Watch All The Movies, Part 4: Ants

This week's feature is "Ants", a 70s movie-of-the-week:

It had that feel when it started up...the music (that SEVENTIES OMINOUS SYNTH haunts me from my childhood. I'm not kidding about that. There was a movie I saw when I was a kid about mind-controlled people that I thought starred Michael York but now I can't track down; anyway, it was freaky as hell and had THAT SEVENTIES SYNTH. ...Wait, where was I? Right...the music), sure, but also Suzanne Somers, who I don't think I've ever seen outside of televsion. It's also got Brian Dennehy, Myrna Loy (!) and Brian Casey, a character actor I recognize from about a thousand different angry-figure-of-authority roles.

The movie leads off with a hard-working construction worker, working on an expansion to a century-old resort hotel, getting attacked by ants that are drunk on industrial-strength pesticides. ("Modern poisons are so complicated," sighs a lab worker.)Then there's the hitchiker sleeping rough on a nearby beach, who convinces the blond, muscled lifeguard to let her grab a quick shower. Then there's the hotel owner who doesn't want to sell the hotel, being pursued by the greedy developer who wants to knock the place down to build a casino. Then there's the uppity hotel manager who likes rough trade with the bearded construction foreman, who in turn is trying to figure out why his employee died. Then the super-ants come back, attacking a tow-headed kid who's collecting bottles for the money, because he needs to take care of his divorced mom; they jump him in a dumpster (no, really). I think the only plot element missed was a hooker with a heart of gold.

The ants go FULL-ON METAL ATTACK at this point ("The ants are climbing fast! Call the police, the fire department, anybody! We need as much help as we can get!"). Suzanne Somers gets eaten by ants, or something. Everyone holes up on the top floor of the hotel, while the lab tech advises them to dig a trench, fill it with gasoline and ignite it ("Containment by fire! Tell them I'm on my way!"). Brian Dennehy finally shows up as the local fire chief who bears the terrible responsibility of LARPing Leiningen Versus the Ants while horrified townspeople watch.

The finale: we're down to the last three survivors (two good buys and one bad guy, so you know who's gonna flip out). They're holed up in the attic of the hotel, staying perfectly still and trying not to provoke the ants. ("They're basically non-aggressive!" says the lab tech over a radio. That's right, it's just like every airplane disaster movie ever, and they're being talked down to the ground.) In order to keep still, no matter how much the ants climb over them, they breathe through rolled up cones of wallpaper held to their mouths. It looks for all the world like they're smoking the world's biggest, most amateurishly-made joints, particularly when the room is flooded with insecticide by hazmat-suit wearing rescuers.

The executive producer was Alan Landsburg, who not only had > 50 movies-of-the-week to his name, but produced a biography of the Kennedys that got a standing ovation at the '64 Democratic National Convention. Interesting career path....

The DVD was made by Direct Source Special Products, which a) sounds like either a mail-order sex toy business or a CIA front, and b) apparently went bankrupt in 2009. Court paperwork offers this snapshot:

The Company's business consists primarily in selling and distributing music CDs, DVDs and videos and focuses on a market niche within the music industry selling as well as repackaging low or modest priced motion pictures and non major labels music discs. In the past year, the Company has experienced a sharp and long term decline of their sales and reported significant losses. Management attributes this declient in sales volume to various factors, in particular to both legal and illegal downloads of music and movies....

Fifteen employees were laid off, and the company "pursued negotiation efforts to recover inventory located in the United States". Guess selling Kids Mix Sing The Hits of Elvis wasn't viable in the long run.

This film was also known as "It Happaned At Lakewood Manor" and was filmed in Qualicum Beach, BC. (I look forward to a future pilgrimage to Qualicum College, which stands in for the resort hotel.) Huzzah for the BC Film Credit!