THE FOOD OF THE GODS (1976) / FROGS (1972) (Scream Factory Blu-ray Review)

THE FOOD OF THE GODS (1976) / FROGS (1972) 

SCREAM FACTORY DOUBLE FEATURE

Label: Scream Factory 
Release Date: May 26th 2015 
Region Code: A
Rating: PG
Duration: 88 Minutes, 91 Minutes 
Audio: English LPCM 2.0 
Video: 1080p Widescreen (1.85:1), (1.78:1)  
Director: Bert I. Gordon, George McCowan
Cast: Ida Lupino, Pamela Franklin, Marjoe Gortner, Belinda Balaski, Jon Cypher, Ralph Meeker,  Judy Pace, Ray Milland, Joan Van Ark, Adam Roarke, Sam Elliott, Lynn Borden

THE FOOD OF THE GODS (1976)

Pro footballer Morgan (Marjoe Gortner) and his pals are hunting on a remote island off British Columbia when one of them are attacked by enormous wasps the size of a small dog with wings. Morgan and the others don't witness the attack and are unaware of the oddity of the death, aside from the unusually swollen corpse. When the autopsy indicates he was injected with a near impossible amount of wasp venom Morgan and his friend Bryan (Jon Cypher) return to the island to find some answers. Once there they stumble upon a small farm house in the woods where Morgan is attacked by an 8 ft. tall rooster that's kept out in the barn, just narrowly avoiding having his eyes pecked out by the gigantic cock.

Mrs. Skinner (Ida Lupino), the elderly owner of the farm,  after some prodding reveals that she and her husband have found a substance bubbling up from the Earth, ome goo with the consistency of runny oatmeal which when eaten enables the animals to grow to an unnatural size, as evidenced by the 8ft rooster. Morgan puts two and two together and deduces that wasps must have eaten the substance and are loose in the area,  but Mrs. Skinner refuses to believe that their discovery could be something awful, what she doesn't know is that Mr. Skinner was torn apart by a horde of flesh-crazed rats who have also eaten the magic growth substance. 

Now we have Morgan and Bryan on the island in addition to a young couple expecting a child plus an unscrupulous owner of a dog food company who is bent on obtaining the substance for his own profit, alongside his somewhat adversarial bacteriologist assistant. Not completely sure why the owner of a dog food company needed a bacteriologist on staff but I do know that white-afro wearing Marjoe Gortner needed a love interest and she fit the bill. 

The idea of giant-sized animals and insects ingesting a strange substance who attack humans on a remote island might sound familiar to anyone who watched director Bert I. Gordon's Empire of the Ants (1971) just a few years earlier. The campy special affects are achieved through various means to varying degrees of success, a series of miniatures sets with real rodents that are hilarious, full size puppets, and a series of composite shot effects, which may not be the most impressive but are a lot of fun, particularly if you love bad movies or are nostalgic for these awesome creature-features from the '70s.

I love love love this film and always have and I always will, it's just a blast and hard not to enjoy for the cult-classic that it is, a movie loaded with giant-sized wasps, chickens, worms and a horde of deadly rodents who lay siege to the farmhouse. I just cannot get enough of this one and I am damn happy to see it get an HD release from Scream Factory with some new extras and improved A/V.   

The Food of the Gods shares space on a single-disc Blu-ray with the eco-terror Frogs, the HD transfer offers up improved clarity and detail over the standard-def DVD, which should be no surprise. Not the most impressive eye-popping 1080p on the market but for an almost 40 year old b-movie this one looked pretty solid. The English LPCM 2.0 audio is nicely balanced with no distortion, optional English subtitles are provided. 

Special features include a brand new Audio Commentary With Director Bert I. Gordon moderated by Kevin Sean Michaels, a fun interview with Actress Belinda Balaski whom recalls actress Ida Lupino informing the director she had written her own death scene and was leaving the set in a few hours, having to scramble to get the scene finished before she left. Additionally there are radio spots, a trailer, a photo gallery and trailers for Empire of the Ants and Jaws of Satan, also available as a double-feature from Scream Factory 

Special Features
- New Audio Commentary With Director Bert I. Gordon
- New Interview With Actress Belinda Balaski (12 Mins) 
- Radio Spot (1 Min) 
- Photo Gallery (4 Mins) 
- Theatrical Trailer (1 Min) 

FROGS (1972)

Frogs is one of those films I caught on TV quite a bit in the early '80s but could just never get into at the time, an environmental horror film starring Sam Elliot sans his signature mustache, which was weird. Elliot is wildlife photographer Pickett Smith who is canoeing around the bayou snapping pics of wildlife and pollution when his canoe is overturned by the wake of a careless speed boater. The speed boat circles back around and pulls him from the water, inside are Clint (Adam Roarke) and his sister Karen (Joan Van Ark), whom invite him back to their island estate for some celebratory fun, as they're celebrating not just the 4th of July but the birthday of their wheelchair bound grandfather Jason Rocket (Ray Milland), a stubborn southern man. 

Soon after the creatures of the bayou seemingly begin to rise up against humanity, beginning with a deadly snakebite in the swamp.  In very short order the birds, rattlesnakes, tarantulas, alligators, snapping turtles and frogs are hunting the humans. The movie is a classic example of '70s slow-burn cinema from start to finish, deliberately paced with some decent tension and creepiness punctuated by a few death scenes involving swampy critters with an attitude.  

Sam Elliot's Pickett Smith is the voice of reason among the humans, but for the most part his warnings to vacate the island fall on deaf ears, particularly the patriarch Jason Crockett who is one grade a stubborn son of a bitch. The kills sequences are fun with some cool shots of frogs gathering in great numbers outside the family mansion, which is sort of creepy but only to a point. There are venomous snakes hanging from trees, and a pretty cool scene of tarantulas descending from the mossy canopy onto a victim who has immobilized himself with a shotgun blast to the leg, while it's not quite up to par with that one scene in Lucio Fulci's The Beyond is is creepy. 

I just happen to enjoy a good slow-burn and creature features, but this one is pretty damn slow with most of the scenes of animals stalking their prey just clips of snakes or spiders spliced into a scene separate from the victim, which hurts it, but there's no denying the building sense of dread and creepiness of this one, but it never quite pans out in the end. While I didn't care for it much as a youth it has grown on me quite a bit, but I can see how many would rather watch paint dry, it's slow. 

The disc from Scream Factory looks good, a definite step up over the MGM DVD from a few years back with improved depth and clarity, skin tones are accurate, but some compression issues take away from the overall score, not too shabby, but not a stunner. The English LPCM 2.0 audio  is clean and well-balanced, again not a stunner, but probably true to the source material and free of distortion, optional English subtitles are provided. 

Special features include a 10-minute interview with star Joan Van Ark who is candid about the film, her love of the director and he obvious pleasure of working alongside Sam Elliot. Funnily she mentions that she is often mistaken for co star Lynn Borden, and is often presented photos of Borden to sign. Other extras include a trailer, a radio spot and a photo gallery. 

Special Features
- New Interview With Actress Joan Van Ark (10 Mins) 
- Radio Spot (1 Min) 
- Photo Gallery (3 Mins) 
- Theatrical Trailer (2 Mins) 

I am loving these Scream Factory double features which seem to be carrying on the b-movie tradition of the classic MGM Midnite Movies double-features, they're not all golden nuggets of cult-cinema but they are certainly entertaining slices of b-movie cinema and I am happy to see them being preserved in HD. The Food of the Gods is the clear winner of this double feature, director Bert I. Gordon mad quite a few entertaining movies and this is one of his best he made. Both films have decent PQ and we get some new interviews and an audio commentary on top of that, for the right price this is a fun double-feature of angry and over sized critters. *** 3/5

WITHOUT WARNING (1980)

WITHOUT WARNING (1980)

Label: Scream Factory

Region Code: A

Rating: R

Duration: 96 Minutes

Audio: DTS-HD Master Audio Mono

Video: 1080p Widescreen (1.85:1)

Director: Greydon Clark

Cast: Jack Palance, Tarah Nutter. Christopher Nelson, Cameron Mitchell, Neville Brand, Sue Ane Langhorn, Ralph Meeker, Larry Stortch

Teenagers Tom (David Caruso, Session 9), Greg (Christopher T. Nelson), Beth and Sandy (Tarah Nutter) head to a rural lake for some fun in the sun. Tom and Beth are the your standard-issue horny teens while Greg and Sandy are more virginal and innocent and the four pile into a shag carpeted Chevy van and drive into the wilderness.

Also in the area are father (Cameron Mitchell) and his son on a hunting trip and a troop of Cub Scouts and they're leader Larry Storch (of TV's F Troop) earning a few merit badges in the great outdoors. The hunters and the scouts all encounter something strange and deadly lurking in the woods, strange flying jellyfish creatures which latch onto victims and dig into their flesh with tentacles and mouthful of teeth. These tiny suckers aren't the only threat in the woods however, these frightful frisbees of death are merely the weapon of choice for an alien creature with a human blood lust.

Our teens stop for gas and encounter scary proprietor Jack (Jack Palance) who warns the teens to stay away from the lake but they just laugh it off. Horny teens never listen to warnings of doom but if they did what fun would that be? They arrive at the scenic water hole and take a dip before the couples split up to pursue their own interests . Of course, it's the horny teens who disappear  without a trace and the virgins are left to sleuth Scooby-Doo style what happened to their companions. Assuming their friends are off fornicating out in the woods they are quite horrified when they find their gooey corpses in a small shack along with the bodies of the scout leader and the hunters. Freaked out they scurry into town and into a bar where they try to tell warn the locals but the drunken townies just are not buying the story. here we have some fun appearances from veteran actors like Neville Brand (Eaten Alive) and the aforementioned Jack Palance. Then there's Sarge, a nutty 'Nam vet (Martin Landau) who suffers from post-traumatic stress and alien paranoia, and who who just  happens to be the only one who believes the teen's wild story. 

Without Warning is the just the kind of drive-in science fiction drive-in I just love to death. Relics from a bygone era of cinema that don't follow logic and are wrought with bad decision making. The cast of characters is fantastic, we have our teens Greg and Sandy who are just the sweetest teens you could ever imagine, they're so nice and polite, it's sort of disgusting. Both of the young ladies in the film cut quite a figure, very easy on the eyes, and while the teens are supposedly the main characters it's  veterans Jack Palance and Martin Landau who both chew the scenery and steal the movie from right from under them whipper snappers. Landau is particularly fun as the bug-eyed lunatic who believes that the teens and pretty much everyone else have been replaced by aliens, just a lot of fun and ridiculous paranoia. 

The low-budget special effects are a lot of fun, those blood-sucking alien jellyfish pulsate and excrete a yellow liquid that was gooey and gross. There's a scene where they latch onto a windshield which offers a close-up and you can see the teeth gnashing away on the underside, most of the effects are pretty dated but I love these latex creatures designs, very enjoyable. The predatory creature design is a thing of schlocky beauty, an elongated grey alien with a massive cranium and long creepy fingers. Perhaps not the most articulated design but very effective and only glimpsed for brief snatches. The reveal of the alien is quite effective, it's a bit of a shame it's spoiled on the artwork for the Blu-ray. . 

Blu-ray: Without Warning arrives on Blu-ray from Scream Factory in the original widescreen aspect ratio (1.85:1) and appears quite nice. Shot on the cheap it manages to look pretty spiffy with a nice grain structure and some good color saturation. The HD upgrade doesn't give the fine detail a massive bump but a very pleasing image. The source material is in pretty great shape considering this cult item has been hard to come by for years.. The English DTS-HD Mono is clean and well balanced, plus Dan Wyman's creepy score sounds great - there are English subtitles provided. 

Onto the extras we have a 21-minute interview with stars Actors Christopher S. Nelson and Tarah Nutter . Nelson remembers the experience fondly and of working with veterans Jack Palance and Martin Landau, Nutter remembers being cold a lot on set and the struggle to stay warm and being cast in the role. Both speak fondly of each other and director Graydon Clark and what it was like working on a small budget film. Nutter tells of destroying the shack in the field with the sheer volume of her scream, sure.  My favorite story from Nelson is a David Caruso story involving Palance threatening to punch him when he laughed during a scene, now that I would love to see!

Cinematographer Dean Cundey chimes in for about fifteen minutes about working with Greydon on four previous low budget films (Black Shampoo, Satan's Cheerleaders, Hi-Riders, Angels Brigade) and the ambitious low-budget production of Without Warning.  He warmly recollects working on the film just after finishing Halloween with John Carpenter despite being warned to stay away from exploitation films for the sake of his career and what a great experience it was.

There's also a brief six-minute interview with Special Make-Up Effects Creator Greg Cannom who speaks about creating the low-budget effects for the film while Co-Writer/Co-Producer Daniel Grodnik speaks about his career producing films which includes slasher classic Terror Train and the comedy Star Hops. Extras are buttoned-up with trailers and still gallery plus a reversible sleeve of artwork.    

Special Features: 

-  Audio Commentary with Producer/Director Greydon Clark
-  INDEPENDENTS DAY: Interview with Cinematographer Dean Cundey (15 minutes) 

- PRODUCERS VS ALIENS: Interview with Co-Writer/Co-Producer Daniel Grodnik (11 minutes) 

- HUNTER'S BLOOD: Interview with Special Make-Up Effects Creator Greg Cannom

(6 minutes) 
- GREG AND SANDY'S ALIEN ADVENTURE: Interview with Actors Christopher S. Nelson and Tarah Nutter  (21 minutes) 

- Original Theatrical Trailer (2 minutes)
- Still Gallery (4 minutes) 
- Scream Factory Trailers (5 minutes) 

Verdict: I love it when Scream Factory unearth these cult classics and spiff them up for the fans to enjoy. A few months ago they unearthed The Final Terror to Blu-ray and this is right up their with that one in my opinion - these would make a great double-feature. I love this weird slice of science fiction drive-in cinema with it's cast of oddball characters and low-budget charms, this is a fiendishly good time for cult film fans. It might not be a genuinely scary movie but it's certainly a fun relic of a bygone era with some nice atmosphere and alien creepiness.