When one thinks of the works of the late Stuart Gordon, certain imagery likely comes to mind. Jeffrey Combs, tentacled eldritch beasts, oozing gooey gore, B-movie seams deftly molded into rollicking entertainment: from Re-Animator to The Pit and the Pendulum to Castle Freak, the director’s memorable oeuvre is one dominated by the macabre, the unnatural and the outlandish. By contrast his final films – the warped true crime survival of Stuck, the psycho character study of Edmond, the nihilistic revenge tale of King of the Ants – are so intriguing in their stylistically divergence from his most famous works.
King of the Ants actually holds another honor by being one of the earliest Asylum productions. Known today for ultra-cheap “mockbusters” such as Transmorphers, Atlantic Rim, and Snakes on a Train, Gordon’s film is nothing like the company’s expected bread and butter. Instead he delivers a disturbing crime thriller soaked in vile morality and psychotic griminess, so much so that the closest tonal comparisons would be the likes of South Korea revenge movies or New French Extremity. That’s no small feat for such seemingly numbing generic genre fare.
Sean (Chris McKenna) scrapes a living by painting houses in Los Angeles, until he crosses paths with shady real estate developer Ray and is offered a more lucrative opportunity. Hired to spy on the investigator looking into Ray’s dealing, it’s not long till drunken ramblings lead to Sean’s duties being upgraded from spying to murder. So far, just a quaint low-budget crime film hampered by a bland wet blanket of a protagonist, even if McKenna does what he can with a script that positions him as the most gullible idiot to ever step foot into a thriller.
But Gordon has more devious plot turns in mind for his characters, as stashed evidence and rattled crooks turn McKenna’s fall guy into a liability. What starts as a fairly routine story of sleazy bastards and snakes plunges into a sickening onslaught of skull-deforming torture and mad feces-monster nightmares that could only come from the mind behind From Beyond. Not many movies would embrace the horrifying logic of destroying a man’s memory of incriminating evidence as the next thing to recovering said evidence, but this one immerses us in every grotesque, grueling detail. The second half of King of the Ants is an escalating spiral through worse consequences and grislier fates, where twisted irony leads Sean to collide with the investigator’s widow, and this web of lives only collapses further into brutal vengeance. Sledgehammered spines, sawed off heads, and pierced hearts, oh my; the director imbues this unassuming slice of crime clichés with a black-hearted savagery that leaves only victims and corpses in its wake.
Among Gordon’s late-career films, none are as pitch-black cruel and as gleefully morally twisted as King of the Ants. A familiar crime story of lowlifes, scumbags and unfortunate innocents, realized via a minute budget but overloaded with nihilistic venom. Fans of Re-Animator or From Beyond might do a double-take when seeing Stuart Gordon as the director of such a gritty, dark and just plain nasty thriller, but it’s certainly a testament to the man’s versatile filmmaking craft.
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