Film Review
Disaster movies were a big thing in the 1970s, almost invariably
star-studded blockbusters that attracted huge audiences who needed some
light relief from the harrowing real-life prospects of nuclear
obliteration, economic calamity and Eurovision. Two of the most
memorable such films were
The
Poseidon Adventure (1972) and
The
Towering Inferno (1978), which were both produced by Irwin
Allen, who is perhaps best known for the TV sci-fi shows he made in the
sixties, notably
Voyage to the
Bottom of the Sea and
Lost In
Space. Allen's third foray into the disaster movie
genre was to have been his masterpiece - an epic struggle for survival
between man and bee, with a cast of literally millions (mostly
bees). Unfortunately, it proved to be an altogether different
kind of disaster movie to the one that was intended...
The Swarm had the potential to
be a great film. The concept was sound, Allen had the kudos to
attract some of the best talent in the business (on both sides of the
camera) and audiences loved disaster films of this kind. But what
should have been a sure-fire hit ended up as one of Allen's biggest
flops, reviled by the critics and shunned by the cinema-going
public. It was thanks largely to this film (and some of Allen's
subsequent offerings) that the disaster movie rapidly began to go out
of fashion. With such a strong premise, how could it all have
gone so wrong?
The main culprit is the script, which is bad even by the generally low
standards of the disaster movie. Indeed, some of the dialogue in
this film is so atrocious you can almost see the actors struggle to
contain the urge to vomit and spit their teeth out as they deliver such
masterfully composed crud as: "We've been fighting a losing
battle against the insects for fifteen years... I never dreamed
that it would turn out to be the bees. They've always been our friend."
or "Houston on fire... Will history blame me, or the bees?" Best
of all is Crane's explanation for how he came to be at the missile
silo: "That's a complicated story. It begins a year ago. But let's skip
that." I defy anyone to sit through the very last scene (in which
Michael Caine sombrely reflects on man's victory over bee-kind) without
collapsing into foam-spitting hysterics of the kind that can get a
person institutionalised.
The Swarm has other faults
beside its woeful script. The performances are way, way over the
top (every scene featuring Michael Caine and Richard Widmark seems to
end in a shout-a-thon that would look O.T.T. in a Christmas pantomime
performed by Prozac addicts). Many of the action scenes are
poorly choreographed and appear so unintentionally funny that you'd
swear the whole thing was being played for laughs. And whilst
some of the special effects are genuinely impressive, there are others
that are totally unconvincing and look as if they were painted on by an
uninspired toddler.
Olivia de Havilland, Ben Johnson and Fred MacMurray stretch the limits
of our endurance for cheesy low-grade schmaltz to the limit as they
enact one of the corniest love triangles ever committed to celluloid
(outside a 1980s soap opera). How happy we are when all three of
them get totally obliterated a few scenes later. Equally
satisfying is the comeuppance of Richard Chamberlain, a nauseating
know-it-all scientist who gets atomised in a nuclear explosion (an
effect that is marginally less convincing than one you would find in an
average episode of
Space 1999).
Slim Pickens somehow manages to escape being zapped by the psychopathic
insects, but you can't have everything. By way of recompense we
have Michael Caine as the self-proclaimed expert in bees who hasn't a
clue how to deal with them and spends most of his time railing against
authority and mulling over matters metaphysical.
The bees should have counted themselves lucky they weren't up
against Harry Palmer.
All this would suggest that
The Swarm
is a grade A turkey that no one in their right mind would ever want to
watch. Yet, as imperfect as the film is, it is remarkably
entertaining, and far more watchable than most other disaster movies
from the seventies. You'd almost think that it was intended as a
parody of the disaster movie - the characters are stereotypes who are
so shallow that you can practically see straight through them, many of
the death scenes are so badly realised that they cannot fail to elicit
a laugh, and the dialogue is so unremittingly, unflinchingly bad that
after a while it becomes very, very funny. If Irwin Allen had
realised this at the time and pushed the film over the edge into
all-out parody it might have enjoyed a far more positive
reaction.
© James Travers 2009
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.
Film Synopsis
When the personnel at a top secret nuclear missile base in Texas are
mysteriously wiped out, the military are at a loss to explain what may
have happened. The most likely explanation is a chemical or
biological attack by a foreign power, but this is soon
discounted. Dr Bradford Crane, a scientist from England, suddenly
appears from nowhere with a theory too fantastic to be taken
seriously. It was the bees what done it, he reveals. And
not just ordinary bees, oh no. The culprits are not the friendly
indigenous bees that pollinate our crops and give us honey but a nasty
species of immigrant bee, from Africa. Whilst Crane and the base
commander Major Slater get to grips with the situation, mainly through
a series of rather pointless shouting matches, a young family are
attacked by the bees whilst having a picnic. Having seen his
parents stung to death by the vicious insects, the boy Paul escapes in
their car to the nearest town and receives medical attention from
Helena Anderson just in time. Despite being the world's
leading authority on bees, Dr Crane is flummoxed and
calls in Dr Walter Krim, another renowned entomologist, but of the
decrepit wheelchair-bound variety, to find a way to destroy the bees
before they destroy us. Meanwhile, the bees have swarmed into the
town where the boy Paul is recuperating and start slaughtering everyone
they can find. They then wreck a train taking evacuees from the
town, before blowing up a nuclear power plant. And now the busy
little blighters are heading straight for Houston for more fun and
games. Unless Krim and Crane can find a way to defeat them, these
hyper-intelligent bees will go on spreading death and disaster across
the globe, until either they get bored or the human race is
extinct. Can nothing defeat the black and yellow peril...?
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.