Empire of the Ants, Night of the Demon, Prison

Empire of the Ants1977, US 89m. Director: Bert I. Gordon.

Mardi Gras Massacre – 1978, US, 95m. Director: Jack Weis.

Night of the Demon 1980, US, 96m. Director: James C. Wasson.

Prison1987, US, 100m. Director: Renny Harlin.

EMPIRE OF THE ANTS (1977) A group of people on an island property tour conducted by a crooked land development company run smack into mutated ants, made oversized by a leaking canister of toxic waste. After the ants feast on a perspective buyer and his wife, they destroy the tour boat, trapping the remaining characters on the island. Unfortunately for the survivors, the island is home to a small town overlorded by the evil sugar refinery responsible for the chemical leak. Do I smell an anti-big business message here? Actually, this is one of many sci-fi-horror films to use revenge-seeking insects/sharks/birds/fill-in-the-blank to propel its story of humans striving for ecological co-existence within a man-made disastrous environment. But unlike Hitchcock’s The Birds, in which the animals win and the characters must learn to live (and respect) their new surroundings, the people in Empire of the Ants exist within the confines of a Bert I. Gordon movie and must fight to the death. It’s all a bunch of cheap but enjoyable malarkey made in the same mold as Mr. B.I.G.’s Food of the Gods. B (Currently streaming on Tubi.)

MARDI GRAS MASSACRE (1978) Shades of Blood Feast flow through this cheap splatter flick shot in New Orleans. The murder of a prostitute—her heart was removed—causes a stir within the nearby police precinct. Straight-laced detective Curt Dawson believes the killing has ritualistic overtones and more women will turn up slaughtered. Dawson gets involved with a hooker (Gwen Arment) who was an eyewitness to the victim’s interaction with the suspect, but ultimately drops the ball when another woman is slain while Dawson and Arment are screwing. But the viewer already knows the killer (Bill Metzo) is sacrificing his victims to some sort of Aztec god and the hearts are being used as a sacrificial offering. Metzo’s territorial imperative is eventually overcome—and he’s plunged into a river and drowns. Plodding and dull. D (Currently streaming on Tubi.)

NIGHT OF THE DEMON (1980) Bigfoot is running amok in Southern California and tearing people to pieces (while fornicating with others) in this enjoyably salacious splatterfest. A camper gets his arm ripped off in the opening credits, the blood pooling in a large footprint left by the beast. The love-making of a couple is interrupted when Bigfoot drags the man off into the woods as his hapless girlfriend watches in horror. The creature plays helicopter with a man in a sleeping bag and impales the poor schlub on a tree trunk. An anthropologist (Michael Cutt) takes several students into the forest to capture evidence of the hairy man-beast and discovers a backwoods cult of Bigfoot-worshippers. The gore was added later by the film’s producer, including the scene where a motorcyclist gets his cock torn off—a realistic detail that got the movie banned in the UK. This is director James C. Wasson’s only feature film credit, which he followed by making several gay porn movies under the aliases Jim/Clinton West—explaining Night of the Demon‘s unusual amount of exposed male buttocks. B (Currently not streaming.)

PRISON (1987) Irwin Yablans, the producer of Halloween, came up with the story for this jailhouse supernatural slasher filmed in Wyoming. Prison overcrowding leads the state to reopen the once-closed Wyoming State Penitentiary. This doesn’t sit well with a bleeding heart liberal board member (Chelsea Fields), who’s more concerned with prison reform, or with prison warden Lane Smith, who’s been haunted by nightmares ever since witnessing the execution of an innocent man at the penitentiary back in ’64. The warden has every right to feel uncomfortable, especially when a malignant presence begins massacring several of the inmates and guards, using all manner of creativity to turn victims into meat pies. Has the spirit of the wrongly executed prisoner returned for vengeance? The first and best of the prison-set horror films of the late eighties, Prison‘s story is aided by a good cast, interesting characters, and some wild special effects—many showcased during the explosive finale. This was given a limited theatrical release, but eventually found a much-deserved audience on videocassette. B (Currently not streaming.)

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