I was shlepping The Stud all over on both
coasts, but I still needed a job. I got one. More than I bargained for, to say the least. Empire of the Ants, an
H. G. Wells classic (so they said), to be shot in Florida.
This was physically the most difficult picture I had ever done.
The Florida swamps in November are dirty, dark, and dank -- infested with crocodiles, rats, and other creepy crawlies too
unspeakable to think about. But we needed money, so off I trotted, along with Robert Lansing, Jacqueline Scott, Robert Pine,
John David Carson, Albert Salmi, and nine or ten six-foot plastic ants, the brainchildren of Mr. Bert I. Gordon, our director.
The story of a group of people trapped on a remote Florida island
infested by giant man-eating ants who stalk their hapless victims one by one and then devour them was not going to win any
of us Oscars. In fact it seemed more of a certainty that this film would guarantee none of us would ever get a job again
-- such was the quality of the story, script, and direction. As it eventually turned out, most of us went on to rather better
things: Bob Lansing to star opposite Elizabeth Taylor in The Little Foxes, Robert Pine to play a continuing role
in CHiPs. But, in November of 1976 we considered ourselves lucky to be working at all.
After a week of slogging through the swamps, sometimes knee-high
in slimy water and freezing weather, we were all thoroughly fed up. The only way we could go to the loo was if one of the
principal ladies (i.e. Jackie or me) insisted on it. A motorboat would whisk us from the swamps to the mainland, wait, then
whisk us back to where we were shooting again.
We became so irritated by this that with much coercing from
the cast -- who persuaded me that I make the demand since I was the so-called "star" of this epic -- we insisted on having
a portable loo on the huge open camera barge that was our headquarters while shooting. Several days later it arrived. And
there it sat in all its glory on the barge... no doors, no privacy. It caused much hilarity, and after a bit more yelling
and screaming by Jackie and me a makeshift curtain was encircled around it -- but we still preferred the speedboat ride back
to the mainland to using it.
One windy morning, the wind almost hurricane-like in its intensity,
I left the motel at 6 A.M. to go to the location. The door of the unit station wagon was held open for me by one of the many
teamsters we had on the crew, but he let it go as soon as I entered the car. The wind slammed the door shut onto my face with
hurricane ferocity. Blood gushed from my eye and I screamed for help, but no one could hear. My teamster friend had disappeared,
it was pitch-dark, and the wind was blowing at seventy miles per hour.
Eventually I wrestled open the door and staggered into the lobby
of the motel where some of the cast and crew were assembled. Someone screamed.
I was a sight straight from one of the more gruesome horror
movies I'd had the pleasure of starring in. Blood was pouring from a gash in my eyebrow. It had already become a bump the
size of an egg. How I wasn't killed or brain-damaged by the force of the door was a miracle. I was left with an unsightly
black-and-blue eye that took the makeup department half an hour to conceal. And they were unable to shoot on me other
than in extreme long shots for four days.
I was not thrilled to be told one day that since our stunt doubles
hadn't arrived from L.A., we were to do the canoe-capsizing stunt ourselves. I was horrified, in fact.
"We're putting the stunt people out of work," I expostulated
to the director, ever mindful of Gene Kelly's warning some years before.
Bert Gordon poo-poohed my fears, intimating I was a bad sport,
difficult, and uncooperative. Since the rest of the cast seemed resigned to their fate, I had no choice but to go along with
it or be called a first-class prima donna bitch and therefore lessen my chances of ever doing another horror flick for A.I.P.
again.
I took off my knee-high boots and threw them to the wardrobe
girl, safe on the security of the big barge. One or two crocodiles still lurked at the edge of the swamp in spite of the prop
men's having fired blanks from their rifles to frighten them away, and the crew's using them as target practice by aiming
their midmorning bagels at the sinister greenish-black hulks.
"Action!" yelled Bert. Two frogmen crouched under the raft,
pushed it over, completely capsizing it, and four petrified actors fell into the swamp. The water was absolutely disgusting,
foul green slime. It probably hadn't moved in two thousand years and it was thick and warmish. I tried to keep my head above
the loathsome liquid while acting convincingly terrified. I swam as fast as possible to the sanctuary of the camera barge.
Under the water my legs and feet became entangled in the submerged giant roots of a swamp plant. I thought of swamp snakes
and kicked with all my might, trying to untangle my legs from this moving mass of God knows what. I crawled onto the barge
like a beached whale, blood oozing from at least a dozen cuts on my legs and from the gash over my eye. I'd swallowed some
of the putrid water and felt definitely ill.
The makeup people immediately poured bottles and bottles of
pure distilled water over us, and produced eyedrops, eardrops, nosedrops, and throat spray, which they insisted we use immediately.
The motor launch arrived promptly to rush us to a nearby hotel; we were told to shower IMMEDIATELY when we got there. The
women were given douche kits by the nurse and instructed to use them. "That water is a major health hazard," said the nurse,
busily trying to patch up my legs as the launch carried us, wet and shaking, to safety. "You could get serious infections
from it. I told them not to let you all go in. They wouldn't listen."
Within two days the cuts on my legs started festering. Some
looked so bad I joked I was getting gangrene, but it wasn't fun. We still had three weeks of shooting left, like it or not.
Each day the wounds on my legs were dressed and bandaged. On
top of the bandages were tied brown plastic garbage bags, attached with camera tape, which was wrapped round and round my
legs until they looked mummified; and over these, the tan leather boots. I looked and felt like a wreck, convinced I was scarred
for life, and was never so delighted and relieved as when the last day of shooting arrived and it was finally my turn to be
asphyxiated by the giant queen ant. Six cast members had already gone to the big anthill in the sky; only four of us were
left.
We had miserably spent both Thanksgiving and Christmas in this
hellhole, and were desperate to get out and back to L.A. for New Year's Eve.
We were shooting in a sugar refinery in a tiny town in Florida.
The smell of the cane being melted was so strong and sickening that everyone wore masks the entire time we weren't actually
shooting.
By now I had been turned into a zombie "ant robot" by some forgettable
plot twist and was standing in line at the kiosk where the queen ant was to blow her magic breath on me so I would become
even more of a zombie and do her ant bidding. As I stood face to face with this ludicrous creature, Robert Lansing burst in
with guns blazing and a flare. The ant expired and fell on top of me, exuding lethal ant gas. How would Alexis have coped?
I have sometimes asked myself.
The sight of this grotesque papier-mache insect face and flaying
tentacle legs -- which were actually attached to moving sticks held by prop men -- was so hilarious that every time I had
to expire with the giant ant on top of me I burst into gales of giggles, which quickly subsided when Mr. Gordon said if I
didn't stop we wouldn't get out of Florida until January 2. Perish the thought!
And that, I am happy to say, was my last horror picture. At
least in terms of ants.
