Collins) is trying to sell inaccessible coastal swamp land to a boat full of potential suckers. The fake development turns out to the site of the mutant giant ants.This is supposedly based on the H.G. Wells short story. It is a B-movie all the way through. The physical ants are terribly fake. The in-camera special effects are old fashion. The main problem is the lackluster group, both characters and actors. The second tier names aren't rising to the challenge. They are given bad dialogue and the characters are hopelessly unimpressive. They don't even bother picking up a stick to fight back and are always shocked to suddenly see the ants right next to them. They reach civilization and that's when the story gets stupid.

Joan Collins is running a real estate scam in the Florida Everglades. She takes some potential investors to an island to look it over and they are all attacked by giant ants. Another laughable B movie from Bert I. Gordon. This is the third in AIP's H.G. Wells trilogy, after Food of the Gods and The Island of Dr. Moreau. Just like with most of Gordon's '50s B movies, the special effects here are very poor. The giant ants are represented by photographically enlarging the footage of real ants, as if that would fool anybody. One ridiculously ineffective scene has Robert Lansing and John David Carson on a boat swinging oars at some of the ants on a nearby shore. They are clearly swinging at nothing with the ants added later. For some scenes that require the actors to physically touch the ants, they use mock-ups of large ants that are so unrealistic the camera swings about wildly to keep the audience from focusing on them too long. It's all very cheap and no-budget but there is some quaint charm to it, I suppose.The cast takes it all seriously, as if this was going to be their Jaws. There's even some Jaws rip-off music. Joan Collins' theatrics are always worth watching. Robert Lansing does his best to rise above the material. Sexy Pamela Shoop goes braless through the whole movie. That may sound like a pretty weak contribution but one takes what one can get when watching a movie like this. The rest of the cast is made up of people you might recognize but likely won't remember their names. It's all very cheesy and tacky but also very watchable. I was never bored with it. But I am someone who can enjoy a good cheap B horror flick. Some of you might have less patience for those types of films. If nothing else, there is some nice Everglades scenery and all the footage of ants you could ever want to see. If either of those things appeals to you, this is your movie.