Food of the Gods, The (1976)

... aka: Die Insel der Ungeheuer (The Island of Monsters)
... aka: H.G. Wells' The Food of the Gods
... aka: La plaga asesina (The Killer Plague)

Directed by:
Bert I. Gordon

H.G. Wells' 1904 novel The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth was divided into three different books and followed a group of scientists who invent a substance called Herakleophorbia IV (or “Boomfood”) that accelerates growth in plants, young animals and human children; eventually turning insects and our four-legged friends into large killer beasts and the kids into 40-foot giants more than willing to use their size to their advantage once they reach their early adult years. This film adaptation uses material from just the first section of the novel, though it doesn't stick all that closely to it aside from some of the same characters, the farm setting and, of course, the giant animals. There aren't any over-sized plants in the one and also no giant kids but that's because Mr. B.I.G. had previously already filmed the kid part as Village of the Giants back in 1965. It too was loosely adapted from just a portion of the book and didn't follow it all that closely. Most disappointingly omitted from the book for this film version are gigantic chickens attacking a small town. I'd have loved to have seen them try to pull that off.

“My father used to say, 'Morgan, one of these days the Earth will get even with man for messing her up with his garbage. Just let man continue to pollute the Earth the way he is and nature will rebel. It's gonna be one hell of a rebellion.'” Professional football player Morgan (played by former “Miracle Child” kid preacher / faith healer Marjoe Gortner), who narrates, his teammate Davis (Chuck Courtney) and overworked PR man Brian (Jon Cypher) decide to get away for a few days go to a barely-populated Canadian island (accessible only by ferry) to ride horses and hunt. Davis chases after a deer and is found dead by his friends; his face hideously pink and swollen. Morgan goes to look for help, stumbles upon a farmhouse, enters the barn and is attacked by a giant rooster. After killing it with a pitchfork, he goes to the home and meets the paranoid, God fearin' country bumpkin Mrs. Skinner (Ida Lupino), who greets him with a shotgun. Morgan and Brian return to the mainland and get the medical report back on their dead friend, with the coroner estimating he'd been stung by 250 wasps. In fact, it was actually just one giant wasp that did all of that damage.

The following day, asshole industrialist / chemist Jack Bensington (Ralph Meeker) and his assistant, bacteriologist Dr. Lorna Scott (Pamela Franklin), show up at the Skinner farm to make Mr. Skinner (John McLiam) an offer on some milky white substance they found leaking out of the ground near their home. Before getting devoured by a slew of giant rats, the farmer had given the substance to his chickens and, while it had no effect on the adult birds, their offspring grew to giant size. Other animals, includes wasps, worms and rats also got into the substance and have grown and now lurk around the island. Morgan and Brian return to avenge their friend's death by blowing up the wasp nest, while Thomas (Tom Stovall) and his very pregnant girlfriend Rita (future Joe Dante staple Belinda Balaski) end up in the middle of things after their RV breaks down. Eventually, everyone holes up in the farmhouse, board up all of the doors and windows and try to survive a giant rat attack.

There was definite potential here for a fun B movie, but it's pretty much all botched due to poor writing, some truly awful dialogue, dull one-dimensional stock characters, too much emphasis put on the rats (personally I'd have much rather seen more of the chickens, worms OR wasps) and special effects that were hokey even back in 1976. Hell, I could have lived with the fx, a mixture of rear projection, optical trickery, superimposition, split screen and cute stuffed model rats, as is if nearly every other component wasn't bad, but that's not the case. Completely stripping away the science elements from the source material and giving the substance a more natural origin actually wasn't a bad idea but they don't do anything interesting with that concept either. There's also a distinct lack of humor and if any movie could have used a few laughs, intentional or otherwise, it's this one. The only amusing bit occurs at the very end. The picturesque British Columbia locales, which look better than ever on the Blu-ray now distributed by Scream Factory, are a plus / minor diversion.

Despite generous use of red paint blood during the attack sequences and one bit where a head appears to have been eaten off (a young Thomas Burman was in charge of the make-up effects) this got a PG rating. Gordon not only directed but also wrote the screenplay, produced and was in charge of the visual effects. His wife, Flora M. Gordon, was the assistant director and unit production manager and Rick Baker supposedly also worked on some of the fx sans credit.

The first and one of at least three comic book adaptations of the novel.

This was the last theatrical feature for the talented Franklin (it's no wonder she bowed out of show business soon after if this was the best she was being offered) and second-to-last film role for pioneering female filmmaker Lupino.

Food was both a Saturn nominee for Best Horror Film and a winner of the prestigious “Worst Rodent Movie of All Time” award in Harry and Michael Medved's book The Golden Turkey Awards. Samuel Z. Arkoff was the executive producer and presenter. Of the 25+ films released by his company A.I.P. in 1976, this actually made the most money. As a result, they not only backed Gordon's big bug follow-up Empire of the Ants (1977) the following year but also sunk 6 million into the Wells adaptation The Island of Dr. Moreau (1977). The belated sequel GNAW: FOOD OF THE GODS II (1989) is actually a lot more fun!

★1/2

Biri beni gözlüyor (1988)

... aka: I Was Watching
... aka: Someone's Watching Me
... aka: Turkish Shining

Directed by:
Ömer Ugur

The Turkish film industry, or Yeşilçam as it's called there, began way back in 1914 with the release of the silent documentary Ayastefanos'taki Rus Abidesinin Yıkılışı, which involved the demolition of a Russian monument at San Stefano. Film production would be very sporadic until things finally picked up in the 50s. By the time the 60s rolled around, Turkey was the fifth most prolific country in terms of film production; averaging 300 films per year in their heyday. There was a huge increase in cinemas during this time (over 2000 by 1966) and thus a larger-then-ever demand for domestic product. However, their impoverished film industry suffered from shoddy, primitive film equipment, untrained and (in many cases) untalented filmmakers and just not enough money to keep up with what other countries were doing, especially in the later era of big budget Hollywood blockbusters. By the 70s, TV took a huge chunk of the film-going audience away. Theaters closed, budgets shrank even further, the original film stars downgraded to the small screen and, in a desperate attempt to both compete and capitalize on the lack of copyright laws in the country, a series of plagiarized rip-offs emerged. These films not only stole complete plots, but also camera shots, music scores and pretty much anything else they wanted; including editing special effects scenes from the original films into the new films as a cost-saving measure.

Not surprisingly, most of these rip-offs didn't get released outside of the country for fear of a lawsuit, but many are now available to stunned contemporary moviegoers worldwide. Turkey had their own home grown versions of Tarzan, Zorro, James Bond, Superman, Dirty Harry, E.T., Star Wars, Star Trek, Spiderman, Rambo, Laurel and Hardy and even a similarly-dressed equivalent of Captain America. There were also a good number of horror films, starting with an unsanctioned Bram Stoker adaptation Dracula in Istanbul in 1953. Other later rip-offs included versions of such famous films as Psycho (1960), The Bad Seed (1963), Straw Dogs (1971), Deliverance (1972), The Last House on the Left (1972), The Exorcist (1973), Young Frankenstein (1974), Jaws (1975), I Spit on Your Grave (1978) and others. Sometimes the source material was fairly obscure as was the case with THIRSTY FOR LOVE, SEX AND MURDER (1972); a copy of the Italian giallo THE STRANGE VICE OF MRS. WARDH (1971), or BRUTAL STORM (1985), a copy of the Spanish chiller A Candle for the Devil aka  IT HAPPENED AT NIGHTMARE INN (1973). Biri beni gözlüyor (or “Someone Is Watching Me”), is another odd one. Heavily, a-hem, “inspired” by the 1980 Stephen King adaptation The Shining (1980), this was made in the late 80s during a time in Turkish film production where sometimes there were as few as a half dozen movies being made per year.

At a seaside hotel on a remote island, a seemingly-normal man snapped and strangled both his wife and son before hanging himself. The incident was enough to pretty much kill the tourism business in the area but this strip of land already had a bad reputation before then. Prior to the hotel even being built, the land was the tomb of a saintly fisherman that other fisherman passing through the area would stop and pay tribute to for good luck. The tomb was bulldozed down and ever since one bad thing after another has occurred, starting with the first attempt at building the hotel resulting in disaster when it fell down. Fish in the area mysterious turn up dead and there's even a rumor that the wind in those parts has the power to drive people mad. It's all rather appealing to Hulki Kalkinç (Tarik Tarcan), a crime / horror novelist desperately in need of inspiration as he hasn't written a thing in two years. Hulki decides to bring his model wife Leman (Silen Dilmen) and whiny young son Ufuk (Erhan Keçeci) to the island for an extended vacation so he can work on what he hopes is his next successful book.

Upon arriving, they're greeted by Mahmut (Ali Ates), a bearded, dirty, creepy and always-smiling sailor who usually looks after the place. While the family stays there, he plans on heading to the mainland for a few days but first clues them in to the history of the place and how all of the bad things seem to occur there on the 15th of the month. The wife is not only leery of him but also becomes increasingly more paranoid about... well... pretty much everything. She thinks someone is peeking in through her bedroom window. She thinks someone is watching her while she's on a swing. She thinks her husband and Mahmut actually knew each other before they came to the island and wonders why the caretaker put them up in Room 213, which is right next door to where the man killed his family. Hulki's increasingly odd behavior certainly doesn't help her state of mind any. He pretends to hang himself just like the previous killer had to see what it feels like. Then he attempts to seduce Leman only to start strangling her just to see her reaction. He then admits he wants to kill her and says it would be super cool to have sex right where the murders took place.

Even with the appropriately dreary surroundings, Hulki can't seen to get over his writer's block, so he decides to tell the sordid tale from the killer's perspective and wants to “feel him to the bone.” He soon becomes obsessed and unhinged and starts lurking around everywhere in a wide-eyed daze. He won't let anyone read what he's typing, ignores his wife and son's requests to leave, scares them with sudden crazy outbursts and slings blood all over the wife waving a piece of raw meat around. The boy finds a bloody axe outside and, since the caretaker gave them false contact information, they think he may have used it to chop up his family and could possibly still be on the island. When Leman tries to leave and take their son away, hubby throws the boat key away and destroys the radio equipment, stranding them there with his crazy ass. He knocks the son unconscious for trying to look at his papers and eventually goes after both of them with an axe.

I'm not one of those people who thinks of The Shining as this deep, flawless masterpiece. I've always viewed it as being a sporadically brilliant / powerful / scary movie with a lot of unnecessary elements needlessly stuffed in that muck the whole thing up. However, watching this cheap, awful, inept rip-off really makes me want to rethink my stance on Kubrick's film. This goes right down the line ripping off The Shining (at least the parts they could afford to copy); only this time the film is done by a director who appears to have no clue how to build suspense, generate scares or even entertain... and I'm not talking about Mick Garris!

There are no pre-hotel scenes here to introduce us to the characters. Since they couldn't afford a helicopter to shoot the family car drive scene, here they just sit the family in a boat where they have a very similar conversation. The grand tour the caretaker gives the mom of the massive hotel / kitchen in The Shining is reduced here to the caretaker showing the mom where the gas tanks to light the stove are. The surreal horror visuals that highlight Kubrick's film are all gone and instead we just get repetitive talky scenes of the wife and son (who doesn't have psychic abilities in this version) having to deal with the husband's odd behavior. Hulki mentions feeling like he's been at the hotel before and all of his writings turn out to be the same sentence typed out over and over again. Instead of a blizzard, there's a bad rainstorm. Instead of knocking Hulki out with a baseball bat, dragging his body to the kitchen and sticking the him in a walk-in freezer, Leman knocks him out with the axe, drags his body to the kitchen and sticks him in a refrigerated glass deli cabinet (!) that he easily breaks out of when the time comes. The caretaker comes back long enough to get axed, though he gets decapitated in this one. Apparently destroying a door didn't fit into their budget, so they don't include a “Here's Hulki!” scene here. Instead, there are a few changes made at the very end, though none to the betterment of the story.

While the leads are certainly nicer to look at than Nicholson and Duvall (the wife bears a striking resemblance to the gorgeous Jennifer Connelly) neither is very good where it really counts: giving a believable performance. However, to their defense, this was shot without sound and they were dubbed in later by others. The dialogue and editing are both awful and this is rather poorly lit and shot to boot. Scenes are frequently blurry and many of the night scenes, including much of the climax, are difficult to make out because it's so dark. This does however boast an excellent, creepy, elegant and sometimes beautiful music score. It was composed by some guy named Jerry Goldsmith but unfortunately had already been used to much better effect in Psycho II. Unlike many other Turkish turkeys, this isn't deliriously awful and unintentionally hilarious, it's simply poorly made and bland.

★