Marabunta

A swarm of ants from South America decide to over run Alaska.

Cheesy and silly from start to end. Poor animation on the ants, to begin with. Sometimes you see some actual footage of about three or four real ants: scary. Attacks are the most contrived sequences you'll ever witness. One dummy climbs into a giant ant hill. Another guy fires a pistol at the ant hill. Some other clod tries to attack them with a tractor. Still another dimwit fires a rifle at the swarm as they try to surround her. Nobody ever seems to think of running away; the ants move at about 1/1000th the speed of a human.

One guy is in a truck driving in circles while fire bombs go off on either side of the truck, no matter where he is at any given moment. But I love the "Let's blow up the dam" sequence best. There's no reasonable explanation for why this would help, or any assurance that it would work. They just decide to blow up the dam. A helicopter picks up a guy after an 2-second earthquake knocks him off his feet, and he rolls down a hill to land atop some dynamite he just lit. And on it goes.

Good for a laugh at how stupid it all is.

I know it as "Terror of the Burley Pines" when shown here on Channel 5 in England. It comes across as very tongue-in-cheek (whether that is intentional I do not know) and is a good laugh at its b-movie style. If you have nothing better to do on a Saturday night then watch this.

Let's face it, in a made-for-TV movie like LEGION OF FIRE: KILLER ANTS! (aka: MARABUNTA), it's all about the ants. The humans are either those who seek to stop the onslaught, or the hapless victims of the tiny horde.

First off, the CGI ants are so poorly realized -even by late 1990's standards- that it's difficult to watch them, let alone take them seriously. Weren't there some real ones crawling around somewhere? Even a few live ants scattered here and there throughout the movie would have been better than these pitiful cartoons!

The humans aren't much better. Poor Mitch Peleggi. How did he wind up in this wretched nonsense?

SOME UNINTENTIONAL HUMOR TO HELP DULL THE PAIN: #1- The couple that decides it would be a nifty idea to get pictures of each other standing on an anthill the size of Devil's Tower! #2- The cartoon ants carrying away cartoon body parts! #3- The sheriff, standing atop his car, fending off the CGI bugs with a fire extinguisher! #4- While one of the heroes drives his truck over rough terrain, the two in the back of the vehicle bounce around in ways that would easily cause massive head trauma and grievous bodily injury! Miraculously, they're unscathed!

This is the sort of omni-schlock that makes ordinary schlock bow its head as it passes by...

If you read or have read many of my other reviews you will find I love bad films. A few days ago I was looking for a tape to record on. I pop a tape in and what do I find? A tape of Legion of Fire: Killer Ants! A lucky(?) find!

I just finished watching it. Man is it bad. The entomologist is an idiot. Anyone who knows insects should know that ants cannot swim. They need a twig/log/ground or some sort of bridge to cross a body of water. Our "hero" seems to forget this when they are on the bank of a river being attacked by ants. Hello? I'm overweight and even I could outrun these poor CGI ants.

Another problem I found was with the kid. Not him personally. Poor "Chad" has his name screwed up several times. He is called Scott, Jake, and maybe one or two other names in this film in addition to Chad. I found myself laughing my butt of at each of these goofs. Once it happens twice in one scene each time was a different name.

You do not want to see this. The acting is bad all around. The effects are incredibly bad.

0/10!!

A small town in Alaska is being threatened by a legion of killer ants, which by some particular reason go crazy every twelve year and just wants to kill everything and everyone in their path. The town is soon evacuated, but some slack people persist with staying put to battle it out with the ants.

This has got to be one of the stupidest film I have ever seen. Sure, it was made directly for TV, but that does not mean it can be as bad as "Legion of Fire: Killer Ants".

The characters we are supposed to care about are: a lame guy from LA, an irritating teacher, a tired sheriff and finally his son, who screams in horror almost the entire film. Perhaps he had realized what he had got himself into when he signed up for this movie. And the otherwise gifted actor Mitch Pileggi, who stars as the sheriff, really should try to find better projects to work on when he is not shooting X-files episodes.

The ants are just as unconvincing as the characters, if not even more. When the movie is over, you will be very tired of close-ups of poor computer made ants that climb over sticks and rocks.

The movie also contains a lot of incredibly stupid action scenes. For example: when the two heroes are trapped between two flocks of ants out in the wilderness, they don´t realize that all they have to do is take one step out in water next to them, and they would be safe. Perhaps they were too scared to remember that ants can´t swim. And one time the kid is trapped inside a school bus, and there are hundreds of ants on it. But when the heroes arrive a few seconds later, all the ants are gone. Why? Many scenes are unconsciously funny, like when the heroes escape from the ants on a motorcycle and she screams, "Hurry! Faster!", when they easily could have walked away from the little troublemakers. And when all the mess is finally over, you have not seen a single ant been trampled to death, which probably would have been the easiest way to finish the little creatures off. Just jump on them, for Christ´s sake!

I could go on and on, but I think I will stop here. "Legions of Fire: Killer Ants" is a horror movie you will be laughing out loud to, which indeed also can be nice sometimes.

* out of * * * * *