“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.
No comments:
Post a Comment