- AKA “It Happened at Lakewood Manor”
- Directed by Robert Scheerer
- Written by Guerdon Trueblood
- Stars Robert Foxworth, Lynda Day George, Gerald Gordon, Bernie Casey
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 35 Minutes
- Watch it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3hG9zyAGhQ
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
This was relatively small stakes with one site and one small group of people at risk, but we got to know them well enough to care a bit when bad things happen. It’s made for TV from the 70s, so it’s pretty tame, but it moves along well enough to be entertaining. Or at least interesting.
Synopsis
We open on a construction crew and bulldozers working next to a resort. A man in a hole screams for help, and another man runs in to help. The first man is being swarmed by ants, but no one can hear him screaming. A bulldozer then accidentally buries both men alive, but nobody notices. Credits roll.
Gloria and Tony are talking about investments and real estate in the back of their car. He wants a single room at the hotel, but she’s strictly business.
Inside Lakeview Manor, Ethel Adams, who owns the place, talks about her 32-year-old parrot. Outside, Linda flirts with Richard, one of the employees. Construction foreman Mike asks Vince if he’s seen Frank, the worker who was buried. We zoom into the hole the men died in, and a bunch of ants crawl out of a pipe. Tony arrives and wants to talk to Ethel about buying the place, but she’s not interested. She’s lived here all her life and doesn’t want to move out.
Ethel’s daughter, Valerie, tells Tony he can’t talk to her now. Valerie chews out Mike about him and his “apes” coming inside to use the restrooms, but then the two sneak into the bathroom to kiss.
The men figure out that Frank and the other man are buried in the hole. Mike goes with Frank to the hospital, and the doctor says he’s been poisoned somehow. Was there something different in that hole? Were there any snakes? We cut back to ants amassing ominously in that pipe and also in the kitchen drain in the hotel.
Tony continues to flatter Gloria at the poolside, and we see that Linda and Richard are there, too.
Mike and Vince return from the hospital, and Peggy from the State Department of Health is there waiting for him. She’s there to investigate the death. Mike says that the pit was off-limits and the men shouldn’t have been in there at all. He looks for snakes in the hole, but there’s nothing but worms and ants. Vince gets bitten by ants, and they soon figure out the problem.
Meanwhile, a kid falls into a dumpster and is attacked by ants. The kid jumps into the pool, where Richard and Mike have to rescue him. Tony uses this opportunity to weasel his way into Ethel and Valerie’s meeting. He says he’ll follow the traditions and take good care of the place, but he really wants to tear it down and build a casino.
Mike gathers a sample of the ants to take to Frank’s doctor, while at the same time, the chef in the kitchen is attacked and killed by them. Peggy quarantines the hotel and says all the guests need to leave. She thinks it’s a virus, but Mike says it’s ants. For some reason, there are no ants in the kitchen now. Mr. White, the health services guy, puts ants from Mike’s jar in his hand, but nothing happens.
Still, Peggy takes the ants to a scientist. She goes to see a scientist who shows her a video about killer ants that sound a lot like what we’ve seen already.
Angry, Mike goes outside and tears up the dangerous hole with a bulldozer. He really only manages to stir up the ants even more, and they all head straight for the hotel. It takes entirely too long for him to figure out that he’s done exactly the wrong thing.
Tony and Gloria have sex in their room, and they don’t see all the ants surrounding their bed. Ethel calls to tell them they need to evacuate. He says he’s willing to stay and talk business. He leaves for a meeting, and the ants crawl all over Gloria.
The guests are all ready to leave, but Valerie soon sees that the grounds are swarming with ants so that no one can go outside. Mr. White goes outside to yell at Mike, but the ants quickly kill him.
Mike tells Vince to use the bulldozer to dig a trench around the place and fill it with water. Tony runs back to Gloria’s room, but she’s dead too. All the main characters are soon trapped on the second floor of the resort.
The fire chief arrives, and Peggy fills him in on the situation. The firemen set up a ladder truck to evacuate the people, but they’re idiots and don’t extend the ladder all the way. They raise Linda way up in the sky before she’s finally able to climb down. That was too dangerous, so the ladder truck left.
The Coast Guard sends a helicopter to airlift the people out. Scientist Tom talks to the fire chief about poisons and evolution. The copter lowers a basket for wheelchair-bound Ethel, and that almost goes badly as Richard falls onto the ant-surrounded roof. Vince rescues him using a bulldozer. The helicopter lands, and the wind spreads ants all over the spectators, so they have to leave, too.
The fire chief reports that they’re sending for special suits to get Mike, Valerie, and Tony out, but it’s going to take more time than they have. Mike rolls up some wallpaper into breathing tubes, and the three people inside sit perfectly still and just try to wait it out. The ants crawl all over them, but as long as they don’t move, the ants won’t bite them.
Tony flips out, panics, and starts smacking at them. He jumps out the window, trying to hit the pool– and misses. Ouch!
Soon, the men in suits cover the room with insecticide and bring Mike and Valerie outside.
Ethel is going to retire to Florida. Mike and Valerie are getting married. Richard and Linda might too, someday. The hotel is probably going to be condemned.
Commentary
This was a made-for-TV movie, and it’s full of familiar faces from the late 70s. There are some scenes where the actors are actually covered with ants and others where they’re just animated dots. The characters are all very generic “types,” so they aren’t that interesting.
I’m pretty sure that if you dug a shallow trench and poured a bunch of gas into it, it wouldn’t make a burning moat; it’d just soak into the sandy soil. Still, we see this trope in lots of movies.
It’s more of a disaster-style movie than a horror film, but it’s really pretty well done.