Food of the Gods



A football player and his two buddies head to a remote Canadian island for a little rustic recreation. But when they get there they discover that a local couple has accidentally stumbled upon some kind of naturally occurring food source that inexplicably causes anything that eats it to grow to obnoxiously large size. Which might actually be kind of cool, if not for the fact that all the local wildlife were now suddenly trying to eat them.


Something tells me this isn’t covered in their homeowners policy.

Considering how well Castle Freak held up, I decided to continue on with my unfinished list from “The 50 Best Movies You’ve Never Seen”. I didn’t know what to expect from Food of the Gods, as I hadn’t even heard of it before, let alone seen it. Or at least I didn’t know what to expect right up until I saw Bert I. Gordon’s name plastered all over the screen. Then I had a better idea of what I was about to watch. For those unfamiliar with his name, if you’ve ever seen some of those movies from the 50-70s that involved people or objects growing larger or smaller, and then regular-sized humans having to interact with said person or item, then Gordon probably had his hand in it. The Amazing Colossal Man, The Village of the Giants, The Magic Sword…Yeah, It was kinda his shtick. And Food of the Gods isn’t really any different. Except it isn’t nearly as charming as those films. Nor is it really even scary. It’s very un-scary and quite cheesy in fact and, well… It’s just kinda bad, actually. Not that I expected the movie to be all that scary, what with its PG rating and Gordon’s name popping up multiple times during the opening credit sequences as the director, writer AND producer, but I was at least hoping for something with a smidge more substance than what I got.


No! Not the window! Those are expensive!

I will give Bert some credit though. The man doesn’t beat around the bush with a bunch of miscellaneous junk in this film. You’re barely even 5-minutes into the movie before the giant insects show up and someone dies a rather painful looking death. So the film’s pacing is actually pretty stellar. So other than the slow opening credit sequence there really aren’t any large chunks of “fat” to be trimmed from the film’s overall plot, which is much appreciated.



Unfortunately, it seems as though it’s the plot itself that needed to be trimmed…. and shredded… and maybe thrown into a fire pit. Cause this poor thing stinks. The movie is very loosely based on the 1904 H. G. Wells’ novel The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth, which centers around a group of scientists that create a chemical food concoction that accelerates the growth of children, turning them into giants, and the fallout surrounding it. But Gordon cut the film down to the original story’s basic premise centered around the food, and turned the movie into your run of the mill Eco-horror tale instead. So instead of presenting and pondering philosophical questions, we instead get to watch a rag-tag group of people follow the lead of a football player, shoot at giant rats, and cold-cock large, rubber chicken heads. Why are all these people blindly listening to a random football player that showed up on the island? Honest to God, I have no idea. Because this guy seems to get people into more trouble than he gets them out of. In fact, now that I think about it, I’m pretty sure that by going back to the island he actually doomed three people to an early death. But that’s just the kind of movie this is. The “hero” sucks, the dialogue is terrible, and key plot points and motivations are rarely explained. The movie is so badly written for the most part that the Eco-horror genre’s standard villain, the greedy, corporate A-hole, often ends up being the one character that ends up making the most sense. In fact, if it weren’t for Football Bro’s sudden reappearance and insistence that no one leave the farm, there’s a good chance that the greedy, corporate A-hole actually could have been the film’s legitimate hero, by getting everyone in his car and driving them somewhere safe. But did he? No. Because even he was inexplicably forced to listen to Football Bro because… Reasons, I guess. I don’t know. The bubbling goop seeping out of the ground that looks like chunky clam chowder and makes critters inexplicably grow huge is more believable to me than just about all of the characters actions and decisions in this film.


I mean, even his friend didn’t want to listen to him, so why is everyone else following his lead?

Then there’s the film’s special effects which, even if I was already sorta expecting the plot to be sucky, I was at least kinda hoping that they’d be amusing enough to keep me engaged and, well… no, they weren’t. I was actually more amused by the actor’s reactions to the “giants” because, let’s be real, it’s hard not to giggle at actors swatting at large insects that you can tell they can’t actually see, or punching large rubber chickens in the face. I don’t care who you are, watching a grown man flailing-ly swing at a fake chicken head is funny as hell. That he didn’t even seem phased by their ginormous size was even better. The other effects though… not so funny. Don’t get me wrong, there are a couple of shots that look shockingly good. But for every neat shot where they were able to splice the animal and human footage together almost seamlessly, there’s another dozen or so that look crappy, even by 1970s standards. Most of the bug-related footage is clearly just a cheap overlay, the worms are little more than rubber blobs, and I’m pretty sure I saw the legs of one of the crewmen holding up the giant chicken head. The rats manage to fare a smidge better, but that’s only because they have the benefit of having more scenes, and thus more chances to look decent. So other than a couple of neat looking moments, most of the visuals are pretty “meh”.


Possibly the best shot in the film.



I kinda wish I had more good to say about this one, because even though Gordon’s films were always pretty cheesy, there was usually some quaint charm in them. But Food of the Gods just feels forced. The basic concept is fine, but you can tell that whatever decent parts the story might have had going for it were all boiled down so much into the most mundane and predictable of Eco-horror tropes that damn-near everything becomes illogical. Because instead of following the story it’s trying to tell, the plot and the characters just seem to be hitting pre-established genre beats because, hey!, that’s what they’re supposed to do, right? And the film’s promise of unconventional effects can’t even save it, because most of them don’t end up being all that good. It might be an interesting film, especially if you like watching those old-time camera effects, but if you’re looking for a good (or scary) story, then this ain’t it.

Food of the Gods is available on a variety of streaming services.

Food of the Gods is also available on DVD and Bluray.

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