THE SWARM (1978) (Warner Archive Blu-ray Review)

THE SWARM (1978) 

Label: Warner Archive
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!

Main Menu

Behind The Scenes Documentary Inside the Swarm (22 min) 

- 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!  

MORE BLU-RAY SCREENSHOTS 

THE BALLAD OF CABLE HOGUE (1970) (Blu-ray Review)

THE BALLAD OF CABLE HOGUE (1970)

Label: Warner Archive
Region Code: A
Rating: R
Duration: 121 Minutes
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (1.78:1)
Audio: English DTS-HD MA Mono 2.0 with Optional English SDH Director: Sam Peckinpah
Cast: Jason Robards, Stella Stevens, David Warner, Strother Martin, Slim Pickens, L.Q. Jones, Peter Whitney, R.G. Armstrong, Gene Evans, William Mims, Kathleen Freeman, Susan O'Connell, Vaughn Taylor, Max Evans, James Anderson1.

It's 1908, a trio of grubby desert rats are scouring the Western frontier looking for a water source, we have Cable Hogue (Jason Robards, Something Wicked This Way Comes), Taggart (L.Q. Jones, A Boy and His Dog) and the dim-witted Bowen (Strother Martin, The Brotherhood of Satan). Water rations are running low for the weary trio and Hogue's desperate partners turn on him, taking his share of the water and abandoning him for vulture meat. He wanders the desert lost and alone for days, parched, blistered and weary from dehydration he falls to the ground during a particularly nasty dust storm, leaving his fate in the hands of the Lord, only to find a natural water spring bubbling up to the surface right below his feet. 

Discovering that his new found spring is the the only watering spot on the forty-mile stretch of road between the towns of Gila and Dead Dog, he manages to scrape up a few bucks to purchase the 2 acres of land around it, and immediately begins to set-up a humble looking roadside watering hole called Cable Springs. The plan is to sell water to stagecoach passersby for 10 cents a head, only his first customer doesn't want to pay, though he does in the end, with his life. His second customer, and first to pay (though reluctantly) is a wandering man of the Lord, the lustful Rev. Joshua Duncan Sloane (David Warner, Time After Time) who is part man of the cloth, and part unrepentant sinner, and the two men strike up an uneasy friendship. 

On a supply run into Dead Dog Cable runs into Hildy (Stella Stevens, Chained Heat), the town whore, a busty blond eyeful who stops him dead in his tracks, and the two begin a quirky courtship of sorts. What follows is a quirky love story between Cable and Hildy, and also the story of how a penniless man embodied the American dream, finding water where there wasn't any to find, prospering, and also a tale of revenge. Eventually the two men who double-crossed him return, there's some revenge, but the outcome is not your standard old west revenger.

The Ballad of Cable Hogue is the story of a man who pulled himself up by the bootstraps and made a name for himself in the middle of nowhere with almost nothing, it's almost a character study more than a Western, and maybe that's why it flopped when it was initially released, it's not the usual western, it's wasn't even what you would call a new western, it was different, and that's probably why it still resonates today. Robards in in good company with his co-stars, his friendship with Joshua is fun, the preacher has an overactive libido, he's not too trustworthy, and it seems no vulnerable woman is safe from his lecherous advances in the name of the Lord, and while he and Hogue are at odds now and again, somehow the friendship remains true right up till the very end, capped off with a striking eulogy. Hogue's infatuation with the town prostitute offers plenty of comedy and more than a few well-deserved tugs on the old heartstrings, the movie is almost as poignant as it is funny, at a certain point their relationship seems cemented and bound, but some poorly thought words over the dinner table throws it all into disarray in a heartbeat, it's such an effective scene you can see both their thoughts written across their faces. 

The dusty Western locations look great, with attractive cinematography and some novel editing tricks, we get split screen and sped-up cameras which give a few comedic moments a bit of vaudeville zing, perhaps even a bit too silly for some tastes, but it works, though I must say that the humor is not something I expected in such abundance my first go round with this movie, it's more a comedic fable than a western, especially at the end when the the invention of the gas powered motorcar threaten to doom Cable's watering hole, he's sees the change coming, but still somehow manages to get thrown under it's wheels. 

Memorable scenes abound, from Cable refusing to pay Hildy, the hooker with heart of gold, for her services, what transpires is a comedy of errors with Hildy launching a porcelain wash basin off her balcony, aiming for his head, but he ends up bringing down a tent full of church goers who are none too pleased, running Cable out of town. I also loved his revenge against the duplicitous duo who left him for dead, they find themselves in a pit while Cable throws  in rattlers! But there's more to it, there's a certain revenge but there's also forgiveness and compassion, which was unexpected.  

Aside from the fantastic main cast the movie is loaded with memorable western faces in supporting roles, Slim Pickens (1941) shows up as a stagecoach driver, Peter Whitney (The Rough Riders) as a banker who finances Cable's watering hole, R.G. Armstrong (The Car) as the proprietor of the stage coach company, and the previously mentioned L.Q. Jones and Strother Martin, both of whom featured in Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch. 

Audio/Video: Warner Archive step up to the plate with another Peckinpah platter with The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970)after their handsome release of Ride The High Country (1962), presented in the 1.78 widescreen aspect ratio with a freshly minted 2017 2K scan from the interpositive. The Lucian Ballard (The Wild Bunch) cinematography looks fantastic, full of dust and grit, the colors are mostly earth tone and not too colorful, with just a few exceptions at the whorehouse and some later scenes, but the colors look accurate, nicely saturated and the grain structure looks tight. There's an abundance of pleasing detail to the image within the period dressing and clothing textures, Hogue's face is nicely rendered, a dusty and whiskered face full of character. The disc has an English DTS-HD MA Mono audio track, the desert sounds come through authentically and well-balanced, the score from Jerry Goldsmith (The Omen) suits the poignant Western romantic comedy, as do the songs of Richard Gillis. At times the movie turns into a musical of sorts with both Cable and Hildy launching into folksy song at one point. Optional English subtitles are provided. 

Onto the extras Warner have ported over all the extras from their 2006 DVD edition, we have the commentary from Twilight Time's Nick Redman, and Peckinpah scholars Paul Seydor, Garner Simmons and David Weddle. It's a nice appreciation of the director and of the film, commenting on the various themes and on the music, cinematography and cast and crew. There's also a vintage 27-min interview with star Stella Stevens, speaking about her early career in the studio system and working with Peckinpah, she's very upfront on her feelings for the man, she speaks more fondly of Jason Robards. we also get a three-minute HD trailer for the film. 

Special Features: 
- Commentary by Nick Redman, Paul Seydor, Garner Simmons and David Weddle
- Featurette The Ladiest Damn'd Lady: An Afternoon with Stella Stevens (27 min) 
- Theatrical Trailer (3 min) HD

The more I watch The Ballad of Cable Hogue the higher it ascends as my favorite Peckinpah movie, which may have something to do with my own advancement in age. In my 20s I was drawn to the bloody violence of The Wild Bunch and the visceral machismo of Straw Dogs, but this comedic Western fable of a desert rat turned scrappy entrepreneur with it's quirky love story keeps winning me over, again and again, and the new HD presentation from WAC is wonderful, highly recommended.