Each Thursday this summer (or Monday, if the disc is late from Netflix) we’ll hop in the Screengrab time machine and jump back thirty years to see what was new and exciting at the neighborhood moviehouse this week in…The Summer of ’78!
The Swarm
Release Date: July 14, 1978
Cast: Michael Caine, Katharine Ross, Richard Widmark, Richard Chamberlain, Fred MacMurray, Henry Fonda
The Buzz: Bees! Get it? The “buzz” is “bees”! I wasn’t even trying to do that! The funny just slipped out of me!
Keywords: Killer Bee, Disaster Film, Mass Child Killing, Child Driving Car, Flamethrower, Science Runs Amok
The Plot: Mysterious doings at a military facility outside the small town of Marysville, Texas have left hundreds of soldiers dead. General Slater (Richard Widmark) arrives on the scene to find a British civilian, entomologist Dr. Brad Crane (Michael Caine) already there. He claims the base has been attacked by a swarm of deadly African bees, but Slater would prefer to believe it’s some sort of commie plot. Slater is further disgruntled when the White House checks in and puts Crane in charge of the entire anti-bee operation. In Marysville, a young boy’s parents are killed by the swarm while picnicking and he narrowly escapes. Later he returns to the scene with some friends, who have the incredibly dumb plan of heaving Molotov cocktails at the swarm. This only angers the bees, who descend on Marysville and kill a bunch of young children in the schoolyard, always a good time at the movies. Proving itself resistant to even the strongest pesticides, the swarm then makes its way toward Houston.
The Test of Time: One of the things I spent way too much time worrying about as a young lad in the ’70s was the swarm of killer bees that we were always being told was making its way up from Africa or South America. It was always about a year or two away – somewhere in Mexico, maybe – and since I had suffered a couple of allergic reactions to bee-stings, resulting in my feet swelling up into purple blobs, I figured this would be the end of me. These fears were fueled by the book The Swarm (not a novelization in this case), but I didn’t see the movie until now. It is, of course, an Irwin Allen production from the tail end of the disaster movie cycle Allen spearheaded. You know, the kind of movie where the poster has a row of boxes with photos of its big name cast running along the bottom, and you expect the last one to say “And Henry Fonda as The President.” (Close; it actually ends with “And Henry Fonda as Dr. Krim.”) Even by Allen’s lax standards, this is one incredibly boneheaded botch – a disaster movie in every sense of the term. The bloated running time extends past the two-and-a-half hour mark, technical incompetence runs rampant – The Swarm features some of the worst day-for-night shots in the history of cinema – and plotlines (courtesy of Oscar-winning screenwriting Stirling Silliphant) tend to vanish without a trace. Although there are hints at some sinister connection between Crane and the bee attack, we never find out how he made his way into the military base. A hokey love triangle subplot involving Fred MacMurray, Ben Johnson and Olivia de Havilland comes to a rather abrupt conclusion when they are all killed in a train derailment. It appears that Allen had some fire-suits left over from The Towering Inferno, which is basically recreated in a battle between flamethrower-wielding soldiers and killer bees. Crane’s solution to the bee crisis is to lure them over the Gulf with the amplified sound of a simulated mating call, then have a bunch of oil tankers dump their loads and set them aflame. I think this could qualify as one of those cures worse than the disease. The Swarm is recommended to all who enjoy laughing at tremendous wastes of time and resources, particularly the DVD version with the deadly serious making-of documentary in which we are informed that “all Irwin Allen movies are rooted in reality” and that, yes, the killer bees will be here any day now.
Quotable Quote: It’s too hard to choose between Caine’s “I never dreamed it would be the bees. They’ve always been our friend!” and Widmark’s “Houston on fire. Will history blame me or the bees?”
2008 Equivalent: This is too easy. Disaster movie + eco-terror + unintentionally hilarious dialogue can only mean The Happening.
Previously on Summer of '78: The Bad News Bears Go to Japan