‘King of the Ants’
The Asylum, 2003

starring: Chris McKenna, Kari Wuher, George Wendt and Daniel Baldwin
directed by: Stuart Gordon

the plot: Sean Crawley (McKenna) is a down-on-his-luck housepainter with no real future until he meets Duke (Wendt) a surly electrician. Duke introduces Sean to Ray Matthews (Baldwin), a slimy contractor who may be the target of an investigation by a crusading accountant at city hall. At first, Sean is hired to follow the accountant and put a scare into him. During his surveillance, Sean falls for the accountant’s beautiful wife (Wuher). But soon, Matthews drunkenly asks Sean to kill the man. Sean, sensing a big payoff, agrees. But after the deed is done, Matthews reneges on his promise and tells Sean to disappear. Sean sticks around, and so Matthews and Duke brutally torture him. But Sean escapes, and, with help from the wife of the man he killed, Sean returns to seek revenge on his assailants.

why it’s good: “King of the Ants” is a bit of a red herring. The box art, depicting a faceless man covered in ants, seems to promise a plethora of gory supernatural delights, much like “Re-Animator” and other previous Gordon films. However, the only ants in the film show up in a brief sequence at a zoo during a confrontation between Duke and Sean, and there is precious little supernatural mayhem going on. Instead, Gordon gives us a competent, somewhat disturbing crime drama, one that straddles the line between outright horror and the campy revenge flicks of the ’70s. While the film’s climax is a bloodbath, the disturbing parts are the scenes of torture Sean endures during the middle of the film. Repeatedly whacked in the head every day with a golf club (the character Matthews hopes to give Sean severe brain damage), Sean becomes physically and mentally deformed. The torture is bad, but the hallucinations Sean experiences are worse and, in some cases, exponentially gross. The film has a very low-budget feel, which works in its favor, and McKenna gives a decent performance.

why you should own it: This is a rental for all but the staunchest of Gordon fans. The DVD edition of “Ants” features commentary from Gordon and McKenna, as well as a making-of featurette and the film’s trailer.