"It's their party... you can die if you want to."
— Cover Blurb
Food of the Gods 2, better known by its video title (or Gnaw: Food of the Gods: Part 2 or simply Food of the Gods: Part 2) is...a very strange film.
Ostensibly, it's the sequel to Bert I. Gordon's 1976 (partial) movie adaptation of H. G. Wells' novel The Food of the Gods, although the movie's shooting title was simply Gnaw and the connection to Gordon's film was added later. Certainly, it has nothing to do with the events of the 70's film beyond the title. In that film, the titular "food" was a mysterious oatmeal-like glop that burbled up from the ground. Here, the "food" (and it's only called that once) is a greenish growth serum developed by a scientist.
Tropes used in this film:
- Anatomically Impossible Sex: Neil has a nightmare wherein he bangs female student Mary Anne after taking the growth formula. It... doesn't end well.
- Animal Testing: By both the ethical scientist (Neil) and the unethical one (Delhurst). Neil is using lab rats to try and find a means to reversing Bobby's gigantism; Delhurst, meanwhile, uses dogs and monkeys for what he claims is cancer research but is really just boneheaded attempts to find a cure for male-pattern baldness.
- Animal Wrongs Group: The entire thing is caused by Mark and his animal rights group trashing Neil's lab and accidentally releasing the giant rats.
- Artistic License – Biology: Some versions of the movie poster show rats baring ferocious canine teeth, which rats and other rodents don't actually have.
- Attack of the Town Festival: Not a town festival per se, but Hamelin is unveiling a new sports complex complete with a swimming pool paid for donors, and White doesn't want a little thing like giant rats to spoil the occasion. It takes a lot of arm-twisting and the death of Neil's friend Joshua to even get him to agree to let Weizel and his men provide security at the event.
- Badass Bystander: One guy tries to be this, grabbing a cop's dropped gun a one point, however he's untrained and panicking and ends up killing more of his own fellow innocent bystanders than rats. Weizel has to restrain him and take the gun away from him, giving him a good Dope Slap for good measure.
- Black Dude Dies First: Activist leader Mark is the first person killed by a giant rat.
- Body Horror: See I'm Melting! below.
- Bloodier and Gorier: It's definitely a lot gorier than the previous film.
- Chekhov's Skill: Neil's ability to summon his pet rat by playing a flute, which comes in handy at the end of the film.
- Danger Takes a Backseat: One of the rats hides in the backseat of some poor schmoe's car.
- Dean Bitterman: Dean White is a jerk just to be a jerk, it seems.
- Dirty Coward: During the attack on the pool, White tries to use Mary Anne as a Human Shield to protect himself from a rat. Then he shoves her at the rat as a Delicious Distraction. It fails.
- Dodgy Toupee: Delhurst wears one.
- Dope Slap: Weizel is fond of these. He mimes giving one to White behind the Dean's back to illustrate just how fed up with the guy, and later, he delivers a truly epic one to the attempted Badass Bystander who steals a cop's gun and starts blasting away randomly, hitting more people than rats.
- Dream Sequence: Neil has a nightmare in which he grows gigantic while banging Mary Anne.
- Eccentric Exterminator: The two Rat-A-Tak guys. Louis is a belching slob who slacks off and watches TV inside their pest control van, while Jacques is a cigar-chomping psycho who hunts rats with flamethrowers and laments that Americans don't take pride in their work anymore.
- Enfant Terrible: Giant kid Bobby insults and belittles his doctor before finally snapping her neck at the end of the film.
- Forgotten Fallen Friend: Jacques never thinks to ask what happened to his buddy Louis...
- Gone Horribly Right: The use of the growth formula to treat Bobby's hormone deficiency leads to him continuously growing as well developing a psychotic aggression, to the point at the end he kills his doctor and escapes.
- Human Shield: Dirty Coward Dean White tries to use Mary Anne as a human shield during the rats' attack at the pool. It doesn't work, fortunately for her.
- I'm Melting!: Edmond Delhurst's grisly fate by melting into a puddle of dog cancer, Street Trash style.
- Improvised Weapon: While being attacked in the library, Delhurst's assistant Brett makes a valiant attempt to defend himself with a hardcover copy of George Orwell's Animal Farm.
- In Name Only: It really has nothing to do with the Bert I. Gordon film (or Wells' novel, for that matter).
- Karma Houdini: Dean White. He has the least grisly death out of all of the characters - if he even died from that puny fall - despite being arguably the most deserving one.
- Leit Motif: The exterminators have a really awesome late-80's synthesizer theme when they first appear. It's later used when Jacques is out hunting the rats.
- Mad Scientist: Edmond Delhurst is a milder variety. Mostly he's just a greedy Jerkass.
- Naked People Are Funny: Carlos. After getting bitten on the ass by one of the giant rats while he's going to the bathroom, he runs around shrieking with his pants down around his ankles and his rear end bleeding. Until he runs out into traffic and promptly gets hit.
- No Ending: Bobby kills Dr. Travis, escapes and....roll credits.
- Obstructive Bureaucrat: Dean White, who really does not want anything to jeopardize the opening of the college's new sports complex.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: Lieutenant Weizel. Unfortunately, his hands are (somehow) tied and he has to kowtow to White.
- Rodents of Unusual Size: Given that it's a Food of the Gods movie, this is pretty much a given. Giant rats terrorize a college campus.
- Sequel Hook: The rats are taken care of, but Bobby has grown even bigger and killed his doctor before escaping.
- Sex Equals Death: Carlos gets killed pretty much right after having sex with Mary Anne.
- Shout-Out: The university is called Hamelin College, a reference to The Pied Piper of Hamelin. There are also a few scenes using the tune Three Blind Mice to lure rats, one on a flute, another Pied Piper reference.
- Too Dumb to Live: Al and Angie descend into the sewers aiming to kill the giant rats... armed with a tennis racket and a butterfly net.
- Touch of the Monster: On one version of the VHS cover, the giant rat appears to be copping a feel of the dead woman's butt.
- Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Neil's reaction to finding the melted Delhurst.
- Waving Signs Around: The activists at the beginning do a lot of this.
