The Swarm

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Trailer—The Swarm

The Swarm

A disaster of a movie but not the kind of disaster the film makers intended. Just awful movie with inept "special" effects and a host of usually fine actors giving atrocious performances. Katharine Ross in particular is terrible, beyond wooden to positively inert but Caine is hardly better. The only one who is seemingly trying to earn his paycheck is Richard Widmark who gives his all while surrounded by bored costars. Although who can blame them with a script that stinks like year old cheese. Let's hope they were well paid. Do yourself a favor and don't watch. If you have to see a bee disaster movie seek out "Killer Bees" a TV movie with Gloria Swanson and Kate Jackson which at least is entertaining.

Killer bees attack residents in a small town preparing for a flower festival. Fred MacMurray begs Olivia de Havilland to marry him and she looks to the heavens with a glowing, "Oh, how lucky I am!" (they both perish.) When the train--packed full of stock characters--derailed, the theater audience I saw this with actually cheered; too bad producer Irwin Allen wasn't aboard. This film ranks right up there with Allen's "When Time Ran Out...", still to this day the reigning champ of bad cinema. The special effects are actually very good, but the script is so lame and the direction so stilted that the results are not uneven so much as they are unintentionally funny. B-grade actors like Richard Chamberlain must've been mighty grateful for Irwin Allen's disaster films (and the chance to work in big-budget productions), but that's no excuse for Michael Caine's limp appearance. Had Mel Brooks put his name on it, "The Swarm" might have been the top comedy of its year. * from ****

Saying that The Swarm is a disaster of a disaster movie would be a slap in the face to the 'Master of Disaster', Irwin Allen. True, is does seem a bit hokey in its approach of displaying the killer bees. However, it does play on the fear of bees (this film is DEFINITELY NOT for those who have the deathly fear of bees)rather well. It doesn't always work, but it's still pretty good. A true highlight is Jerry Goldsmith's score. You don't have to see the movie to hear his score. The score is truly one of his best, in my opinion. The cast reads like a Who's Who in cinema of the 60's and 70's. Out of the many seen in the movie, Richard Widmark, Katharine Ross, Michael Caine, and Henry Fonda truly stand out. By the way, this was Fred MacMurray's final film. Though mainly ignored when it debuted in 1978, it has now achieved somewhat of a cult status.

I know that there are plenty of people who think that Irwin Allen's 1978 sci-fi/horror/disaster film THE SWARM is closer to PLAN NINE FROM OUTER SPACE than it is to JAWS or THE BIRDS. And I will cheerfully admit that a very good cast (Michael Caine, Henry Fonda, Ben Johnson, Slim Pickens, etc.) was wasted by a surprisingly lame Stirling Silliphant screenplay. Furthermore, I'll admit that the special effects themselves aren't all that special (especially for $19 million in 1970s money). Still, I found THE SWARM to be frightening and prophetic enough in its story of America facing an onslaught of Africanized killer bees. Those bees have indeed colonized California and much of the Southwest, so you can't say that the film's science is all that far off the mark, regardless of how it functions as a film. It is for that reason that I give THE SWARM the "7" rating.

The subject line says it all: this is a B-Movie about, well, bees. Sorry about the pun! Despite the big budget and big cast, this essentially is an old 1950's style B-Movie, and in that way it works very well as a guilty pleasure. Mixing together the cliched concepts of both a creature feature with a 70's disaster epic, what The Swarm ends up as is not quite exactly either one, but certainly a good part of both. The effects are good but not great, some of the performances are pretty good (Richard Widmark I thought played Slater very well), and it kept my interest for its entire (extended) running time. This one is worth checking out if you are a fan of Irwin Allen, bug movies, or 70s-style monster movies.