ANTS! (1977)
There's something to be said about the Made For TV Movie (or "telefilm", if you're Canadian or an asshole). Before cable came around, this was the networks' way of getting parents and their children together around the teevee for two hours after dinner for some quality family time. While digesting mom's meatloaf surprise, we all learned some valuable lessons about proper road etiquette (DUEL), toilet plunger rape (BORN INNOCENT), child prostitution (DAWN: PORTRAIT OF A TEENAGE RUNAWAY), and how playing football can totally give you cancer (BRIAN'S SONG). While the production values were never the best, the Made For TV Movie was always dependable in it's ability to deliver an engrossing story directed by a seasoned pro filled with a who's who of up and comers and television veterans.
One of the best lessons learned in the 1970s was that we're seriously fucking up the planet with over development, air and water pollution, soil contamination, and industrialization. And with this fuck up comes our worst nightmare...retribution! Oh yes, my friend, Mother Nature does not take kindly to being fucked with.
Which brings me to IT HAPPENED AT LAKEWOOD MANOR...or as the no-nonsense Filipino people call it, ANTS! Like most of the disaster / man vs. nature films of the 70s, we have a fairly large cast of familiar archetypes that usually turn up in pairs. First up, we have Mike, the blue collar hero and his fiancee, Val (a post DAY OF THE ANIMALS Lynda Day George). Mike comes across as a more butch Mr. Brady with his scruffy beard and head of sandy curls...he's obviously the one character we can depend on to get whoever survives this mess to safety. Val's just kind of there for Mike to save...oh, her wheelchair bound mom owns Lakewood Manor and that's kind of a big deal...or whatever.
There's Tony, the 1st rate asshole, and his beautiful and smart female assistant, Gloria (a pre-THREE'S COMPANY Suzanne Somers). Tony plans on buying the Manor to create a "Las Vegas of tomorrow" since the Las Vegas of today isn't so cool now that Dino's too busy with his TV show and Peter Lawford split to LA to make WON TON TON, THE DOG WHO SAVED HOLLYWOOD. Gloria plans on being treated as Tony's equal in this business we call plastics...but Tony and I both know that she's just a girl and girls don't know shit about semisynthetic polymerization products.
There's Richard, the lifeguard, and his love interest, Linda (who's allergic to heights...dum,dum, dum!), Vince (Yaphet Koto-lite actor, Bernie Casey), as Mike's right hand black man, some woman and her meddlesome son, a Hispanic cook, Brian Dennehey as a shouty, sweaty fire chief, and a whole slew of vacationers...oh, and then there's millions of killer ants!
It seems the construction around the Manor has disturbed a giant colony of ants...they're not giant but what they lack in size they make up for in sheer numbers. Right off the bat, a couple of construction workers get all "ants in the pants" and things start heating up at Lakewood. Not an hour later, a young boy is viciously attacked by our eusocial insects while dumpster diving for recyclable bottles (this is a great scene that only could have been done in the 70s...it's almost reminiscent of the Phan Thi Kim Phuc photo, but without all the total downer feelings). You know, we don't have enough children in peril on teevee anymore...but that's just my opinion. Anyway, the bodies are rushed to the hospital to try and figure out just what in the Hell is going on at the resort. One of the men seems to have some sort of neural damage and the boy (who lives...BOOOO!) is covered in a mysterious rash. The doctor figures maybe some sort of virus or chemical leak is to blame, but Mike isn't so sure. To make matters worse, the Manor's cook becomes the next victim in the ants deadly rampage, prompting the Health Department to swoop in and start causing all sorts of egg-headed problems and generally getting in Mike's way.
Mike and Vince do some investigating and pretty much rule out the whole virus idea, but they just don't know what could be killing the folks at the Manor...but they do know that something is "...mad because we disturbed it!" As any red blooded macho type would do in this type of situation, Mike hops on a bulldozer and tears up the Lakewood grounds, which seriously pisses off the killer ant colony. With the ants on the move towards the Manor, the Board of Health geniuses decide it's time for the guests to evacuate! Mike rushes in to save his gal and her paraplegic mother and ends up trapped inside the Manor along with our other major players in this melodrama. Oblivious to all the ant-icts (get, it?), Tony and Gloria have been in a high powered meeting in Tony's bed. It seems Gloria has really made her point about being taken seriously as businesswoman by getting all P to V with the T-Man...but I digress...Tony goes downstairs to check out what gives with all the commotion allowing Gloria to become the next body in need of a toe tag courtesy of the ants.
With the shit hitting the fan in full force, one of the Board of Health employees heads back to the home office to consult with their resident ant scientist. He spouts all sorts of nerdy stuff about Africa, pesticides, mandibles, and how the ants have found a way to use our own poisons against us and then shows some really cool insect snuff footage to convince everyone that the ants are some sort of menace. Finally, the cops, coast guard, EMTs, and the fire department converge on the Manor and it's prisoners to save the day. Of course this doesn't work out so well and it's up to Mike and his not so intrepid people to figure their own way out of the ant besieged building. Here's where the movie turns into a typical Irwin Allen type production...Tony keeps up his dickishness, with the whole "save me first routine", Mike is coolheaded in his role of keeping everyone alive at all costs, Richard does his best to keep up with Mike, and the remaining women just hang around and act like women usually do in a 70s disaster situation.
We have a few botched rescue attempts, a moat of fire, helicopters blowing ants all over the rubberneckers, Brian Dennehey smoking, and a black man finally turning a fire hose on a crowd of white folks during the finale. It gets pretty hectic in the last act...and I have to admit, I got a little squirmy when Mike, Tony, and Val had to make breathing tubes out of wallpaper scraps so as not to breathe on the thousands of ants that swarmed over their bodies. That's right, their only chance of survival was to lay perfectly still until the hazmat suited exterminators made it through the moat of fire, across the pulsating hoard of ants, and up to the top floor of the Manor where our survivors were trapped!
Did they make it? Is there still time for Tony to make one more bullshit move to save himself? Will Mike and Val ever get out of this mess so they can finally be wed? Will the killer ant colony be destroyed? Why wasn't there a wise old Indian like Iron Eyes Cody around? The answer to the first four questions is, "yes!" The last question is one for George Clutesi, I guess.
Moon Boy
TARANTULAS:THE DEADLY CARGO
Alan Landsberg Productions and writer Guerdon Trueblood strike gain with more creepy crawly TV terror with TARANTULAS: THE DEADLY CARGO. As with the Trueblood scripted THE SAVAGE BEES, the villain this time is another stowaway: the dreaded Wandering Spider of Ecuador, which oddly enough is pointed out in the film not to be a true tarantula. I believe this was several years ahead of the tarantulas being widely sold as pets in malls across America, so maybe to the completely uninformed they still held a little bit of menace to them.
After a bit of jazzy opening music we meet two bush pilot/smugglers played by Tom Atkins and Howard Hesseman whose big plan involves smuggling "black gold" also known as coffee beans. While the coffee is being loaded we notice a couple, maybe three taraantulas sneaking aboard. They also agree to carry some non-arachnid illegal immigrants so the spiders can bite somebody on the long plane ride. Hesseman's portrayal reminds me of the day's when "Miami Vice" would have guest stars like Glenn Frey or Jimmy Buffet come on and play parts like "rock'n roll bush pilot/smuggler". So the plane crash lands of course with several dead spider bitten corpses on board. Local Doc Pat Hingle at first thinks it some sort of illness and looks both curious and troubled at the same time. No nonsense volunteer fireman Claude Akins gives a lot of orders, rubbing the local sheriff the wrong way. And you gotta have a "Mayor Vaughn" type in the post JAWS world so this time it's a local orange distributor who is really in a hurry to get the oranges out and can't be bothered by mysterious deaths. For added melodrama there is an adulterous couple, one of which is the sheriff's wife, and an Autistic Kid's School. After the cheating wife is killed by a spider, the Doc figures out it's all spider related. But the local orange boss doesn't want a panic that would cause the delay of the orange delivery. It's vital the oranges get out by 8:00 a.m. To make it worse, the spider is identified as the aggressive, pesticide resistent Wandering Spider. A couple of deaths later, including the rare TV death of little Billy or whatever his name was and our heroes come to the conclusion that the spiders will all gather at the orange plant. It's established that they can't poison the spiders because the oranges have to be organic and also it would be too easy. The expert tell us that "fire will kill them, but you gotta find em first", which is tragically obvious even to dead Billy. Eventually, they come up with a plan to terrorize the spiders into paralysis with the amplified sounds of the buzzing of wasps which has gotta be one of the more needlessly complicated plans in the history of killer spider movies. The real problem with this kind of movie, and this goes for ANTS ( also written by Guerdon Trueblood) as well, is that really all that is required to escape danger is the ability to walk. On top of that, you could try stepping on the spiders. Buy the time we get to the big showdown there must be a couple hundred spiders, which means they were literally shoveling spiders into coffee bags at the beginning of the movie. That had to be just a little bit confusing for the Ecuadorians doing the loading, maybe they just assumed crazy gringos like spider in their coffee. There's just not really much of a menace here, at least with bees they can fly fairly quick, but tarantulas just creep around minding their own business. As the end credits roll, we get an orange montage sequence that reminds us all how much we like oranges. I suppose as far as animal attacks movie written by Guerdon Trueblood goes, this is the worst. Try THE SAVAGE BEES or it's sequel TERROR OUT OF THE SKY. THE SAVAGE BEES has the conclusion where the bees are convinced to attack a Volkswagon bug that is then driven into the Superdome where the bees are killed by air conditioning.