One of my all time favorites.

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

A made for TV addition to the "Nature Strikes Back" genre that was prevalent at the time, this shows its audience a pretty good time. Lakewood Manor is a lodge in Arizona (although the production actually filmed in Canada) that ends up under siege by a never-ending onslaught of ants that have become toxic and can kill people provided they bite their victims enough times. Robert Foxworth is the grim-faced, take-charge Mike Carr, a construction worker and the hero of the piece; Lynda Day George is his appealing leading lady, and screen legend Myrna Loy plays Lyndas' wheelchair-bound mom.A number of familiar faces get trotted out, disaster-movie style, for this well-directed tale that delivers a reasonable amount of thrills. While ants may not be among the most off-putting members of the insect world, to see so many of them mobilized here, and to see human beings covered with scores of them will ensure nail-biting tension for the more squeamish people in the audience.The characters are largely standard-issue, but fairly engaging just the same. We also get stock individuals like the stubborn dummy (Steve Franken) who doesn't believe Mike about the killer ants theory, and the worthless jerk (Gerald Gordon) who will be out to save his own skin when the going gets rough. That said, there is a very first-rate cast at work here, although Ms. Loy gets precious little to do after a while. Also turning up are Bernie Casey, Barry Van Dyke, Karen Lamm, Anita Gillette, Brian Dennehy, Suzanne Somers, Stacy Keach Sr., and Rene Enriquez.In a way that hearkens back to sci-fi monster movies of the 1950s, the filmmakers (Robert Scheerer directs from a script by Guerdon Trueblood) take the time to educate us as well as entertain us, with some facts shared regarding the nature of ants.Well done overall, with a particularly effective finale.Seven out of 10.

A lot of familiar faces show up in this made for television film about a colony of ants who get mighty upset with humankind around Myrna Loy's resort hotel where there's some construction going on under the stewardship of foreman Robert Foxworth. This films teaches us that when Ants get disturbed they can really cause havoc.I remember back in good old Fort Polk almost 50 years ago I put my hand on a nest of Ants and got some bites for my trouble. With what Foxworth and Lynda Day George go through in the end I hope their paychecks cleared before filming that last rescue scene.You have to be an insect lover or a stargazer to appreciate this film. What was Myrna Loy thinking? I guess she saw a lot of her contemporaries go the horror and science fiction route. But this is definitely no Whatever Happened To Baby Jane. Louis B. Mayer never gave her a film like this.

This is another one of those 'humans vs insects/eco-horror' features; a theme that was popular in the late 70's. Only you can't really call it horror. There's zero suspense and no gruesome events. In other words: this movie is pretty lame. It's not that it's really bad or something; it's just very boring. A construction site near a hotel uncovers a big nest of ants. Later on we learn that, probably due to different sorts of pesticides used in the past, their bite became poisonous. Some people get bitten and rushed to the hospital and it takes ages for the residents of the hospital to figure out what's going on. Robert Foxworth figures it out first and then you can see him go berserk with a digging machine for what seems like several hours. Then they flee in the house, waiting to get rescued. And, man, you should see all the efforts they make for rescuing them. I won't spoil too much, but at one point they even use a big helicopter. All the time when I was watching this, I sat there thinking "Come on, people, you all got shoes on. Just run out of the building. I'm sure a bunch of ants won't catch up with you." It's all pretty ridiculous.Of course, lots of close-ups of crawling ants are shown throughout the whole movie. Ants in the garden. Ants in the garbage. Ants in the kitchen. Ants on the roof. Ants in the bedroom. Ants in the sink. And the best part: Ants crawling on people's faces while the actors are breathing through straws. But when you see groups of ants in wider shots, they indeed look like black rice the set designers glued to the wall.One small surprise came near the end. No, it has nothing to do with a twist in the plot. It was just that Brian Dennehy made an appearance as a chief-fireman. Ehrr... What more can I say? This movie is called IT HAPPENED AT LAKEWOOD MANOR but the box-art of my copy read ANTS and the title during the opening credits was PANIC AT LAKEWOOD MANOR. There you have it. Now, since this is a made-for-TV movie from the 70's, I'll be once again extremely mild in my final rating. Now, THE SAVAGE BEES, another 'humans vs insects' TV-movie from 1976 was much better than this one. I even feel I have to go back and add a few points to its rating after having seen ANTS. Lacking suspense, action, thrills, shocks and creepiness, the only thing you'll be left with after seeing ANTS is an annoying itch.

This nicely creepy and enjoyable 70's made-for-TV killer animal horror item centers on a nest of lethal and poisonous ants which are unearthed by a construction crew working on a posh lakeside resort. The ants proceed to attack a few folks and trap a handful of others inside. Among those trapped in the resort are feisty elderly owner Myrna Loy, her comely daughter Lynda Day George (who also dealt with a larger array of deadly critters in "Day of the Animals"), rugged construction foreman Robert Foxworth (who later faced off with a murderous misshapen mutant bear in "Prophecy"), jerky sleazeball businessman Gerald Gordon and his lovely partner Suzanne Sommers of "Three's Company" sitcom fame, health inspector Steve Franken, and sexy drifter Karen Lamm. Trying to rescue the people trapped inside are construction worker Bernie Casey and fire chief Brian Dennehy. Capably directed by Robert Scheerer, with a tight script by Guerdon Trueblood (who wrote "Tarantulas: The Deadly Cargo" the same year), several truly skin-crawling ant attack scenes (the sequence where Sommers gets munched is a definite highlight, plus a little boy has a close call with the ants as well), a nice snappy pace, and uniformly sound acting from a fine cast, this baby makes for a most satisfying and occasionally harrowing little scarefest.