Beau Bridges

With its gargantuan dancing ducks and toga-wearing teens, Village of the Giants reputation as the kookiest teen movie of the 1960s should come as a surprise to absolutely no one.  That it’s based on renowned science fiction author H.G. Wells’ novel The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth only makes the whole thing all the kookier.  Gordon took another crack at the material in 1976 with AIP’s Food of the Gods, a boiled-down adaptation of only the first part of the author’s larger work.  Although the director tended to stay in his lane as a maker of giant creature nonsense, by that time, he and every other genre filmmaker were preoccupied with ripping off Jaws and upping whatever exploitation ante that they could.  Village of the Giants, for all its massive shortcomings, still manages to stand tall as the go-to go-go sci-fi feature of its bright day… hailing from a time just before the world had reason to freak out over bigger problems.