Sunday, October 07, 2007

King of the Ants

(2003) **
Why am I even bothering? Barely a horror movie and having pretty much nothing to do with ants, King of the Ants is my first true dud of the Horrorthon. Sean Crawley (Hah, I just got it – Nope, this movie’s still lame.) is a man with no prospects who gets contracted by some shady real estate developers to kill a Los Angeles city accountant. When his employers won’t pay him, he attempts to blackmail the money out of them. His plan backfires and they spend weeks whacking him across the head with a golf club in an empty shed outside of one of their construction sites. He escapes by faking brain damage, and through a series of non-sequiturs winds up shacking up with the wife (Kari Wuhrer) of the man he killed. He bides his time and then unleashes an unspectacular revenge plot.

The cast is a list of “oh yeah, that guy”s, headlined, so to speak, by the crappy Baldwin brother. No, not Billy – the other guy. The one that looks like the scrapped, clunky, early design of what later turned out to be Alec.
That there were no stars carrying the cast is irrelevant --- King of the Ants isn’t really deserving of stars.
It attempted, at various awkward moments, plot contrivances of which it was also undeserving. The one that stuck out the most for me occurs while Sean is shacking up with Kari Wuhrer. She weeps as she tells him memories of her fallen husband. “It’s not your fault,” Sean repeats consolingly. It’s a moment of genuine and bitter irony, a moment which would have been far better suited to a less stupid movie. This movie is the really chubby dude with the flabby arms, flexing in front of a mirror saying, “Oh yeah! Look at these fucking guns, baby!”

I’d recommend this film for the following people:

-Those who want to see Kari Wuhrer naked – there’s a number of scenes in which she bares her tits and a couple extended sex scenes where you can see some ass-to-hips going on.

-People who like full-frontal male shots. We see Sean’s dong once, maybe twice (I’m not going back to check) and we see his butt plenty of times. I suppose I should be grateful that we never had to see co-“star” George Wendt’s penis, but I’m not forking over another star just for that. That’d be like getting throttled by someone and then thanking them for saving your life when they stop.

-Stupid people

-Annoying people

-The three guys who were going to beat me up when I was in 8th grade because I kept forgetting to make a dub tape of Boogie Down Productions for one of them.

9 comments:

Octopunk said...

Under normal circumstances I'd be miffed that Marc beat me to the punch seeing a movie with Kari Wuhrer in it, but his description of this flick was so bad I took it off my upcoming Netflix goodies. (Yes, despite the nudity.)

Does it even deserve the two stars, dude?

50PageMcGee said...

Eh, the torture stuff isn't bad. Also his revenge scenes are okay. Can you really blow up a house by leaving the gas stove on for 5 minutes, though?

DKC said...

No offense to the men in the audience, but I have never found male frontal shots to be all that. Certainly not a reason to see a movie anyway - ladies, care to weigh in?

AC said...

I agree with DCD. I don't object to male full frontal but it doesn't bring me running (nor earn stars per se). 28 Days Later has Cillian Murphy fully nude (front and back) which adds to the realism but is not erotic, and it's not intended to be.

50PageMcGee said...

perhaps, dcd and ac, but when i wrote that, i was not thinking of the female audience but rather of the guy that introduced me to Octo. he's acutely aware of pretty much any movie in which a guy shows his wee wee. Fisher King? seen it. Rumble Fish? seen it.

DKC said...

I was more thinking of it in the lines of, well, guys seem to get kind of psyched if there are boob, etc shots of females in movies *cough-jpx-cough*. I don't think it adds the same level of excitement for women. Maybe I'm just not watching the right movies!

miko564 said...

I don't know if I buy it DCD, my wife has never been a fan of the historical "epics", but somehow always has time in her day to watch Troy when it appears on HBO. Since the movie sucked, I can only surmise the Brad Pitt "removing his armor" scene is the big draw......'course that's more butt rather than "sword" being shown.

AC said...

umm... Miko564, do you happen to know if that scene is anywhere on youtube? :)

i must admit, i would go so far as to check youtube to see a clip of Brad Pitt's naked ass, but not so far as to watch a whole bad movie to see Brad's naked ass (unless we start an epicthon).

BTW, does anyone remember the scene in the Iliad in which Achilles "removes his armor"? am i forgetting something (quite possible), or did the geniuses behind "Troy" assume that one of the greatest epic tales of all time needed Brad Pitt's nude butt to sell tickets?

DKC said...

I'm totally there for Brad Pitt's butt!

Malevolent

 2018  ***1/2 It's 1986 for some reason, and a team of paranormal investigators are making a big name for themselves all over Scotland. ...