Region Code: A
Rating: Unrated
Duration: 156 Minutes
Subtitles English SDH
Audio: English DTS HD-Master Audio 2.0 with Optional English Subtitles
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (2.40:1)
Director: Irwin Allen
Cast: Michael Caine, Katharine Ross, Richard Widmark, Richard Chamberlain, Olivia de Havilland, Ben Johnson, José Ferrer, Patty Duke, Slim Pickens, Fred MacMurray, Henry Fonda, Cameron Mitchell
70's disaster flicks were always overstuffed with big-name casts, but very few were as over-overstuffed as with Irwin Allen's killer-bee extravaganza The Swarm (1978). Coming in at a whopping 156-minutes long this extended version is also over-long. Let's get some of the cast out of the way, we have Michael Caine (The Island), Katharine Ross (The Legacy), Richard Widmark (To The Devil a Daughter), Richard Chamberlain (King Solomon's Mines), Olivia de Havilland (Hush… Hush, Sweet Charlotte), Ben Johnson (Terror Train), José Ferrer (Bloody Birthday), Patty Duke (You'll Like My Mother), Slim Pickens (1941), Fred MacMurray (The Shaggy Dog), Henry Fonda (Once Upon A Time in the West), and of course it wouldn't be a 70's b-movie without the talents of one Mr. Cameron Mitchell (Raw Force). The film opens with group of soldiers in contamination suits storming a Texas missile base to find that the soldiers there have been killed out by an unknown enemy. Enter Dr. Bradford Crane (Michael Caine, Death Trap) who is strangely already on the scene, he informs Major Baker (Bradford Dillman, Piranha) that the base was attacked by a variant strain of Africanized bees, which he scoffs at. However, a short time later a swarm of bees down a military helicopter and it becomes evident that killer bees are no joke. Not long after that the swarm arrive to spoil a family picnic, killing a boy's family as he watches on in horror from the safety of the family car, this is a scene that as a kid traumatized me, the kid really sells the helplessness and horror of it all.
Much to the chagrin of General Thaddeus Slater (Richard Widmark) the president puts Dr. Crane in charge of the response to to the killer-bee threat, leading to some fun scenery chewing monologues from Caine with spittle spewing from his mouth, seemingly more venomous than the killer-bee stings. There's an ill-advised romance for the entomologist with base doctor Helena (Katharine Ross, The Stepford Wives), and a ridiculous septuagenarian love triangle with vintage Hollywood actors Olivia de Havilland, Ben Johnson and Fred MacMurray. This sub-plot is a terrible but I like where it ends-up, at a bottom of a ravine in a fiery train wreck! Side characters just keep popping up everywhere throughout the film, including a wheelchair-bound Dr. Walter Krim (Henry Fonda, Tentacles) who is tasked with creating a bee-sting serum, who winds up testing the experimental drug on himself with dire consequences, by dire I mean an overly long and overwrought death scene, but is was worth for a scene of Caine crying over his corpse while kissing his hand!
I love it when the still ill from being stung teenager who saw his parents die earlier goes back to the picnic site with a few of his friends for revenge, hurling Molotov cocktails at the swarm, then running and hiding underneath some trash cans for protection. They survive but the riled-up swarm fly into town and kill over 200 people, way to go kid! A strange side effect of the bee venom is that the survivors suffer hallucinations of giant bees, these scenes are ridiculous, and brought to mind a similar scene from killer-rabbit films Night of the Lepus (1972), which for the record is a much better movie.
The whole shebang is overripe, overwrought and overstuffed, but it's definitely a so-bad-it's-good scenario, somewhere in this meandering disaster of a disaster flick there's probably a decent killer-bee film, but it's lost in a myriad of random side characters and bad melodrama. The vintage special effects are okay in my opinion, certainly passable for the era, with optical effects used to create swarms of bees in the skies, the hallucinated giant bee visions are probably the most dated. The practical stuff is a bit more successful, we get bodies covered in bees, masses of bees being blown out of tight spaces as if they're being blasted with a leaf blower, and the soldiers fighting swarms with flame-throwers look great, I love the fire-stunts here, we get some really good ones.
The killer-bees here manage to rack up quite a body count, they derail a train killing hundreds, and then set their sights on a nuclear power plant. Richard Chamberlain plays a scientist who shows up at the plant to warn the chief operations officer of the impending threat, who responds incredulously, saying there's no way bees could harm the plant, and that's when they show up and the whole place goes nuclear, literally killing tens of thousand of people in the explosion! For all his venom spewed about not using pesticides to kill the bees for fear of an eco-logical disaster Dr. Bradford's final solution proves to be quite an aquatic doomsday scenario, with he and his love interest espousing some dialogue to the backdrop of the ocean on fire!
The Swarm is big and dumb, but I cannot help myself, I have a soft spot for these overstuffed disaster flicks, I find it hard not too love the inherent scenery chewing and boneheaded ideas. Make no mistake though, this is a big-budget slice of 70's schlock, if you love the bad stuff this thing is stuffed with it, it's like a triple-stuffed Oreo of best/worst movie-making.
Audio/Video: The extended cut of The Swarm (1978) arrives on Blu-ray from Warner Archive with a new 2018 2K scan from an interpositive, framed in 2.40:1 widescreen, the 1080p image is a massive upgrade from the previous WAC DVD release, it's quite a stinger, I mean stunner! Grain is finely managed and resolved, details are crisp and the depth and clarity is rather surprising, contrast is markedly improved, and the fine details of the 70's clothing textures, facial nooks and crannies, and the minutia of the bees are nicely resolved. Audio comes by way of a solid English DTS-HD MA 2.0 stereo track, it's a bit thin at times, but we get a really fun and exuberant score from Jerry Goldsmith (Alien), it comes through with some nice buoyancy, optional English subtitles are provided, and they are not ALL CAPS subtitles which WAC were doing not so long ago.
Extras mirror the previous DVD release, we get the vintage 22-min making of featurette with interviews from Director Irwin Allen, Actors Michael Caine, Henry Fonda, Patty Duke Austin, Richard Chamberlain. There's plenty of behind-the-scenes video of the film being shot including filming scenes with live bees and fire stunts, and of stunt coordinator Paul Stader working with the actors during the train derailment scene. We also get a three-minute trailer for the film. I know that WAC's business plan does not include creating new bonus content for their titles these days, but I would have loved the option to view the more streamlines theatrical version of the film, plus an audio commentary, there must be so many behind-the-scenes stories to be told about the making of this film, it would have been wonderful to hear a film historian like David Del Valle dish about it for nearly three hours!
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| Main Menu |
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| Behind The Scenes Documentary Inside the Swarm (22 min) |
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| - Theatrical Trailer (3 min) HD |
Special Features:
- Behind The Scenes Documentary Inside the Swarm (22 min)
- Theatrical Trailer (3 min) HD
Bad bee-movie fans will absolutely delight in this sting-filled slice of 70's schlock, Warner Archive have been doing excellent work for the bad-movie crowd with HD releases of The Black Scorpion (1957), and From Hell It Came (1957). They've done another bang-up job with The Swarm, it might be a sting-ker but it's never looked better, if you're like me and cannot get enough of the bad stuff this is the good stuff!
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