Synopsis
During construction workings at the old, financially hard-pressed Lakewood Hotel resort, two workers accidentally stumble upon a large swarm of ants in a section closed for entry and find out that these insects are unusually aggressive and that their bite is very dangerous. But before they can get the warning out, they are both accidentally buried alive by one of their co-workers.
Shortly after this incident, unscrupulous real estate magnate Anthony Fleming (Gerald Gordon) and his parter and mistress Gloria (Suzanne Somers) arrive at the hotel, which Fleming wishes to convert into a casino, in order to haggle with the eldery and infirm propietor, Ethel Adams (Myrna Loy), and her daughter Valerie (Lynda Day George). In the meantime, foreman Mike Carr (Robert Foxworth), who is in a relationship with Valerie, and his co-worker and friend Vince (Bernie Casey) find their two missing men, but they die in the hospital due to massive poisoning. Unknown to everyone in the hotel, the ants begin encroaching on the hotel, first attacking a young boy as he looks for a bottle inside a dumpster, then killing one of the hotel's cooks, and finally nearly killing Vince as he and Mike investigate the pit in which their men were buried.
Peggy Kenter (Anita Gillette), a Board of Health inspector and an unfavorite acquaintance of Carr's, decides to quarantine the hotel, thinking a virus is at work. But Mike soon discovers that there is an immense ant's nest in the pit, and concludes that these insects are responsible for the toxic attacks on people. Tom (Bruce French), a BOH researcher, finally discovers that the ants are actually highly poisonous, due to being exposed to and eventually having aggressively adapted to man's indiscriminate use of insecticides. But by that time, the ants have already begun swarming the hotel by the millions, killing Gloria and Peggy's assistant White (Steve Franken) and driving Carr, Valerie, Ethel, Fleming, hotel employee Richard (Barry Van Dyke) and his girlfriend Linda (Karen Lamm) into the upstairs rooms. Vince alerts the authorities, who attempt to contain the ants with a trench - to be first filled with water, then with burning gasoline after Tom stresses the habit of army ants of crossing water streams on bridges built on ant corpses - and rescue the trapped people inside the hotel. Attempts by a fire ladder (during which the rescuee, Linda, nearly falls off), and later by helicopter (as the copter's rotors begin spraying the ants all over the area) are soon deemed to risky, so a set of Coast Guard protection suits is sent for.
Carr, Valerie and Fleming, the only people left in the hotel, are eventually cornered by the ants when through a working phone line Tom gives them the advice not to move, in order to give the ants no reason to attack them. As the ants begin crawling all over them, Fleming eventually snaps and launches himself from the room's balcony into the swimming pool below, in a desperate attempt to escape the ants, but misses and dies in the fall. Shortly afterwards, two suited-up rescuers arrive and take Carr and Valerie to safety. When they are taken away by the ambulance, Tom assures Carr that such a case will not likely be recurring, as the unique environmental conditions at the hotel estate were vital for the existence of the ants' nest.
Read more about this topic: It Happened At Lakewood Manor