Ants (1977)

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It Happened at Lakewood Manor (Robert Scheerer, 1977)

Picture it. Pittsburgh, 1977. I was over at a friend's house doing something or another. As I was walking out the door to go home, his parents were watching TV. I saw just a scene. It traumatized me. We're talking nightmares for weeks. I had no idea what it was. Fast-forward twenty years later, to the glory of the Internet and its many film geeks. I describe the scene on a forum, and presto-- someone comes up with the name of this movie. I worship. Fast-forward another eleven years, to last night-- yes, it took me that long to get my hands on a copy-- when I watched it. I was once again traumatized, but for very, very different reasons.

Ecohorror schlockmeister Guerdon Trueblood (Candy Snatchers) wrote the screenplay for this Robert Scheerer (The World's Greatest Athlete)-directed dog about mutant ants menacing a resort. Ethel Adams (Myrna Loy) has been running it for decades, with a helping hand from daughter Valerie (Lynda Day George) since infirmity forced her into a wheelchair. A shady developer (Bernie Casey) and his gorgeous assistant (Suzanne Somers, who gets top billing despite having relatively little screen time) want to buy the resort so said developer can put up a big, glitzy lakeside casino. Meanwhile, a nearby construction project (whose overseer, Mike [Robert Foxworth], is having an affair with Valerie) has disturbed, yes, a vast nest of mutant ants. And boy, are those ants mad. When the Department of Health gets involved, things get all kinds of fun.

Oh, Guerdon Trueblood, how I love thee. How long did it take you to bang this script out, an hour? Less? It's quite nicely summed up by one of the characters, inserted into the movie just so the ants will have another target, who says breathlessly to her new boyfriend, "and to think, this morning I didn't even know you." (Later that morning, however, they knew one another very, very well. Ah, the swingin' seventies.) the characters are far too thin to be cardboard. Onionskin, perhaps. The plot is about as solid as an acid-eaten piece of PVC pipe. The music (the only score to which Ken Richmond's name was ever attached, at least according to IMDB) comes straight out of the adult film industry. Can say one good thing about it: the ant special effects are about a thousand times better than those of more recent killer-ant CGI-fests on the Sci-Fi Channel. (I assume that real ants were used for most of the shots; amusingly, whatever they used to get the ants where they wanted them was painted in swirls, and so you see meandering rivers of ants wandering down, say, a hotel corridor. I kept wondering why everyone was so scared of a six-inch-wide trail of ants working its way down a six-foot-wide hallway. Why not just step around them?)

This is, truly, an awful movie in every respect, but I have to admit-- the kid-in-the-dumpster scene that gave me such nightmares when I was nine years old? Yeah. That still creeped me right the [censored for Amazon consumption] out. **
April 29, 2008

ants

this is an older movie but one that is worth watching if you like this type of show its fun to see the difference between the stars then and now March 29, 2008

"An Army like no Other!"

It is said in the scientific circles that if, for whatever reason, the insect species were to rise and attack us, we would have no hope of survival. Food for thought. Well in this well crafted thriller with an angle of Science Fiction, the day they speak of has come.
Our story opens at an aged, somewhat uncool and border line out of date Motel/Inn were a nearby construction site has disturbed a small patch of ground that is home to an enormous soldier ant nest. This particularly poisonous species lashes out with stealth, attacking through a broken sewer pipe and against a small boy in a dumpster. But with the attack of a broad shouldered construction worker who is literaly brought to his knees, things start to get serious.
Sometimes know as..."It happened at Lakewood Manour" This nature against man movie is one of the best, with good characters, a good build up in suspence. And an ending for the hero's of our story that will have anyone's skin crawling......Please enjoy. January 13, 2008

Bravo to Direct Source Video

At last a company that is dedicated to releasing pristine quality prints of exceptionally rare TV Movies of an era fondly remembered by viewers of the 1970s. Classic casts and interesting stories from the 'disaster' era.
Along with Ants you will also find Tarantulas: The Deadly Cargo (1977) with Claude Akins, Pat Hingle, Charles Frank, Bert Remsen, Howard Hesseman and Charles Siebert. And to complete the trilogy, Terror Out Of The Sky (1978) a sequel to The Savage Bees (1976) which starred Ben Johnson, Gretchen Corbett, James Best, Horst Bucholz and Michael Parks. Terror stars stalwart Efrem Zimbalist Jr, Tovah Feldshuh, Dan Haggerty, Ike Eisenmann and Lonny Chapman. Buy all three and you will not be disappointed! August 2, 2007

It ain't Shakespeare, or even Sci-Fi channel productions, but bought it for a dollar and so i'll give it a break

First off Suzanne Somers is in this one for about 5 min. total(most of it in a bed sheet) so don't think she's the star, Robert Foxworth is and as cheap horror movies for T.V. go(1977) this isn't that bad. You get what you pay for though(if you pay over 2.00 dollars ,you've payed too much) so sit back and watch ants wipe out a resort. April 2, 2007

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