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The Swarm [1978]


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Editorial
Amazon.co.uk Review

Legendarily chintzy "event" producer Irwin Allen (The Towering Inferno) went out with a gargantuan buzz-on with this jaw-droppingly goofy disaster flick. No cliché is left unturned, as a hyperactive strain of hallucination-inducing killer bees get it into their microscopic brains to derail a commuter train, destroy a nuclear power plant and otherwise decimate a veritable cornucopia of washed-up actors (Fred MacMurray, Henry Fonda, Richard Widmark, Patty Duke, Slim Pickens and narcoleptic dreamboat Richard Chamberlain are just a few of the legendary has-beens to get fatally stung by what appears to be airborne coffee grounds). Be sure to stay tuned through the closing credits for a (lawsuit-preventing?) coda absolving the good ol' hardworking American honeybee of any and all sinister charges depicted herein. The Swarm is an irresistibly hilarious chunk of honey-roasted cheese--70s style. --Andrew Wright

Editorial
Amazon.co.uk Review

The Swarm was one of many 1970s disaster epics masterminded by producer Irwin Allen. Unfortunately, it comes from the tail end of the public's fascination with the genre, a fact not unreasonably attributed at the time to this also being Allen's first full-length directorial debut. In retrospect, it's perhaps understandable that the threat of killer bees was never going to seem as spectacular as The Towering Inferno or The Poseidon Adventure. Nevertheless, there's plenty to admire in the concept, which at least went so far as to research its subject matter, even if the explanation for how the bad-tempered little critters came to be in the vicinity of Houston is a little shaky.

Michael Caine heads a typically all-star cast. Ironically, the first thing Richard Chamberlain's character says is that he's arrived under protest. In fact, he along with Henry Fonda, Olivia de Havilland and several others do look rather reluctant to plough through their roles, especially when that involves being bombarded with forcefully blown bee replica debris. At least the effects go some way to redress the lack of punch in the performances (or sense in the plot). Cheesy and clichéd by today's standards it may be, but in the mutant insect sub-genre, The Swarm remains one of the best, helped along by a fine Jerry Goldsmith score.

On the DVD: The Swarm arrives on DVD in a surprisingly clean transfer that picks out both the primary colours and great swathes of beige in the 1970s fashions and decorations. 2.35:1 anamorphic is perfect for capturing the scale of the bees' attack, although the merely stereo soundtrack is a let down considering what fun effects could be achieved mixing the humming drone through various channels. There's a trailer and information on key cast and crew, but the real treat is the 22-minute "Inside the Swarm" documentary. Clearly this was aired on TV at the time of release, but puts to shame the uninformative equivalent promos of today. All the cast are animated in their descriptions of what's being shot around them. And naturally Allen the Showman is the most animated of all. --Paul Tonks


Languages and subtitles
Review date: 2007-11-08 Rating: 6 out of 10

THE SWARM (1978)
(Zone 2)
directed by Irwin Allen
Music composed by Jerry Goldsmith

LANGUAGES: ENGLISH
SUBTITLES: ENGLISH - FRENCH - FINNISH - ICELANDIC - SWEDISH - CZECH -
GREEK - POLISH - TURKISH - ROMANIAN - DUTCH


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Reviews


A CHEESY GOOD TIME
Review date: 2007-10-26 Rating: 8 out of 10

Investigating a missile asylum, Major General Thalius Slater, (Richard Widmark) finds Dr. Bradford Crane, (Michael Caine) inside the facility, claiming that a strand of mutant killer bee is responsible for the mysterious happening. As reports come in indicating a swarm of insects getting closer to Central Texas, he agrees to put Crane in charge of stopping the bees, and enlists friends Dr. Walter Krim, (Henry Fonda) and Dr. Hubbard, (Richard Chamberlain) for help in dealing with the problem. When conventional methods prove useless and the swarm is able to break and attack Houston, they confer about using a new strategy against them. Recalling an earlier attack, Dr. Crane and his assistants race to perfect a special device that will lure them away where a special team can then conduct a planned operation to deal with them.

The Good News: Taken into context, this here isn't that bad of a film. Like it's action/disaster forefathers it's been inspired by, there is plenty of spectacle here, from the initial attack on the small-town, which contains a lot of great moments that are a staple of these kinds of scenes, to the victim crashing through a store-front window in front of the other potential victims, to a bunch of the creatures overcoming all sorts of victims screaming and thrashing around. It's long, drawn-out and quite simply a fun sequence. The attack on the train is another big action scene, as an entire train, including it's haul, is destroyed in spectacular manner, jumping off rails and plunging down into a ravine, exploding along the way before all explode in a massive fireball at the base. It's a big-scale disaster that is nicely played out. The fact there's plenty of big action throughout the film, including a huge helicopter crash early in the film to a major sequence where a fire-throwing squad starts to incinerate a large city to fight the threat, is one of the greatest scenes in the film and is one of the main reasons to see this. The fact there's also a huge body count, though a lot is implied, this is still a really nice body count film as so many deaths occur in the film. It's quite good when it wants to be.

The Bad News: There's really only a few things wrong with the film, but they are pretty big ones. The first, and most major one, is that the film is just way too long. This could've been trimmed by a good forty minutes without wasting anything important. Most of that is the useless love-angle that's shoe-horned in. Not only is it for characters that don't mean much of anything to the plot other than taking up space in the running time, it's for a group of characters that have no reason to be there. The fact that this is even in the film is hard to realize, and the final resolution of the struggle is played through secondary characters instead, making them completely useless in the film. All of the incessant shouting and yelling all of the characters do at each other is quite unnecessary. The film's other big problem is it's series of inane and moronic moments. The fact that the decisions made by all the scientists prove disastrous and the military ones are helpful isn't explained, nor is the fact that nearly every bit of exposition offered in the film to help out is completely ludicrous and doesn't offer even the slightest hint of actual truth to them. It's all quite hard to take in, and combined with the slow pace, this has developed somewhat of a bad reputation, but there are flaws in it.

The Final Verdict: While flawed, it's also a nice and fun disaster flick with some great action scenes and a lot to cheese to carry it through. The cheesiness might be too much for some, though, so this one is really only for the cheese-fest enthusiasts or those that have a particular affection for the particular kind of film.


"Will history blame me or the bees?"
Review date: 2006-10-03 Rating: 6 out of 10

There's delusion on an epic scale on display in Irwin Allen's infamous The Swarm. It's not the worst of his oeuvre by a long way - Beyond the Poseidon Adventure and When Time Ran Out are both much, much worse - but it's become the poster child for all the absurdities of the disaster genre at it's hokeyest. But then capsized ships with atom bombs aboard or volcanoes threatening hotel complexes can't compare to killer bees destroying nuclear power plants and causing train wrecks on the Richter Scale of movie absurdity. And it's a curiously second- and third-hand construction too - structurally Stirling Silliphant's script is surprisingly similar to his script for In the Heat of the Night. Okay, there weren't any bees in that one, but from the beginning where big city cop Sidney Poitier is discovered at a murder scene and immediately treated as a suspect by hard-assed racist cop Rod Steiger until he gradually learns to respect his expertise, it's being used as a template, with sunflower seed munching entomologist Michael Caine discovered in a missile silo full of dead bodies by hard-assed xenophobic general Richard Widmark, who immediately suspects him of their deaths until he gradually learns to respect his expertise (how can you not love a film where Bradford Dillman asks "Can we count on a scientist who prays?" only for Widmark to respond "I wouldn't count on one that didn't"?).

But this isn't a film about trust or even narrative, it's about miscast and affordable stars getting stung to death in slow-motion by what look like bits of oatmeal painted black and fired at them by air-cannons. It's a film about hallucinating patients being menaced by imaginary giant bees. It's a film about military complexes with lots of flashing lights. It's a film about bad acting in the face of insurmountably inane dialogue ("Are you endowing these bees with human motives? Like saving their fellow bees from captivity, or seeking revenge on Mankind?" "I always credit my enemy, no matter what he may be, with equal intelligence." and "Billions of dollars have been spent to make these nuclear plants safe. Fail-safe! The odds against anything going wrong are astronomical, Doctor!" "I appreciate that, Doctor. But let me ask you. In all your fail-safe techniques, is there a provision for an attack by killer bees?" are just the tip of the iceberg). It's about bad fashion sense - this being the 70s, the decade that taste forgot, amid a preponderance of trouser flairs there are a lot of earth tones and oranges amid the costumes, so it's entirely possible that the bees simply mistook the actors for flowers waiting to be pollinated. And it's all done with a gloriously straight face and even, on a few rare occasions, some technical competence - Irwin Allen may have loved schmaltz, but he had a great visual sense when dealing with military hardware and there are some genuinely impressive shots in the picture when he gets to play with the toys. Unfortunately his handling of the actors is much more mechanical, with the old guard (Widmark, Olivia DeHavilland, Henry Fonda, Ben Johnson) faring better than poor old Caine and Katherine Ross. And, like many bad films, it's topped off by a superb score, one of Jerry Goldsmith's very best from his golden period. Much more fun than it's good to admit, the proposed remake has a lot to live up to.

The DVD is a fairly good value package - the extended two-and-a-half hour cut from the laserdisc release, a hokey 22-minute making of documentary and the original trailer ("It's more than speculation - it's a prediction!"). The 2.35:1 widescreen transfer is good, though the sound range is not quite as good as it could be.

This movie is unBEElievable! (that was just a joke)
Review date: 2004-04-15 Rating: 6 out of 10

This film, directed by Irwin Allen (of the The Towering Inferno, The Poseidon Adventure fame)is an anti-classic of the highest order BEEcause (sorry, that's a stupid joke, I know) the acting (from a cast featuring 7 Oscar winners) is, on the whole, absolutely terrible and unintentionaly funny. Interestingly, the DVD also features a documentary which considers the story of thousands of bees attacking America some sort of prediction. It is really hard to keep a straight face with Michael Caine being enthusiastic about this film. (I suppose Ed Wood was very enthusiastic about Plan 9 From Outer Space) A must for all BEE-movie (I have really got to stop doing that) fans.

Good god!
Review date: 2003-06-07 Rating: 10 out of 10

Shove this one under 'so bad it's good'. Wasting a GIGANTIC amount of talent (such as stars Caine and Fonda), this epic is truely awful. Problem number one is the script. What can you say about a film about killer bees that completely ignores the fact that they die when they sting? That shoehorns in a pointless subplot about a love-triangle between three sixty-year-olds who die before it can be resolved? That gives us dialogue so inane that you literally can't work out what the characters are trying to say?

The special effects- let's face it, a key element of any disaster flick- vary from passable to atrocious. I have never seen such an obvious bluescreen effect at the climax. The crashing train, the exploding power plant- eveyrthing screams "Model shot!"

Given this, in spite of the skilled actors on display, hardly anyone turns in a decent performance. Caine doesn't. Katherine Ross doesn't. Richard Widmark doesn't. But why bother trying? This film runs over two and a half hours without any logic or common sense in sight. If you want a diabolical film, this is it. It's 'Battlefield: Earth' before Travolta ever had that ridiculous idea.

Product Details/Specifications


Actor(s):
Richard Widmark
Olivia de Havilland
Katharine Ross
Richard Chamberlain
Michael Caine

Creators:
Michael Caine (Primary Contributor)
Katharine Ross (Primary Contributor)
Fred J. Koenekamp (Cinematographer)
Irwin Allen (Producer)
Harold F. Kress (Editor)
Arthur Herzog Jr. (Writer)
Stirling Silliphant (Writer)

Director(s):

Recording label: Warner Home Video
Manufacturer: Warner Home Video
EAN: 7321900126137
Binding: DVD
Number of items: 1
Format: PAL,
Release date: 2003-02-17
Number of discs: 1
Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
Audience rating: Suitable for 12 years and over
Region code: 2
Running time: 149 minutes
Theatrical release date: 1978-07-14
Language: English (Original Language)

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