I saw this movie a long time ago when I was little. All I remember were some bees that attack some town and that people were running around screaming trying to seek cover indoors.
I also remembered that it was called "The Swarm".
Now that I'm all grown up, I thought I might try to hunt that little movie down at the video store and watch it again. I located the video on the bottom shelf in the "Action" section of the video store. The cover had long been faded, but I recognised the "boxed" faces of Olivia, Henry, Fred, Richard, Michael and Katharine below big red letters that read "The Swarm". The first thing I thought was, "Wow! I don't remember all these actors being in this!" The second thing I thought was, "Wow! I can finally watch this again and appreciate all the new things I missed out on when I was a naive young little boy!"
Oh boy, was I in for a surprise!
When I put the video cassette in my VCR, some fool had forgotten to rewind it. As I rewound the film, I thought to myself, "How dare he treat this classic with such disrespect!" When the movie started, the opening titles boomed the names of Oscar winning stars and well-known faces to both the silver screen and the television screen. After I recognised about twelve names in secession of each other, I thought I was about to witness a lost film of epic proportions.
Unfortunately, I sat through about 2 and a half hours of bad acting, bad scriptwriting and EXTREMELY bad special effects. What looked like stock footage of a swarm of bees placed onto a film of people running around trying to look scared turned out to be something that made me feel like an idiot. Most disaster films have some sort of a background plotline running through it. In this film, it was about some ridiculous love triangle going on between Olivia De Havilland, Ben Johnson and Fred MacMurray. They bicker whilst preparing for the town festivities. They bicker while the bees attack them. They bicker on the trail as it derails and plunges into a fiery explosion. In what may have been one of Olivia's finest performances (closely behind "Lady In A Cage"), she spends one scene shouting into the school P.A. system, "There is a swarm of bees heading this way!" I kept hoping that the camera would catch a small smirk on her face while she said it, but she looked all too serious.
Henry Fonda makes a 2 minute cameo appearance in a wheelchair predicting where and when the bees will attack next. Richard Widmark plays a megalomaniacal military officer who thinks that the best way to erradicate the "bee problem" is to hose them with fire (!!). Michael Caine and Katharine Ross spend a good part of the movie racing around trying to either catch up with the bees or run away from them. I'm not sure that they could make up their minds half the time as to what they were supposed to be doing. The rest of the supporting cast spend their precious four minutes on screen running around screaming and flailing their arms in the air as the stock footage of bees swarm around them.
Richard Chamberlain turns in one of his most campiest performances to date. His grand finale is in a nuclear power plant that explodes with about as much excitement and authenticity as an episode of "Thunderbirds".
The screen extras were basically paid to scream one line only, "The bees are coming!... The bees are coming!".
When the credits finally rolled,(and my eyes finally stopped), I hit the eject button on my VCR, drove tight-lipped and pale-faced and returned the movie to the video store. The only understanding I got out of renting this movie was why the previous viewer before me never rewound the movie.
If you want to see a movie where Oscar winners and much-cherished film veterans drive a stake through their movie careers and announce either their retirement from the industry on the spot or on this planet altogether, then you should rent this movie.
If you want to have a good laugh - forget this movie. Rent "Dawn of the Dead" instead. At least the zombies had more life in that movie.
0/10
I also remembered that it was called "The Swarm".
Now that I'm all grown up, I thought I might try to hunt that little movie down at the video store and watch it again. I located the video on the bottom shelf in the "Action" section of the video store. The cover had long been faded, but I recognised the "boxed" faces of Olivia, Henry, Fred, Richard, Michael and Katharine below big red letters that read "The Swarm". The first thing I thought was, "Wow! I don't remember all these actors being in this!" The second thing I thought was, "Wow! I can finally watch this again and appreciate all the new things I missed out on when I was a naive young little boy!"
Oh boy, was I in for a surprise!
When I put the video cassette in my VCR, some fool had forgotten to rewind it. As I rewound the film, I thought to myself, "How dare he treat this classic with such disrespect!" When the movie started, the opening titles boomed the names of Oscar winning stars and well-known faces to both the silver screen and the television screen. After I recognised about twelve names in secession of each other, I thought I was about to witness a lost film of epic proportions.
Unfortunately, I sat through about 2 and a half hours of bad acting, bad scriptwriting and EXTREMELY bad special effects. What looked like stock footage of a swarm of bees placed onto a film of people running around trying to look scared turned out to be something that made me feel like an idiot. Most disaster films have some sort of a background plotline running through it. In this film, it was about some ridiculous love triangle going on between Olivia De Havilland, Ben Johnson and Fred MacMurray. They bicker whilst preparing for the town festivities. They bicker while the bees attack them. They bicker on the trail as it derails and plunges into a fiery explosion. In what may have been one of Olivia's finest performances (closely behind "Lady In A Cage"), she spends one scene shouting into the school P.A. system, "There is a swarm of bees heading this way!" I kept hoping that the camera would catch a small smirk on her face while she said it, but she looked all too serious.
Henry Fonda makes a 2 minute cameo appearance in a wheelchair predicting where and when the bees will attack next. Richard Widmark plays a megalomaniacal military officer who thinks that the best way to erradicate the "bee problem" is to hose them with fire (!!). Michael Caine and Katharine Ross spend a good part of the movie racing around trying to either catch up with the bees or run away from them. I'm not sure that they could make up their minds half the time as to what they were supposed to be doing. The rest of the supporting cast spend their precious four minutes on screen running around screaming and flailing their arms in the air as the stock footage of bees swarm around them.
Richard Chamberlain turns in one of his most campiest performances to date. His grand finale is in a nuclear power plant that explodes with about as much excitement and authenticity as an episode of "Thunderbirds".
The screen extras were basically paid to scream one line only, "The bees are coming!... The bees are coming!".
When the credits finally rolled,(and my eyes finally stopped), I hit the eject button on my VCR, drove tight-lipped and pale-faced and returned the movie to the video store. The only understanding I got out of renting this movie was why the previous viewer before me never rewound the movie.
If you want to see a movie where Oscar winners and much-cherished film veterans drive a stake through their movie careers and announce either their retirement from the industry on the spot or on this planet altogether, then you should rent this movie.
If you want to have a good laugh - forget this movie. Rent "Dawn of the Dead" instead. At least the zombies had more life in that movie.
0/10