The Swarm (1978)

 Earlier this month I reviewed The Bees and mentioned The Swarm and made a point of it to dig out the DVD and watch it in time to put it here on The Countdown to Halloween.  In the mid 1970's a killer bee scare gripped the U.S. as killer bees had made their way across the Atlantic ocean into Central American and by the late 70's they had made it all the way to Mexico.  In this Irwin Allen film it hypothesizes as to what would happen when they made their way into the states.  It wasn't a question of if but of when because according to scientists they were on our doorstep and they were more lethal than any bee we had seen before.  Also something that was gaining strength was Hollywood's obsession with making disaster films like The Poseidon Adventure, The Towering Inferno, Earthquake, and The Hindenburg just to name a few but believe me there were many more.      

 

 

 

 

 

Two of the films I've mentioned (The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno) were produced by Irwin Allen who also directed and produced The Swarm.  Hindsight being 50/50 I'd say perhaps he should have stuck with just producing disaster films instead of directing because unlike the other two which were good (Inferno) and really good (Poseidon) The Swarm is a disaster film of another type.  Now I mean that in the kindest of ways giving the list of names involved here no need to be unnecessarily mean.  In fact there are so many actors in this production that when I was watching I kept yelling at the TV: "WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS?  YOU'RE BETTER THAN THIS!".  I'll give you a list of the people in this, legendary names like Michael Caine, Katherine Ross, Richard Widmark, Olivia de Havilland, and Henry Fonda.  I mean for frig sake (see Cerpts, I can work clean when I want to!) just about everybody in this film is failed by it's direction, writing, and editing.  OK, maybe the editing isn't their fault, in fact it might not even be Allen's fault.  At least he trimmed it down to less than two hours of torture.  I went and found the version of the film that is closer to three hours long than it is to two.  Unfortunately. 

 

 

 

I wish I could have talked to some of these legends before they signed the contract to be in this film.  "Olivia, Henry, Michael, Richard, Patty Duke, you're even in this?  My god, who else?  Richard Chamberlain?  You're all too good for this!!  Ben Johnson, Slim Pickens, Fred MacMurray, Well OK, you three might not be better than this. But still!"  You get the idea.  For many it was a quick payday for just a few scenes worth of work I guess.  The Swarm fluctuated between pissing me off because it was so stupid as characters made one bad decision after another and hilariously bad as even these Hollywood hall of famers had a tough time making it believable.  I honestly think Fonda was reading most of his lines off of cue cards that were just off camera as some of his lines were in the form of questions as if asking "Is that how you want me to say that?" after his dialog called for him to be scientific beyond his understanding.  It gets wordy in parts and even Michael Caine's "I know what I'm doing, now everybody just do what I say and we might make it through this alive.", attitude isn't fully believable.  There's a part where Katherine Ross tries to take the blood pressure of someone who doesn't even have a pulse.  What the absolute F?  Kids could be reading this so forgive me if I sound like an idiot but movies that are this bad but should have been better piss me off but I still need to edit myself sometimes.  Therefore, I have no choice but to give this one just two squeaky wheelchairs out of five and declare The Bees as the preferred and recommended viewing of the two bee movies from 1978.  Now excuse me I have to go get my costume of.  Happy Haunting from The Man Hole.