Conference bookie::movies

274.0. "Gnaw: Food of the Gods II" by DSSDEV::RUST () Wed Jul 28 1993 00:16

    It's seldom that Hollywood turns out a sequel that even remotely
    approaches its predecessor in quality, and even more seldom that the
    sequel eclipses its progenitor. But I recently saw such a rarity, and
    wanted to share it lest you may have missed it somehow.
    
    I speak of "Gnaw: Food of the Gods II". Now, "Food of the Gods" was an
    eminently forgettable "giant creatures attack humanity" movie, with (I
    dimly recall) Marjoe Gortner and a cast of almost-as-famous people and
    sundry unhappy-looking blue-screen shots of animals chasing each other
    around the landscape. The prospects for "Gnaw" were not good. Yet, by
    some good fortune, I stayed tuned long enough to realize that "Gnaw" is
    light-years beyond "Food", and well worth a little attention.
    
    First, it has a startling complexity of plot for its genre. The
    opening sequence pits a band of youthful animal-rights activists
    against scientists at a university. The activists break in to the labs,
    and are appropriately stunned by what they find there; they take
    pictures and wreak havoc, thereby upsetting the work of the
    university's top man, who's been working for years on - a cure for
    cancer? Well, that's what he's _supposed_ to be working on, but he's
    really researching baldness cures.
    
    Meanwhile, down the hall, the good-guy scientist has been asked to take
    on a special project - to discover a cure for a young boy who had been
    given a dose of a growth hormone in an attempt to fix <something or
    other>, and who is now very tall and surly, and growing taller and
    surlier by the day. Our hero agrees, although he points out that up
    until now he's only been working on finding the key to growth in
    vegetables - he *hates* doing experiments on animals. But with a human
    life at stake he is persuaded to try his experimental compound on *one*
    rat...
    
    It should not be difficult for fans of the genre to guess what happens
    next. But "Gnaw" doesn't lean on the old traditions. Yes, the rat gets
    huge - we all knew it would. But a cageful of unused test rats gets
    itself a little too close to a "huged" tomato, and all of those rats
    get huge, too. And as if that weren't enough, who should break in to
    the good guy's lab that night but the animal-rights activists! Yes!
    (And can anyone guess what the giant rats do to them? Right!)
    
    The rats and a few of the activists escape, in opposite directions,
    leaving the tattered shreds of one activist lying - no longer active -
    on the lab floor, seeping blood in between the tiles. Next day the dean
    (who patterns his performance on the mayor of Amityville in "Jaws")
    says, "We can't close down the campus, we're having a fund raiser next
    week! I'll just call in a rat-killer to take care of that one giant rat
    (the good guys don't know about the tomato-fed rats yet), and we'll all
    keep it out of the papers."
    
    Enter, the rat-catcher: doing a splendid homage to Clint Eastwood,
    complete with stubble, snarl, and cigar. Off he goes into the tunnels,
    with his flame-thrower set on "toast".
    
    The typical giant-animals-run-amok theme plays on for a while here, but
    its traditional stylings are counterpointed by the recurring theme of
    the giant boy, and an occasional interlude of sex between the good-guy
    scientist and his girlfriend (a surreal edge is added here by the
    presence of the scientist's pet white rat, who scurries along the edge
    of the bed frame as the couple reaches climax; the audience deduces
    that the she-rat is jealous). 
    
    A few more shredded people later, and the rat-catcher surfaces in the
    library with a charcoal-broiled giant rat. "Success!" exclaims the
    dean, and pronounces the fund-raiser on. Our hero and his trusty
    assistant, trusty girlfriend, trusty graduate-student-with-a-crush-
    on-him, and trusty rat, know better; they've found out about the
    tomatoes. "How do we find the rats?" they ponder. "Hmmm... female rats
    in heat can scent male rats *miles* away. What if we 'huge' a female
    rat in heat, put a radio collar on her, and follow her to the male
    rats?" Great idea, says the good guy, "but not _my_ rat". <Heavy chords
    from the score are not needed to tell us that, somehow, his rat is
    going to get huged.>
    
    While the climactic events of the film are not atypical of the genre,
    they are handled here with a ticklesome whimsy that I really
    appreciated. I won't go into further detail - much of the grand finale
    simply _must_ be seen, not recounted - but I will say that the giant
    rat attack on the synchronized-swimming competition was a truly
    ground-breaking scene. Don't miss it.
    
    -b

    Is this available on video?
    
    Dale

    I saw Food Of The Gods at a drive-in many years ago, I really enjoyed
    it, however I can't say that I share your quite enthralled opinion, I
    was more or less bored by what seemed to me a pale shadow of a sequel.
    (And I LIKE gore movies, generally....) Maybe it was because it just
    didn't 'feel' the same.....
    
    MBH

    Once again, I feel compelled to point out to all members of this
    conference that Beth Rust is a truly warped individual; please read
    her reviews with that in mind.  Thank you.
    
    NAZZ

    
    	Yes, it is available on video.
    
    							GTI