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    Nostalgia Central
    Home»Movies»Movies by Decade»Movies - 1970s
    Movies - 1970s Movies - S 2 Mins Read

    Swarm, The (1978)

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    African killer bees are moving west and threatening to engulf Houston, Texas.

    Quick, call on entomologist Brad Crane (Michael Caine) and a hive of Hollywood has-beens to out-ham each other while reciting terrible dialogue and getting stung by coloured Styrofoam pellets!

    Crane has long been predicting a human vs insect war, but he “never dreamed it would turn out to be the bees. They were always our friends.”

    Richard Widmark is General Slater, the quick-tempered Air Force man piqued when a civilian is put in charge of the rescue and containment operation (and quite rightly as Caine’s character doesn’t really make a single right decision until the very end).

    Henry Fonda is Dr Krim, a spectacularly useless wheelchair-bound immunologist who dies testing his anti-venom on himself.

    swarm

    Richard Chamberlain turns up for about five minutes as Dr Hubbard and says – truthfully one feels – that he “came reluctantly” and Katharine Ross is Helena, a comely doctor cast presumably because she’s exactly the right height and colouring to be able to nestle appealingly against Michael Caine’s tan-clad chest.

    Producer/director Irwin Allen added new meaning to his “master of disaster” title with this bumbled B-movie, considered one of the worst ever made by popular consensus.

    For such a daft film with such a terminally silly premise, it’s surprisingly bloodthirsty, killing quite a few people on screen, a lot of them children, and then a few hundred more casually when the bees derail a train.

    However, there’s much to enjoy precisely because it is so awful, with Queen Bee Olivia de Havilland’s laughable love triangle with Ben Johnson and Fred MacMurray being the only strange mating ritual Caine should be studying.

    Brad Crane
    Michael Caine
    Helena
    Katharine Ross
    General Slater
    Richard Widmark
    Dr Hubbard
    Richard Chamberlain
    Maureen Schuster
    Olivia de Havilland
    Felix
    Ben Johnson
    Anne MacGregor
    Lee Grant
    Dr Andrews
    José Ferrer
    Rita Bard
    Patty Duke
    Jud Hawkins
    Slim Pickens
    Major Baker
    Bradford Dillman
    Clarence
    Fred MacMurray
    Dr Krim
    Henry Fonda
    General Thompson
    Cameron Mitchell

    Director
    Irwin Allen

    Video

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    Irwin Allen
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