The Swarm (1978)

That was an excellent one.

Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

Lots of stars, major and minor, can't lift this shoddy piece if commercial garbage out of the dismissible category. But it DOES have one thing in common with "Hamlet" in that almost everybody of importance dies.It's not really fun watching watery-eyed Henry Fonda inject himself with a bee venom antidote and see his EKG rise to "really sssspooky rates." And it's positively embarrassing to see Ben Johnson talk about love to a plump Olivia De Havilland, who resurrects her Melanie accent from "Gone With The Wind." We can cover the special effects with the observation that everyone dies in slow motion and that buildings, trains, and automobile blow up.The structure of the tale is awful. Every attempt to kill the monster swarm is ineffective until, at the very end, Michael Caine as the requisite scientist springs a new weapon out of nowhere. And what a weapon. Now, I'm no apiarologist or apiariatrist. I'd be the first to admit it. But I'd bet the house my ex wife got that bees don't have a mating call, not being moose. Some kind of scent, a pheromone, might get my attention but this movie loses its organoleptic thread when it introduces portable hummers.It should be shown in all film appreciation classes as a bad example.

Such an incredible trainwreck! And, yes, there is a trainwreck in the movie! You can say that it is at that point in the movie where the movie goes off the rails. (Get it?)First, I have to tell you perhaps the funniest story of my movie-going life. It was summer 1978. Our family had rented an RV, and were about to go to Colorado. I loved disaster movies, and still do! Well, back then, with a truly great movie like "The Poseidon Adventure," and recent silly, but still likable ones like "Airport '77," I was ready for Irwin Allen's latest! Like, really ready!Now, I couldn't just see it. I had to see it on the BIG SCREEN! That meant the Grandview II, with two 550-seat auditoriums, in St. Louis' North County, 30 or so minutes away. So, I basically dragged my mother and brother up on the opening day afternoon to see "The Swarm!" And, it is as delightfully awful as you know!So, instead of getting ready for our trip, I had the three of us spending hours in going up and back and seeing this crazy movie! You can bet that I didn't hear the end of it for a while. And, the thing is? I didn't care! I loved it. It's awful, it's gloriously insane! It all-but-immediately ended Irwin Allen's career!Plus, I got to read the terrible one-star (at best!) reviews all during our vacation!Everything else you know, if you've seen it. The hilarious actor's reactions to being killed by bees. The endless disasters within disasters: the aforementioned trainwreck, the nuclear plant magically blowing up (!) because bees got into the control room (what?!). It goes on and on.Plus, introducing all these characters, just to kill them off for the heck of it! And, the only-here-for-the-paycheck actors of the requisite "All-Star Cast." Lastly, you have to LOVE the way they deal with the bees at the end! The one thing I can unequivocally endorse is Jerry Goldsmith's score. 1978 was his greatest year, with one great score after another (plus, another Oscar nomination for "The Boys from Brazil") Here, Goldsmith again provides a score as if he is providing music for the greatest film ever! I love this movie, as impossibly bad as it is! Please, please, remaster this and release it on Blu-ray. After all, we could all use a good laugh these days!******* (7 Out of 10 Stars)

Run for you lives, viewers, a "moving black mass" is on the loose. Soon revealed to be African killer bees, "The Swarm" levels some people and helicopter pilots. Bee-savvy entomologist Michael Caine (as Bradford "Brad" Cane) quickly swings into action. He's a real smarty-pants. Likewise surviving a bee attack, attractive Katharine Ross (as Helena Anderson) joins Mr. Caine. Initially called a "crackpot" by bee-skeptical Richard Widmark (as Thaddeus Slater), Caine is put in charge of fighting the bee invasion. Action continues in a small Texas town, which is holding its annual "Flower Festival". As you know, bees dig flowers...In Maryville, we meet two of the bigger names in the all-star cast, schoolmarmish Olivia de Havilland (as Maureen Schuster) and mayoral Fred MacMurray (as Clarence Tuttle). This fiasco was Mr. MacMurray's last appearance on screen. Neither he nor Ms. de Havilland spend much time on camera, fortunately. Also making it to town is young Christian Juttner (as Paul Durant), who has a very big bee in his bed. Folksy insect expert Henry Fonda (as Walter Krim) arrives in his wheelchair...More stars appear. More bees fly… "The Swarm" was produced by Irwin Allen, who usually knows how to do this sort of thing. First of all, he should have assigned someone different to direct this disaster. The performances show how those considered good actors and actresses can quickly turn into amateurs without the right script and director. Costume designer Paul Zastupnevich, a regular on Mr. Allen's crews, received an "Academy Award" nomination. This film doesn't warrant an "Oscar" award, but Mr. Zastupnevich consistently contributes well. The bee attacks are laughable and there are a few funny lines buzzing around.*** The Swarm (7/14/78) Irwin Allen ~ Michael Caine, Katharine Ross, Richard Widmark, Henry Fonda

****SPOILERS*** What turned out to be the last of the 1970's big budget disaster movies turned out to be a total disaster in the box-office making back just half of it's costs. The movie has Michael Caine as bee expert Dr. Bradford Crane trying to save the South-West of the USA from a massive killer bee attack that nothing, even the US military, seems to be unable to stop. Called throughout the movie as "The Africans" the bees end up killing off almost the entire cast of the movie until, when all hope is gone, Dr. Crane and his doctor girlfriend Helena Anderson, Katharine Ross, discover a way to prevent the killer bees from overrunning the city of Huston. Not with fire power, including nuclear weapons, or thousands of spry cans of DDT but but love! The bees mating call that's mistakenly being used in local computers of military bases and local atomic power plants that has set the killer bees into a frenzy looking for action, or love, in all the wrong places! Thus resulting in the death, by deadly bee stings as well as bee related accidents, of hundreds if not thousands of people.It's US Air Force General Thaddeus, Richard Widmark, who's given the thankless task by the President himself, Jimmy Carter?,to prevent the bees from overrunning or overflying the entire USA. Which almost causes the general, in him not being unable to prevent it, to suffer a complete nervous as well as physical breakdown. In the end when Gen. Thaddeus just about gave up it was the bees that finally did him in together with his entire staff. Thers's also the eminent and wheel-chair bound immunologist Dr. Walter Krim, Henry Fonda, who to save the world put his life on the line. That by Dr. Krim injecting himself with bee venom that if successful can cure the many bee sting victims only to fall victim, yes it didn't work, himself.The big moment in the movie, before the bees were finally did in, was when a frantic Dr. Hubard-not Dr. Kildare-played by Richard Chamberlain looking like the Wolf-Man of London tries to get nuclear plant manager Jose Ferrer,Dr. Andrews, to shut his plant down before the bees, by swarming into it, do it for him. Not listening to reason and just doing his job ended up costing Dr.Andrews his life together with everyone , including Dr. Hubbard, within 10 miles of the plant. As it soon detonated in an nuclear explosion that wiped out half the state of Texas.Considered by it's star Michael Caine to be the worst movie that he ever was in "The Swarm" still has it's high points that as crazy as they are keeps the audience interested in watching it. The film is so unintentionally funny that despite all the deaths that the killer or "African" bees cause you just don't work up enough emotion to miss or feel sorry for any of them. The explosive ending of the movie came so suddenly that it looked forced as if the movie makers and what seems like the last two survivors, Caine & Ross, of the movie were happy as hell to see it was finally over and then try to forget as much as they can that they were ever in it!