Das Kapital in the heart of darkness. The challenge is not just to keep audiences waiting close to an hour before the marauding insects are even mentioned, but to do so with easeful filming that sets the ripe punchline of a vengeful-Nature scenario that dissolves a system but saves a relationship. The mail-order bride (Eleanor Parker) arrives from New Orleans, Florida delivers a passable performance as her new, South American home; her husband (Charlton Heston) owns a plantation and makes a point of showing his displeasure. He tries to frighten her away with displays of jungle brutality, but she's a feisty belle and his anxieties are uncovered instead -- two rhyming scenes are key, the first finds Heston splashing Parker's neck with perfume before angrily kissing her decotellage, the second betrays a stubborn tenderness as he rubs bug repellent into her bare shoulders. The army of ants heading their way is unveiled with a high-angled long shot that sketches a red carpet stripping the verdant expanses; fellow pith-helmeted imperialist William Conrad dubs it with appropriate pulp poetry ("Forty square miles of agonizing death!"). Byron Haskin unites dollying and dissolves in a lucid analysis, both allusive (Heston as bronzed stallion, Parker as caged bird, womanly virtue as a piano) and straightforward (a close-up of a slumbering helper tilts down to show ants feasting on his lower half). There's a close link to Douglas' Them!, and also an anticipation of Buñuel's Death in the Garden; Verhoeven took it as part of the excoriating satire of Starship Troopers. With Abraham Sofaer.
--- Fernando F. Croce
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