The Queen Wants New Tenants

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MOVIE REVIEW
Empire of the Ants (Blu-ray)
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Genre: Horror, Sci-Fi
Year Released: 1977, 2026 Eureka Entertainment Blu-ray
Runtime: 1h 29m
Director(s): Bert I. Gordon
Writer(s): H.G. Wells, Jack Turley, Bert I. Gordon
Cast: Joan Collins, Robert Lansing, John David Carson, Albert Salmi, Jacqueline Scott, Pamela Susan Shoop, Robert Pine, Brooke Palance
Where to Watch: available now, order your copy here: www.eurekavideo.co.uk

RAVING REVIEW: Bad real estate deals are already scary enough before radioactive insects get involved. EMPIRE OF THE ANTS takes that on headfirst in a wonderfully ridiculous way, turning a swampy land scam into a giant siege where capitalism, toxic waste, and 1970s creature-feature logic all crawl into the same pile. Bert I. Gordon’s final giant-monster film is clunky, silly, and sometimes awkward in ways that are impossible to ignore, yet there’s something undoubtedly entertaining about watching it keep pushing forward with a straight face.

The setup is magnificently shameless. Marilyn Fryser, played by Joan Collins, corrals a group of would-be investors into a beachfront property pitch that’s built on sand in more ways than one. She’s selling the promise of paradise, even though the land has the unmistakable feel of a place nobody should be buying, developing, or wandering around. Nearby, barrels of radioactive waste have washed ashore and done what radioactive waste always does in this era of movie history, turning ordinary wildlife into oversized, misunderstood monsters.

Gordon wasn’t tackling unfamiliar territory here. Nicknamed “Mr. B.I.G.” for his attachment to oversized threats and large-scale B-movie spectacle, he spent decades making ordinary stuff enormous and then letting humans act like they didn’t screw up. EMPIRE OF THE ANTS arrives late in that cycle, after the 1950s had already made giant insects a staple and the 1970s had turned nature’s revenge into a subgenre with an environmental conscience. The result feels like an older kind of monster movie trying to keep pace with a dirtier, more cynical decade.

The film has an eco-horror anxiety. It opens with warnings about ants, pheromones, organization, and the terrifying possibility that humanity may not be as dominant as it thinks it is. Then it moves into a parade of stock characters, bad decisions, and giant ant attacks that range from charmingly goofy to accidentally hilarious. EMPIRE OF THE ANTS isn’t subtle, but subtlety was never the purpose; chaos was from day one.

Collins plays Marilyn as greedy, refined, pushy, and transparently phony, which makes her far more interesting than several of the people trapped alongside her. Collins doesn’t need to overplay the part to make Marilyn unpleasant. She carries herself like someone who has talked people into terrible financial choices before and expects to do it again. Watching that confidence get chewed apart by giant ants gives the film a simple but satisfying experience.

The rest of the ensemble is more uneven, though that unevenness fits the movie’s survival structure. Robert Lansing brings a more even presence as Dan Stokely, while John David Carson, Albert Salmi, Jacqueline Scott, Pamela Susan Shoop, Robert Pine, and Brooke Palance fill out a group designed largely to panic, argue, flee, and thin out as needed. These aren’t deep character arcs. They’re creature-feature victims, and the film has no interest in making everyone memorable before the colony starts clearing them out.

The effects are where EMPIRE OF THE ANTS becomes both most vulnerable and most lovable. Gordon uses a mix of real ants, compositing tricks, and large prop ants that don’t always blend with the actors or environments. Some shots have a crudeness, especially when the film leans into scale and movement. Others look like the movie is daring you to laugh. The ants shriek, swarm, loom, and occasionally appear pasted into the frame with all the elegance of a nightmare assembled on a deadline.

For viewers open to this kind of cult cinema, the visible seams are part of the appeal. EMPIRE OF THE ANTS belongs to a period when imagination often ran several steps ahead of execution, and the best way to meet the film is to accept it without questioning it. You won’t get realism. You won’t get cultivated suspense. You will get Joan Collins, toxic sludge, screaming ants, chase scenes in the swamp, questionable survival instincts, and a final act that decides the movie wasn’t weird enough yet.

That late turn is what keeps the film from being only another “giant animals attack” film. Without spoiling the surprise, EMPIRE OF THE ANTS eventually shifts from survival horror into something closer to insect-controlled social horror, using pheromones and obedience as a wonderfully strange escalation. The ants aren’t only eating people; they’re organizing. The idea is pulpy and absurd, but it also brings the film closer to H.G. Wells’ original fascination with intelligent ant societies and human arrogance, even if the adaptation is loose at best.

The ecological angle remains one of the movie’s strongest accidental advantages. The illegal dumping of radioactive waste is pure genre shorthand, but the basic anger underneath still works. Humans poison the environment, try to profit from land they don’t respect, and then act surprised when nature responds without mercy. EMPIRE OF THE ANTS may not be graceful in how it delivers that message, but that bluntness has aged better than expected. There’s something oddly satisfying about a film this cheap that understands that environmental damage eventually sends someone the bill.

The Eureka Classics Blu-ray gives the film a context it benefits from. EMPIRE OF THE ANTS is easy to mock in isolation, but harder to shrug off when placed inside Gordon’s career, the nature-strikes-back wave, and the longer history of giant insect cinema. Extras focused on Gordon, commentaries, a new introduction, and the collector’s booklet help frame the film as more than late-night weirdness. It’s still ridiculous, absolutely, but it’s ridiculous with lineage.

It has a personality that many more technically competent creature features lack. The movie is awkward but is never lazy, silly but not empty, and strange enough to keep surprising you. It’s the kind of cult title where the flaws and strengths keep feeding each other until separating them feels beside the point.

EMPIRE OF THE ANTS won’t convert anyone who needs their creature features to be remotely plausible. It asks for patience, a tolerance for dated effects, and an affection for genre films that swing bigger than their resources allow. For the right viewer, though, that’s part of the pleasure. Gordon’s mutant ants may not always convince the viewer, but they understand the assignment: punish the greedy, chase the foolish, and remind humanity that the smallest creatures can still ruin the whole sales pitch.

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[photo courtesy of EUREKA ENTERTAINMENT]

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