DRIVE-IN SATURDAY
If youve, always wanted to see Ida Lupino get sucked by a giant earthworm, scarf up The Food Of The Gods. This screen adaptation of an H .G. Wells novel about nature gone berserk and overgrown, could have been a genuine choker; instead its pretty tough to swallow.
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DRIVE-IN SATURDAY
Big Rats Eat Goo And Marjoe, Too!
Edouard Dauphin
If youve, always wanted to see Ida Lupino get sucked by a giant earthworm, scarf up The Food Of The Gods. This screen adaptation of an H .G.
Wells novel about nature gone berserk and overgrown, could have been a genuine choker; instead its pretty tough to swallow. In fact, it eats it.
Those orally-fixated gags out of the way, lets talk about the movies good points. As directed by special effects veteran Bert I. Gordon, it has a nice sense of atmospheric isolation, the kind once found in 1950s B films set at the North Pole or at the bottom of the ocean. Gods takes place on a remote island in the Pacific Northwest where the chief entertainmennseems to be watching eight foot chickens bite peoples heads off. Frank Perdue is gonna lpve it. >
Seems the creatures got this way by eating a mysterious substance that oozes from the ground and resembles Cream of Wheat. Wasps like it. So do rats. The local Baskin-Robbins wants to riame a flavor after it. Enter Marjoe Gortner, star of the movie. Marjoe is an interesting example of an actor who has continued to accept film roles even after having had his face permanently turned to stone. His only expression is a kind of perplexed grimace—this guys mug ought to be hanging in some periodontist s waiting room.
After a fierce battle with half a dozen overdeveloped chickens, Marjoe confronts Ida Lupino, who runs the farm on which this junk food is available, "What have you been feeding those chickens?" Marjoe asks, as if he were inquiring the way to the Century Plaza Hotel. Enter Ralph Meteker who wants to bottle the stuff and go into business—anything to avoid becoming an aging character actor;.
Bert I. Gordon is probably best known for having done the technical effects on the 19{i>7 B movie, The Amazing Colossal Man. In Eighth Avenu6 film circles, this picture is usually referred to as "The Amazing Transparent Man," due to the s6ethrough-fluality df Berts special effects. Nostalgia buffs and film cultists will be pleased to know that nothing has changed as far as Berts abilities are concerned. There were things crawling around the screening room that were far more intimidating than any of the diaphanous creatures Bert served up on screen.
The Food Of The Gods is crass, obvious and silly but at least it never tries to rise above its station. Its a drivein movie and proud of it. Ralph Mdeker goes down on a five foot rat. Belinda Balaski, possibly the oldest ingenue in films, gives birth to a baby while monstrous animals are shaking the walls and is back on her feet again, ten minutes later, for the finale . And then you have Idas bloodsucking scene, which raises the question: Where is Howard Duff whenpou really need him? „
Go see The Food Of The Gods and bring along the Cream of Wheat.
Hope you dont get bamboozled by those enticing ads for The Omen that imply its another Exorcist, Rosemarys Baby or even Jaws. This two-hour soporific wouldnt scare my Aunt Minnie, even if they did let her out of the laughing academy long enough to sit through it.
Gregory Feck (still around) and Lee Remick (starting to look dowdy) play ' an ambassadorial couple with a problem—their five-year-old son happens to be the Anti-Christ. And as if that werent enough: he chews his food with his mouth open. See, the kid has the dreaded number 666 (cf. Bible, Holy Book Of Revelations) birthmarked on his scalp, but no ones noticed it on account of his Beatle hair comb. (Brat looks like George, if you ask me.)
Pretty soon, the unexpected starts to happen. A nanny hangs herself. A priest is brutally speared by a lightning rod (made him resemble the Greek letter chi), David Warner gets his head lopped off (it made a nice soccer ball), and Gregory Peck does a little acting. But the unexpected is all pretty expected and, about half way through, you start wishing that everyone on,the screen would just stop what theyre doing, climb out into the audience and watch the picture. Because then theyd be able to put the pieces together and know what was going to happen.
Skip The Omen and see the real end of the world instead.
