HALLOWEEN HORRORFEST 2020: Food Of The Gods (1976)

Our sponsor today finally is Brooklyn bonviant and author Nicholas Kaufmann!  Last year Nick tossed me into a pit of intellectual dread by making me watch The Intruder Within on his day of the Halloween Horrorfest.  Nicholas represents The Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.

This year, he has decided to unleash upon me one of the last well-known films (this guy was active until 2015!) by writer/director Bert I. Gordon, Food of The Gods.

Now let me state this up front: Bert I. Gordon is neither a good director, nor a good special effects producer...even though he most likely will tell you otherwise.  I always got the nagging impression that if William Castle was punching up trying to be Alfred Hitchcock, Gordon was punching up trying to be William Castle.  I don’t think there is a Bert I’ Gordon film I can point to and say is legitimately good, and this is not going to be the exception.  It’s terrible...but it has some real bright spots in its ineptitude.

Morgan (Marjoe Gortner) is a football player who’s given the day off before the big game--it is obvious that Gordon understands nothing about football--so he takes a trip to an island for some hunting.  When his fellow player dies, the corpse swollen and red, Morgan and his buddy Brian (Jon Cypher, a few years before he has a second career thanks to becoming a regular on Hill Street Blues) look for help.  What they find is Mrs. Skinner (poor, poor Ida Lupino), who has found what looks like Larry Cohen's Stuff bubbling up from the ground and has been feeding it to her livestock, resulting in giant animals.  Mr. Skinner has made a deal with Nasty McNastymean (Ralph Meeker; I know the character has an actual name, but I call ‘em like I see ‘em) to market the new goop, which is why Nasty McNastymean has brought along Lorna (Pamela Franklin, who never takes off her overcoat throughout the whole film) to verify the stuff before he buys it.  But since rats have gotten into the stuff--helpfully labeled ‘F.O.T.G.’ by Mrs. Skinner--and have now become a man-eating horde, the question is whether any one will get out alive.

Man, this film is so stupid.  It is painfully bad to the point where I can’t pinpoint what is the place in production where it went off the rails.  Yes, the script is awful, rife with cliched and wooden dialogue...but that could be solved with good acting, except the acting is led by the thoroughly stiff Gortner and a series of ‘Yesterday’s Stars Today’ who can’t be bothered.  But that could be forgiven if the special effects were truly amazing or the pace was breathless, but that ain’t happening unless you like real rats crawling over obvious miniatures, superimposed transparent wasps or cute rat head puppets.

Really, really cute rathead puppets.

And that’s where I found my joy in viewing this waste of celluloid.  Every time those rat heads showed up to chew on our cast, I gleefully cried out ‘rat puppet!’ and grinned.  About halfway through, when Gordon starts presenting us with ominous shots of a white rat that Morgan identifies as the ringleader of the Giant Rat Horde, I laughed.  The gratuitous shots of the ferry going to and from the island?  I was so tempted to start a drinking game.  Yes, there was nothing redeeming in watching this film, and yet I still enjoyed watching it.  In a way I appreciated it the way I appreciate the films of Phillipe Mora, only not as enthusiastically.

This film marked the last theatrical appearance of Pamela Franklin, and the next-to-last appearance of Lupino, and that saddens me.  Ida Lupino was a verifiable bad-ass both on screen and off, a true pioneering woman, and I wish she had spent her waning years continuing to direct some great crime films rather than appearing as a religious farmer lady.  And Franklin was something of a scream queen who I appreciated in And Soon The Darkness and The Legend of Hell House, and here she is playing fawning romantic interest for the lumpen Gortner, asking him to make love to her while shooting giant rats.  I had a theory that I could not confirm that the reason she is constantly wearing a shapeless beige overcoat in the film was because she was pregnant with one of her two sons, but I could not find any corroboration.  These two women were good to great in their own ways, and I hated seeing them going out like that.

I will also state that while I can see why people claim rats were actually shot with pellet guns in the ‘realistic’ special effects, I don’t see it.  I do see offscreen special effects people using an air blower to launch what seems to be red gelatin at them, resulting in the rats being stunned or running away.  There are shots where you can see the rats scurrying about or waving their little feet around, which is why I started referring to them as ‘stunt rats’ in my mind.

This is a very poor, very bad film.  Once again, I found myself reminding myself that it was a theatrical release.  But it’s one of those films that you can’t resent for existing.  While I would never say that Food of The Gods has charm, it is fun...and that might be good enough for government work.  I would recommend this not as a piece of art, but a piece of entertainment.

Our sponsor tomorrow is my pal from West Virginia, the man who gave the world all those wonderful theme songs for Better In The Dark and the kingpin of the B Hyphen Podcast Network, Kelen Conley!  Kelen has chosen the stone cold classic that is was part of a run of films by John Carpenter that was astounding in its quality.  I speak, of course, of 1982‘s The Thing!

There is One Sponsorship Slot Left in the Halloween Horrorfest this year.  You can claim it by doing one of four things:

1) You can become a Domicile of Dread Patreon at any level.  Patreons always get a free slot, as well as advance access to podcasts and other goodies!

2) You can buy me a coffee at Ko-Fi.  Suggested donation is $3

3) You can make a donation to Black Lives Matter.  Suggested donation is $10.  Please forward your receipt to me as proof.

4) You can choose to make a donation to the charity chosen by a sponsor on his/her/their day. Like with the third possibility, please forward me proof of donation.

As with last year, if I end up with more sponsors than there are days in October, I will go into Horrorfest Overtime, which means Halloween goes into November for me--and you!