The Swarm (1978)

Yes, this is an actual scene from the movie!

*

Awful, awful, awful “killer insect” film from Irwin Allen who hires names from the past just so that the potential of putting ass in seats, but that certainly didn’t happen. I was surprised this was only in theaters two weeks, though. I just assumed (very wrongly) it would get a month and then be dropped like giant turd in the crapper to flushed away for good. Honestly, this turkey really didn't even give me that many giggles. I just felt bad for the cast involved with this. I mean, some great actors are squandered in this film. Disaster movies are like that, though.

As you can see, all those faces above on the poster were an effort to help the movie out.

Overlong (this should have been 90 minutes tops), with subplots that should never have been added to begin with (geriatric love triangle between Suthun-voiced Olivia De Havilland, retired “master mechanic” Ben Johnson, and store clerk Fred MacMurray which ends with all of them dying in a train disaster! Patty Duke is pregnant and has her baby. County “water control” Slim Pickins crying over the body of his soldier son, getting access inside the military base after threatening to cut off the water! A little boy who watches his parents die, drives their car into the nearest town, sees a hallucination of a giant bee that Michael Caine successfully helps him free himself from, later returning with some boyhood friends to hurl Molotov cocktails at a tree containing the swarm!). 

Typical surly look from Widmark towards Caine

Michael Caine just shows up at the military outpost and is provided carte blanche by the President of the United States much to military man, Richard Widmark’s chagrin. He declares himself an entomologist, and his credentials are later confirmed. So Henry Fonda (the best bit of casting this film has going for it) and Richard Chamberlain (absolutely wasted) are brought in as important scientists to either find a cure for the bees or to kill them. 

The bees! Look out for the bees!

Caine gets a love interest in Katherine Ross (a military doc), but they register zilch in chemistry. The movie spends plenty of time showing this black mass representing the swarm in the sky but this isn’t the least bit scary. Slow motion attacks on people is more laughable in its presentation than convincing as a horror in motion. Allen loves to blow everything up or set it on fire. 

Allen goes for the jugular as this child was sucking on the lollipop just before the attack

Houston in flames thanks to the moronic use of blow torches by men in white suits and helmets who seem to just aim at anything including their fellow man! Finally, it is discovered that the Africans (the term for the African bees!) are drawn to a type of alarm that sounded by the military installation attacked at the beginning of the film. Caine and Ross (of course), miraculously escape Houston unharmed despite everybody else bites the dust, and get back to the Texas base, working on a payload carrying horns sounding off the same alarm that drew the bees in the first place. Missiles drop and KABOOM! A nice fire cloud in the background as Caine and Rose hug each other tight. 

This is as terrible as most tell you. It is truly sad some good actors are attached to it, but disaster films often occupied old Hollywood veterans in key roles to draw audiences. In this film’s case, people fortunately didn’t waste their time watching this drivel. De Havilland with her Southern accent is rather humorous, and the old timers out to gain her hand are ditched like toilet paper after a trip to the bathroom which left wondering why on earth they were in this film at all besides their recognizable names in the cast. Widmark and Caine often scream at each other for no reason; all I could guess was there seem to be this need to pit military against scientists which might explain their unnecessary animosity. 

Jose Ferrer’s casting left me baffled: Irwin Allen’s cousin’s brother’s uncle could have played this throwaway part. So Ferrer was doing something else for Allen...what favor is he doing your film if he is in it for like two minutes? Ferrer had more time in Bloody Birthday than this movie! Also given parts are Cameron Mitchell as a military sergeant who receives news from the Pentagon and transfers information back and forth to the Texas military base, Lee Grant (her role is meaningless) as a reporter who shows news reports of the Texas town disaster where 200 locals perish due to a killer bee attack, and Bradford Dillman as Widmark’s second he orders around. 

Overcrowded and yet absurdly plotted, The Swarm deserves its rotten reputation. It wastes talent, disposes of talent in a way that leaves them so meaningless to their introductions and purpose, and has the bees seemingly attacking everyone except Caine who escapes without a single sting. Hell, even Ross is stung, although she miraculously survives. Plots go nowhere. The immunization serum is tested, Fonda dies, and it is discarded without further study. Chamberlain decides (why, I don't know; maybe he was only scheduled for a day's work) to go to the nuclear plant when any military officer or person other than a scientist needed at the military outpost could be just as helpless in shutting down the building. The Houston bee invasion, and all the men with torches setting everything on fire had me just rolling my eyes in disbelief. There are set pieces, the nuclear plant and Houston, that seem designed specifically for special effects. There's the train wreck (useful to describe this film) that sends some of the old timers flying out windows to their deaths. Allen was never exactly the kind of guy with a history of great characterizations in his movies. This film is certainly an example of that.

Sadly this was MacMurray’s final film…maybe after this disaster he felt the need to call it quits! Fonda using himself as a guinea pig with no one else in the lab while injecting himself with an experimental serum makes no sense! He injects himself with the venom and has trouble reaching the anti-toxin vial!