The Food of the Gods (film)
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| The Food of the Gods | |
|---|---|
 Promotional movie poster for the film |
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| Directed by | Bert I. Gordon |
| Produced by | Samuel Z. Arkoff Bert I. Gordon |
| Written by | Bert I. Gordon |
| Starring | Marjoe Gortner Pamela Franklin Ralph Meeker John McLiam Ida Lupino |
| Music by | Elliot Kaplan |
| Cinematography | Reginald H. Morris |
| Editing by | Corky Ehlers |
| Distributed by | American International Pictures |
| Release date(s) |  June 18, 1976 January 22, 1977 March 15 July 15 |
| Running time | 88 min. |
| Country | U.S.A. |
| Language | English |
| Allmovie profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
The Food of the Gods is a 1976 film released by American International Pictures and was written, produced, and directed by Bert I. Gordon. The film starred Marjoe Gortner, Pamela Franklin, Ralph Meeker, John McLiam, and Ida Lupino, and was loosely based on a portion of the H. G. Wells novel The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth. A sequel to the film was made in 1989 entitled Food of the Gods II (often referred to by its working title Gnaw: Food of the Gods II).
The movie was not very successful. However, it did receive a Golden Turkey Award for Worst Rodent Movie Of All Time, beating such competitors as The Killer Shrews (1959), The Mole People (1956), The Nasty Rabbit (1965), and Night of the Lepus (1972).
Interestingly, Bert I. Gordon had earlier written, produced, and directed (for Embassy Pictures) Village of the Giants (1965), also very loosely based on the book.
[edit] Plot summary
The film reduced the tale to an 'Ecology Strikes Back' scenario, common in science fiction movies at the time. The food mysteriously bubbles up from the ground on a remote island somewhere in British Columbia. The couple that discover it (McLiam and Lupino) consider it a gift from God, and promptly begin feeding it to their chickens. Soon, rats, wasps, and worms consume the substance, and the island is crawling with giant vermin. A professional football player (Gortner) and his buddies are camping on the island, and one of them is stung to death by the wasps. Also thrown into the mix are an expecting couple, the owner of a dog food company (Meeker) hoping to market the substance, and his assistant (Franklin), a "lady bacteriologist." Eventually, the survivors are trapped in the farmhouse with the rats swarming around outside (or at least swarming around a doll house) and Lupino promising God that she'll never sin again. The football player eventually blows up a nearby dam, flooding the area and drowning the rats (who can't swim due to their extra weight). But the food survives and is consumed by cows, who give tainted milk, which is then drunk by schoolchildren in the fishing-for-a-sequel ending.
