Empire of the Ants

Director: Bert Gordon

1977 / 89min / 35mm

The final film in American International Pictures’ H.G. Wells cycle of the ’70s, based on the author’s 1905 short story of the same name, Gordon’s Florida-shot creature feature stars Joan Collins as a land developer whose scheme to foist off some worthless island property on a group of clients goes awry when they stumble across a colony of huge irradiated ants. The handmade special effects, overseen by Gordon personally, used process shots to put on-set actors in the same frame with close-ups of live ants.