The Swarm

One day the world will look back to the '70s and find out just how close we all came to being eaten by bees. Not just once, but twice. Both times we were saved by Hollywood. All the greatest film stars of the day banded together and fought mano-a-mano with the Bengal tiger of the skies until the world was once again safe enough for us to go around mugging each other and shooting dogs.

Most surprisingly, who ever would have thought that Michael Caine, known for his Cockney accent and bad haircut, was actually the world's foremost expert on African bees? Or that Peter Fonda, the dad of Jane, father of Peter and uncle of Stavros was a renowned immunologist? Or that Richard Chamberlain had a beard? Or that Starsky from Starsky and Hutch was gay?

Then, on that fateful June 35th, 1978, a date that shall go down in history as one I made up, a swarm of African bees invaded American soil and demanded the right to own a Starbucks franchise. When they were refused, they pooped in all the coffee in sight and went on a wild stinging rampage. Starbucks marketed the poop flavoured coffee as Poopachino.

"I never dreamed that it would turn out to be the bees. They've always been our friend"

The slaughter was horrible. Thousands of innocent civilians were stung in slow motion while camera crews with Panavision lenses just happened to be nearby to capture the footage. Wave after wave of model helicopters were attacked by the swarm and crashed into the side of scale model mountains. Literally hundreds of people felt the need to escape a possibly stinging death from killer bees by crashing through sheets of glass and dying of massive blood loss instead. Someone crashed a model train with Fred MacMurray on board.

THOSE BASTARDS!

Soon, half of Texas was destroyed, not by the bees, but by the stupid ideas of the army.

General: “Hey, I know, let’s use flamethrowers to burn the whole city to the ground. That’ll get rid of those slightly pesky bees!�
Soldier: “But General, what about the devastation? It will take decades to rebuild!�
General: “Look! A bee!�
Soldier: “Aeeeiiiiiiiii... BURN EVERYTHING!�

Finally, Michael Caine discovered that he could lure the bees away from land and out to sea by waving a contract in front of them for a bit-part in another Irwin Allen disaster film, The Weasels!. When the whole swarm had, well, swarmed I guess, out to sea, the army put up a big fence and told the nasty bees to stay out. And blew them up with missiles just in case they didn’t understand English.

And that’s the story of why Americans don’t like Mexicans.

The End.

..or is it just the beginning?...

…no, it’s definitely the end.

Using the only ratio regarded by the film industry as capable of capturing the grandeur of a fake bee attack, The Swarm is framed at 2.35:1, and was shot anamorphically, giving us a (relative for the time) great looking picture. Compared to more contemporary offerings, the picture definitely isn’t as sharp and the colours are far more subdued, but they were different times back then, and even my memories seem a bit faded and soft. Do you like grain? Good, because there’s a bit of it on show here, in varying intensities, but it never gets out of hand enough to ruin the picture. It’s a very clean print also, without much in the way of film artefacts an such, and the whole show runs without any noticeable problem at all, which is quite an effort.

Killer bees swarming in and out of the discrete channels scaring the crap out of you as you munch on your Twisties, now that is super cool. Unfortunately, that’s not the case here. The mix is a Dolby Digital 2.0 surround encoded job, so the rears are mono and never add up to much. The sound on the whole is clear, but rather flat, with dialogue and effects all sounding the same, and desperately in need of a bit of added treble and bass. When the swarm enters the picture, the rear speakers fill with a buzzing-humming sound to give an impression of the size of the attack, but it’s not that effective, though better than nothing I suppose. Also, when this buzzing-humming occurs, any other sound issued from the front three speakers struggles to compete and sounds even flatter than usual.

Frankly, I’m shocked that there are any extras on this DVD at all. A cast and crew List and trailer I can understand, and I’m happy to have, but a 22-minute making of featurette – Inside the Swarm shot at the time of the release was a nice bonus to find. It looks and sounds dated, but it’s still fairly interesting to watch. However, you have to wonder if the actors who spoke so passionately of the real dangers facing mankind from swarms of killer bees in this featurette ever looked back at it and wondered “What the hell was I thinking? Killer bees? Sheesh, I’m an idiot.�

A classic slice of old time disaster epic filmmaking roping in lots of stars and shithouse dialogue to the beat of whatever looming apocalyptic theme they could muster up, The Swarm is missing only one thing (other than a good script, good acting, good effects, and good results, that is) and that is an exclamation mark after the title, as in The Swarm!.

The DVD is a fine effort, not that I can imagine it could have been any better than this, because I’m sure a commentary was probably out of the question (too many cast and crew were probably dead or embarrassed or incontinent), so the featurette is okay with me, and the good looking picture and so-so audio sit comfortably as well.