Sunday, October 1, 2017

The Swarm (1978) and How Crazy the Bees Were



“We've been fighting a losing battle against the insects for fifteen years, but I never thought I'd see the final face-off in my lifetime. And I never dreamed, that it would turn out to be the bees. They've always been our friend.” – Brad Crane, The Swarm

Early in The Happening, Elliot Moore (Mark Wahlberg) pondered the disappearance of bees with the students in his high school science class.  They came to the conclusion that an unexplainable force of nature must have made them disappear.  The removal of bees from the world would be devastating to most ecosystems since the bees themselves are a force of nature, pollinating many of the plants that bring life to Earth.  They are the backbone of nature in many ways.  However, people fear the creatures, seeing them as buzzing little annoyances.  People don’t want to risk being stung.  The venom in a bee sting can hurt and sometimes kill.  As with any fear, movies picked up on this.

The Swarm was an Irwin Allen directed disaster movie about a swarm of African Killer Bees invading Texas.  There was massive death and destruction, as well as a cast filled with recognizable faces.  Michael Caine starred as Dr. Brad Crane, an entomologist studying the bees to find a way to get rid of them before the death toll rose too high.  He brought in help from Dr. Hubbard (Richard Chamberlain), Dr. Newman (Morgan Paull), and Dr. Krim (Henry Fonda).  The military oversaw this mission.  Specifically, General Slater (Richard Widmark) oversaw things while Captain Helena Anderson (Katharine Ross) worked with Crane to save locals from the bees.  The locals were mostly inhabitants of nearby Marysville, including Mayor Clarence (Fred MacMurray), Maureen Schuester (Olivia de Havilland) and Felix Austin (Ben Johnson).  Other characters entered and exited the movie at various points as Texas was torn apart by the bees.

African Killer Bees were one of those fears that seemed like such a big thing at the time, but now isn’t much of anything.  That fear emanated through The Swarm, making the bees into one of the most destructive threats to ever hit the USA.  The bees could destroy anything in their paths, getting increasingly more ridiculous as the movie played on.

At the start of The Swarm, the military entered one of their bases and found all of their men dead.  They thought that some sort of biological weapon had been used.  It wasn’t so.  As Dr. Crane would later figure out through tapes of the events leading up to the attack, the base had done some sort of alarm test with their sirens.  The sirens sounded the same as the mating call of the African Killer Bees.  The bees were attracted to the sound and infiltrated the base to mate.  They found the military personnel and killed them.  It was a form of biological weaponry, only it wasn’t humans against humans.  It was humans against bees.

The military quickly learned to take the bees seriously.  They sent two helicopters to follow a slow moving mass.  That mass ended up being the bees.  The African Killer Bees didn’t appreciate being followed by military helicopters and attacked the flying machines.  The pilots lost control of both helicopters and crashed.  Explosions left no doubt that the personnel died during the crashes.  This event helped to prove Dr. Crane’s point about how dangerous the bees were.  The military had no option but to let him do his work to try and stop the bees.

The bees followed up this military intrigue by going after the small town of Marysville.  This happened in two stages.  The first was when they attacked a small family that was having a picnic in the countryside.  Paul (Christian Juttner), the son, was the only member of the family to escape the bees.  He watched as his mother and father were covered and killed by the African Killer Bees, and fled in a bee covered car.  The bees followed him to Marysville, where they subsequently attacked the town.  They went after the people in the main square.  They attacked children on recess at school.  The visuals during this portion of the movie were great as every person attacked by the bees was shown covered in the bees.

Marysville residents weren’t too excited about the attack and decided to flee the town before the bees returned.  They got onto a train and headed to safety.  They wouldn’t make it.  As the train rolled on, the bees gave chase.  They attacked the engine, causing a chain reaction.  The train fell down the side of a hill or mountain, killing most of the people on board.  A few of the major characters were taken out of the story with this incident.  From this point forward, there was one, more destructive, act that the bees would cause.

Dr. Hubbard was sent to a nuclear power plant to inform the workers that the bees were headed that way.  Dr. Andrews (Jose Ferrer), the man in charge of the plant, said that the bees weren’t a threat.  His nuclear power plant could withstand an attack by the bees.  But it couldn’t.  The bees immediately made their way into the plant.  They killed the two doctors as well as many of the other workers inside.  This was another scene that did great work with the bees being everywhere.  Chamberlain and Ferrer were covered with bees.  It was visually stunning.  The bees managed to do something inside the nuclear plant that caused it to explode, killing over 200 thousand people in the area.  Somehow the bees survived, though.

Fire became the primary weapon of the heroes in their attempts to stop the bees.  After the explosion of the nuclear plant, Houston was evacuated and set on fire to try and kill the incoming bees.  When the bees invaded the headquarters for the military force against them, General Slater and Major Baker (Bradford Dillman) used flamethrowers and their lives to let Dr. Crane and Captain Anderson escape.  The two escapees came up with a new plan.  They oil slicked some water off the coast of Texas.  They used buoys to lure the bees out there with the sound of the sirens from the military base.  When the swarm got to the buoys, the oil was ignited and the African Killer Bees were killed.

The Swarm was a disaster movie through and through.  The only difference was that the disaster was a swarm of African Killer Bees.  Everything escalated to insane heights.  The only reason it didn’t work as well as other disaster movies was because the story was about bees causing trouble.  It wasn’t a fire that was doing stuff.  It wasn’t an overturned boat or an earthquake.  There were no weather issues.  It was one swarm of African Killer Bees causing the same amount of destruction.  That’s a little bit ridiculous.

The African Killer Bees aren’t as big of a fear now as they used to be.  That makes looking back at The Swarm somewhat of a look back into history.  It’s not a movie that is entirely relevant now.  But it is semi-fun.  If you like to see destruction, and you want to see people covered in bees, this is the kind of movie to show that.  It’s not something that should be taken seriously.  It’s goofy.  But it’s still entertaining.
Here are some less entertaining notes:

  • The Swarm was suggested by @brideofcrapula, who also suggested Fatal Deviation.
  • The Happening was mentioned at the beginning of this post.
  • Cameron Mitchell was in The Swarm, after being featured in Terror in Beverly Hills.
  • Howard Culver returned to the Sunday “Bad” Movies with The Swarm.  He had previously been in The Million Dollar Duck.
  • Don ‘Red’ Barry appeared in The Swarm.  He was also in Orca.
  • The Swarm was the second Sunday “Bad” Movie for Michael Caine, who was in Jaws: The Revenge.
  • Finally, Morgan Paull showed up in The Swarm.  He had done voice work in GoBots: Battle of the Rock Lords.
  • Have you seen The Swarm?  Do you still fear the African Killer Bees?  Let me know your thoughts about anything related to this post in the comments section.
  • The comment section is also a good place to let me know about the movies I should be watching as part of the Sunday “Bad” Movies.  Go to the comments.  Put the movie there.  I’ll see what you have to say and likely put the movie in my list of possibilities for future scheduling.  Or you can find me on Twitter and do the same thing.
  • Sometimes when I watch bad movies, I share clips of them on snapchat.  If you want to see those clips, add me.  Jurassicgriffin.
  • Now onto what’s coming up next week.  The movie will be a little movie called Suburban Sasquatch.  It’s in one of the movie sets I have.  If you haven’t heard of it, don’t worry.  I’ll be writing about it in a week and then you’ll know all about it.  See you then.

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