Killer bees attack residents in a small town preparing for a flower festival. Fred MacMurray begs Olivia de Havilland to marry him and she looks to the heavens with a glowing, "Oh, how lucky I am!" (they both perish.) When the train--packed full of stock characters--derailed, the theater audience I saw this with actually cheered; too bad producer Irwin Allen wasn't aboard. This film ranks right up there with Allen's "When Time Ran Out...", still to this day the reigning champ of bad cinema. The special effects are actually very good, but the script is so lame and the direction so stilted that the results are not uneven so much as they are unintentionally funny. B-grade actors like Richard Chamberlain must've been mighty grateful for Irwin Allen's disaster films (and the chance to work in big-budget productions), but that's no excuse for Michael Caine's limp appearance. Had Mel Brooks put his name on it, "The Swarm" might have been the top comedy of its year. NO STARS from ****
Review of The Swarm
