ferbs54 Immediately before the release of his $21 million disaster epic "The Swarm" in July '78, producer/director Irwin Allen boasted to the press that he thought the film would be "the most terrifying movie ever made." And the so-called "Master of Disaster" had good reason to feel confident; his previous films, "The Poseidon Adventure" and "The Towering Inferno," had been monster hits, performing remarkably well at the box office. But "The Swarm," which dealt with an attack of African killer bees in the American Southwest, failed to live up to expectations, and indeed brought in a mere $7 million in box office returns. The reviews were scathing, with "The New York Times" calling the film "the surprise comedy hit of the season" and London's "Sunday Times" deeming it "simply the worst film ever made." "Time Out" has gone on to call it a "risibly inadequate disaster movie," the "Maltin Movie Guide" has awarded it its lowest BOMB rating, while the Medved Brothers, in their "Golden Turkey Awards" book, give it the prize for The Most Badly Bumbled Bee Movie of All Time. So IS "The Swarm" the worst movie ever made? Well, of course not, and all those who have heaped such savage and hyperbolic condemnations on the film have obviously never seen such truly awful and ineptly made motion pictures as "The Beast of Yucca Flats," "Horror of the Blood Monsters," "Dracula vs. Frankenstein," "The Worm Eaters" and "Blood Freak." But is "The Swarm" a good film; a quality motion picture? Well, I wouldn't go THAT far.The film, to my great surprise, is fun to watch, and several of the sequences involving those bee attacks are exciting and fairly well done. And if the film truly IS as bad as they say (perhaps I should add here that I have a very high tolerance for shlock cinema, and that the print of "The Swarm" that I recently watched was the theatrical, 116-minute version, and not the 156-minute extended cut that some say is the preferable way to go), its exceedingly large cast of famous faces is surely not to blame, all of whom give it their professional best. Thus, we have Michael Caine, Katharine Ross, Richard Chamberlain, Henry Fonda and Alejandro Rey as scientists desperately searching for a defense against the venomous critters; Richard Widmark, Bradford Dillman and Cameron Mitchell as military men; Olivia de Havilland, Fred MacMurray and Ben Johnson representing three sides of a love triangle in the quaint little town of Marysville, Texas; Patty Duke Astin as a pregnant widow; Slim Pickens as a grieving father; Lee Grant as a reporter; and Jose Ferrer as the head of a nuclear power plant. Rather, and to my huge amazement, the blame here must rest squarely on the shoulders of screenwriter Stirling Silliphant, whose script contains many lines of stunning banality, and plot points that just peter away into nothingness. I say "amazement" because Silliphant had previously been responsible for the majority of the scripts for one of my favorite television programs of the '60s, "Route 66," many of which were remarkable for their poetic and literary qualities. His script for "The Swarm," however, is far, far from the work he had done for that show some 15 years earlier.Still, the film does have some compensations, and, as I say, some nice touches. I did enjoy the scene in which three kids chuck Molotov cocktails at the swarm's tree trunk nest, and then cower beneath metal garbage cans in the resultant bee storm. The film has a VERY high body count (the ridiculous scene in which the bees invade that nuclear power plant and cause an immediate mushroom cloud accounts for the deaths of 36,422 people alone!), and is not afraid to show youngsters being both attacked and killed by the vicious little monsters. In what is surely the film's most suspenseful sequence, Fonda self-administers a 6X lethal dose of the bee venom into his system, and then injects himself with a possible antidote, as we wait breathlessly to see the result. The bee attack on the Marysville population (resulting in 232 dead) forcefully brings to mind a similar scene in Hitchcock's "The Birds" (it is hardly as well done, of course), although the attack on a speeding train is not nearly as convincing. As I mentioned earlier, many story lines simply dwindle away, such as the one with Patty Duke and her baby, and that love triangle is, surprisingly, summarily snuffed out in the train disaster. Perhaps the longer cut brought these story lines more satisfactorily to a conclusion? I would like to think so. And then there are the questions of why didn't the fireball at the nuclear plant destroy all the bees, when fire is shown to be a very effective means of combating them later on? And, as the Widmark character mentions early in the film, just what WAS Caine's civilian character doing at the Air Force base at the film's beginning anyway? Gaping plot holes and inconsistencies aside, however, "The Swarm" remains a moderately fun watch, and is most assuredly NOT the worst movie ever made. And really, any film with a POV shot from a bee's eyeballs can't be ALL bad, right?

classicsoncall When those African killer bees finally do make their way North to the States, I bet nobody will be laughing then! How long has it been now? I recall hearing about them decades ago, what's taking them so long? Well in a way, the premise of the story has an element of believability to it, but when it comes to battling the little suckers, the whole thing gets rather absurd. Seriously, what was the deal with the poison pellets being dropped from those helicopters - how was that supposed to do anything? Were they supposed to knock out the bees as they fell from the sky, or were the little buggers supposed to die eating them? It just didn't make any sense to me.And wait a minute now, Dr. Walter Krim (Henry Fonda) injects himself with the equivalent of six bee stings when just three will prove fatal? And then waits sixty seconds to give the poison a fair chance before going for the antidote? That was just a bit too bizarre to contemplate, but no more so I guess, than a whole host of famous film stars showing up in this disaster travesty.I hope director Irwin Allen wasn't thinking sequel here because the ending was just a bit too sophomoric to have killed off all of the pesky little critters. You know there had to be a few bees that would have gotten away from that oily inferno to close out the story. Sequel or no though, once was enough for me. I won't get stung again.

jmillerdp 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)

ThatMOVIENut The last major offering from Disaster Master Irwin Allen (Poseidon Adventure, Towering Inferno), The Swarm deals with an invasion of killer bees that threaten to wipe out humanity. Lots of stuff gets destroyed, plenty of people die and well, the Bees evolve, ready for the next attack.Overlong and incredibly padded, Allen's infamous 1978 'bee' movie earns its reputation via a story that keeps protracting via cheap contrivances and idiotic characters (you could make a drinking game out of how long it takes for these guys to come up with obvious solution to killing the bees, as well as what kind of deus ex machina the bees will magically pull to somehow survive the next attack), as well as a preachy and undercooked environmental message that does not deserve my attention when you've pulled every trick to drag this trainwreck out longer than needed, and given me nothing but dimwits to watch.Furthermore, we also have very hit-or-miss special effects (shocking, considering Allen's experience, and that this was released the same year as Donner's first Superman), with the bees ranging from fairly well done to pathetically tacky, with the model work and bits of bluescreen suffering similarly. However, the all star cast of actors do try, with special note going to Slim Pickens and Henry Fonda who do bring some emotional weight to their roles, even if Caine just comes off as really whiny, and the late great Jerry Goldsmith's unsettling yet effective score adds more tension and atmosphere than the film would have otherwise.Beyond a noted curio of bad cinema, you have other so, so, so many options for your monster and disaster movie fixes, so why really bother here?