Editorials
‘Gnaw: Food of the Gods II’ Is B-Movie Perfection and Creature Feature Fun [Horrors Elsewhere]
The wrath of rats on film essentially began with 1959’s The Killer Shrews, but more unambiguous depictions first cropped up in the ‘70s. This included Bert I. Gordon’s 1976 adaptation of H. G. Wells’ 1904 book, The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth. Food of the Gods was financially successful by AIP’s standards, although critical opinion was by and large negative. Roger Ebert dished out a 1-star rating, and Gene Siskel called the film’s special effects “rotten” and the script “laughable.” Any small demand for a follow-up was only met when production began on an even schlockier sequel in 1988.
Damian Lee’s continuation has little to do with Wells’ book or Gordon’s film. In fact, the only enlarged critter to make it to the sequel is the rat. Completely shot in Ontario, Canada but set in New York based on a conspicuous license plate, Gnaw: Food of the Gods II primarily takes place at a university during winter. The campus, really York University in North York, Toronto, is under fire by animal rights activists. The main target is Edmund Delhurst (Colin Fox, Murder by Phone), a scientist who is misusing grant money to cure male pattern baldness rather than cancer, as he originally proposed. In place of a beard of evil, Delhurst’s furtive wickedness is denoted by his lousy toupée.
Meanwhile, the sequel’s main character, a spectacled and rather beefy Dr. Neil Hamilton (Paul Coufos), is strictly all about the plants. That is until he gets a call from a colleague, Dr. Travis (Jackie Burroughs, Willard). Her patient, a boy named Bobby (Sean Mitchell), is now 12 feet tall and swearing like a pirate after his parents okayed an experimental growth hormone. Travis then asks Hamilton to help her reverse the process. This is where the real trouble — and more importantly, the fun — starts.
The creature-feature element is underway once Dr. Hamilton’s hunt for Bobby’s antidote requires finding lab rats he is not so attached to; his beloved white rat Louise is off the table. The resident animal activists, led by Réal Andrews, catch wind of the experiment and break in one night, minus Hamilton’s double-agent girlfriend, Alex (Lisa Schrange, Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II). Their attempt to document and liberate only ends with someone’s face becoming a chew toy for a 20-pound rat, and all the voracious rodents escaping.
As is always the case in these kinds of films, a growing body count is not enough for the authorities to do anything other than look the other way or think of how their money will be affected. Dean White (David B. Nichols) is not about to jeopardize the unveiling of a new pool in several days, even if that means permitting some man-eating rats on his campus. He channels the mayor of Jaws and requests this matter be kept under the radar. Then there is the other ostensible human villain; the previously mentioned Dr. Delhurst is making good on his veiled threat when Dr. Hamilton refused to help him after the activists destroyed his own lab. Delhurst’s theft of Hamilton’s serum does not go unpunished in the film’s one scene of human body horror. In putrid fashion, Fox’s character is reduced to virtually nothing after succumbing to multiple tumors within a matter of minutes.
This film being set in college as well as made in the ‘80s, Gnaw naturally throws in sex to punch up the material. Coufos and Schrange’s lovemaking is awkward, and having Louise the white rat as a spectator to said session was a weird and suggestive choice. One of Hamilton’s groupies, a student named Mary Anne (Kimberly Dickson), is then involved in two lusty scenes. The first has her partner Carlos (Eduardo Castillo) getting more than a love bite on his rump after a nightly roll in the bushes. However, the strangest and most memorable of all these sequences has to be Dr. Hamilton’s serum-induced wet dream about Mary Anne. He suddenly grows in size — in more ways than one — during their bizarre encounter.
If Gnaw has anything going for it, it is the visual effects. Delhurst’s previously mentioned body meltdown is a gooey delight, accentuated with popping pustules and oozing orifices. Colin Fox delivers a campy and visceral performance as he deteriorates in real time. The tricks used to make the rats and Bobby appear big are convincing enough, although the prop for Bobby’s humongous hand at the end is as comical as it is rubbery. Giant rat models are brought in for those up close and personal attacks; limiting them to quick shots is for the best. And lastly, the inevitable massacre at the pool opening should have been the film’s pièce de résistance, but most of the action comes from the poolside humans panicking — a random man grabs a gun and starts firing into the crowd, completely missing the rats — rather than actually getting devoured by the jumbo vermin. Nevertheless, the scale work at the pool and in the subsequent extermination scene is solid, all things considered.
As positively junky and sleazy as Gnaw: Food of the Gods II is, it is also immensely fun. The dead-serious tone clashes with the film’s fundamentally preposterous nature, and the audience laughs when the actors themselves cannot. The story gets odder with every passing minute, and the overall execution is bewildering. Even after all the skewering, this sequel still manages to outdo the original in some respects. How it goes about doing so would never be accepted as “good” in critic circles, but among B-movie fans, Gnaw is a treasure trove of absurdity and mindless entertainment.
Horrors Elsewhere is a recurring column that spotlights a variety of movies from all around the globe, particularly those not from the United States. Fears may not be universal, but one thing is for sure — a scream is understood, always and everywhere.
Having grown up in a religious family, Christian movie night was something that happened a lot more often than I care to admit. However, back when I was a teenager, my parents showed up one night with an unusually cool-looking DVD of a movie that had been recommended to them by a church leader. Curious to see what new kind of evangelical propaganda my parents had rented this time, I proceeded to watch the film with them expecting a heavy-handed snoozefest.
To my surprise, I was a few minutes in when Denzel Washington proceeded to dismember a band of cannibal raiders when I realized that this was in fact a real movie. My mom was horrified by the flick’s extreme violence and dark subject matter, but I instantly became a fan of the Hughes Brothers’ faith-based 2010 thriller, The Book of Eli. And with the film’s atomic apocalypse having apparently taken place in 2024, I think this is the perfect time to dive into why this grim parable might also be entertaining for horror fans.
Originally penned by gaming journalist and The Walking Dead: The Game co-writer Gary Whitta, the spec script for The Book of Eli was already making waves back in 2007 when it appeared on the coveted Blacklist. It wasn’t long before Columbia and Warner Bros. snatched up the rights to the project, hiring From Hell directors Albert and Allen Hughes while also garnering attention from industry heavyweights like Denzel Washington and Gary Oldman.
After a series of revisions by Anthony Peckham meant to make the story more consumer-friendly, the picture was finally released in January of 2010, with the finished film following Denzel as a mysterious wanderer making his way across a post-apocalyptic America while protecting a sacred book. Along the way, he encounters a run-down settlement controlled by Bill Carnegie (Gary Oldman), a man desperate to get his hands on Eli’s book so he can motivate his underlings to expand his empire. Unwilling to let this power fall into the wrong hands, Eli embarks on a dangerous journey that will test the limits of his faith.
SO WHY IS IT WORTH WATCHING?
Judging by the film’s box-office success, mainstream audiences appear to have enjoyed the Hughes’ bleak vision of a future where everything went wrong, but critics were left divided by the flick’s trope-heavy narrative and unapologetic religious elements. And while I’ll be the first to admit that The Book of Eli isn’t particularly subtle or original, I appreciate the film’s earnest execution of familiar ideas.
For starters, I’d like to address the religious elephant in the room, as I understand the hesitation that some folks (myself included) might have about watching something that sounds like Christian propaganda. Faith does indeed play a huge part in the narrative here, but I’d argue that the film is more about the power of stories than a specific religion. The entire point of Oldman’s character is that he needs a unifying narrative that he can take advantage of in order to manipulate others, while Eli ultimately chooses to deliver his gift to a community of scholars. In fact, the movie even makes a point of placing the Bible in between equally culturally important books like the Torah and Quran, which I think is pretty poignant for a flick inspired by exploitation cinema.
Sure, the film has its fair share of logical inconsistencies (ranging from the extent of Eli’s Daredevil superpowers to his impossibly small Braille Bible), but I think the film more than makes up for these nitpicks with a genuine passion for classic post-apocalyptic cinema. Several critics accused the film of being a knockoff of superior productions, but I’d argue that both Whitta and the Hughes knowingly crafted a loving pastiche of genre influences like Mad Max and A Boy and His Dog.
Lastly, it’s no surprise that the cast here absolutely kicks ass. Denzel plays the title role of a stoic badass perfectly (going so far as to train with Bruce Lee’s protégée in order to perform his own stunts) while Oldman effortlessly assumes a surprisingly subdued yet incredibly intimidating persona. Even Mila Kunis is remarkably charming here, though I wish the script had taken the time to develop these secondary characters a little further. And hey, did I mention that Tom Waits is in this?
AND WHAT MAKES IT HORROR ADJACENT?
Denzel’s very first interaction with another human being in this movie results in a gory fight scene culminating in a face-off against a masked brute wielding a chainsaw (which he presumably uses to butcher travelers before eating them), so I think it’s safe to say that this dog-eat-dog vision of America will likely appeal to horror fans.
From diseased cannibals to hyper-violent motorcycle gangs roaming the wasteland, there’s plenty of disturbing R-rated material here – which is even more impressive when you remember that this story revolves around the bible. And while there are a few too many references to sexual assault for my taste, even if it does make sense in-universe, the flick does a great job of immersing you in this post-nuclear nightmare.
The excessively depressing color palette and obvious green screen effects may take some viewers out of the experience, but the beat-up and lived-in sets and costume design do their best to bring this dead world to life – which might just be the scariest part of the experience.
Ultimately, I believe your enjoyment of The Book of Eli will largely depend on how willing you are to overlook some ham-fisted biblical references in order to enjoy some brutal post-apocalyptic shenanigans. And while I can’t really blame folks who’d rather not deal with that, I think it would be a shame to miss out on a genuinely engaging thrill-ride because of one minor detail.
With that in mind, I’m incredibly curious to see what Whitta and the Hughes Brothers have planned for the upcoming prequel series starring John Boyega…
There’s no understating the importance of a balanced media diet, and since bloody and disgusting entertainment isn’t exclusive to the horror genre, we’ve come up with Horror Adjacent – a recurring column where we recommend non-horror movies that horror fans might enjoy.
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