Spooky Halloween: The Swarm

So in my "long day's journey into emotional sterility" I watched a few 70s disaster films. In 1975, Jaws became the first blockbuster of a young Stephen Spielberg, and the Jaws-like subgenre was a kind of disaster film, except one where the disaster had intention. Rob Hill of the Bad Movie Bible has you covered if you want to know more. For Spooky Halloween, I thought I'd do another favorite...horror? film of mine, which is definitely a disaster: the Swarm, from 1978.

The Swarm is about swarms of angry killer bees, and it was directed by Irwin Allen, the producer/director of The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno. In fact, the cast and crew are all recognizable names, especially if you know period disaster films. It stars Michael Caine as a heroic entomologist, Dr. Bradford Crane, and in the first sentence of description, it has already gotten silly. This movie is basically an alien invasion film, where the aliens were replaced by bees, possibly as a prank. Last year for Halloween, we did The Devil Doll, which I enjoy because it is so weird. The Swarm, in contrast, is just terrible, punctuated with moments of unintentional hilarity.

We open in the American Southwest, with a tense scene of USAF soldiers securing a USAF missile base. The base has stopped communicating, y'see. The troops have chemical warfare gear on, and are armed with flamethrowers as well as M16s. The flamethrowers are odd: the only thing I can think of is the costuming was already made, so they just threw it into the scene despite the fact that the rationale for flamethrowers only happens near the movie's end. On the base they find only: a suspicious van.

"Ford Econoline, size: small."

The effect is a bit like Half-Life, 1978 edition.

Maybe somebody wanted to open on Stormtroopers. Stormtroopesques?

The fact-grubbing part of my brain wants to you know missile silos are not structured like underground skyscrapers.

Lead by a Major Baker, the team gets to the command center only to find the crew dead, their computers full of rheostats and blinking lights. Starring the Computer says the visually unbelievable computers were originally part of the SAGE system, and sticking with how this movie is going to go, it's kind of amazing to me a real nuclear defense computer is going to be used as a prop in this control room, that could be part of a Logan's Run set. The soldiers radio General Slater, (Richard Widmark) who was concerned that this missile silo has been neutralized in a chemical warfare first strike. He flies in, only to find:

Dr. Bradford Crane, who's been following the killer bee problem. He likes sunflower seeds. His outfit is dapper. And he's been personally empowered by the President to be an entomologist-at-large to tackle insect problems. Post bee swarm, he parked his entomologist van outside and went in, to see if he could help.

It occurs to me that "missile silo penetrated by bees" is probably the first writing mistake. Nuclear Missile silos are famously impervious to the outside world. By having the bees penetrate something that should be comically impenetrable, they've made what the bees can and cannot penetrate arbitrary - a few scenes from now, bees fail to penetrate a public school, and an old Ford Mustang.

Anyway, nobody believes Professor Crane, however this very rapidly becomes stupid on the part of the other characters. General Slater organizes an interception of a slow moving cloud on radar, interception by two helicopters. This goes poorly. They helicopters fly into the cloud of bees and somehow go out of control and crash. The second helicopter crew delivers our first brilliant line "Oh my God! Bees, bees, millions of bees!" So Dr. Crane is vindicated immediately - although General Slater still orders up more aircraft to track the swarm. [When the helicopters crash, they are models - I'm just mentioning it because I like nice model work.]

Dr. Crane gets introduced in this sequence, though the concept of killer bees is already seen as read. The General attempts to wave off talk of africanized bees killing his men, saying the bees were "ten years away, at least." Dr. Crane retorts "On who's schedule, general? Yours, or theirs?" [Michael Caine really earns his paycheck in this movie, acting the hell out of whatever he is given. Him refusing for a second to give into the omnipresent silliness makes the movie that much funnier.] General Slater, despite hearing two helicopter crews die while screaming about bees, is still not sold (IE he's putting Crane under arrest) but then Katherine Ross steps in, as Dr. Anderson, who confirms the bee swarm attack, and managed to rescue six airmen by getting them into the hospital bunker, then closing the hatch. General Slater makes the same impressed sound like he'd just been told the Doctor's back deck had been built by her. An exchange follows where she needs antitoxins to save the lives of the four remaining airmen, Dr. Crane says, suavely "I have cardio-pep in my van" and Dr. Anderson says she just finished reading an article in the "medical heath journal", by a...Dr. Crane? about treating bee venom with it. For the viewer, there is zero ambiguity about who's in the right.

Which kneecaps any dramatic tension we could have had, and makes any further non-obedience to Prof. Crane feel like time wasting. That doesn't stop General Slater from objecting to Dr. Crane's van substance, when HE can get the centres for disease control on the phone. Dr. Crane tops that by recommending 'the best immunologist in the country', a personal friend of his, which the General accepts, because Dr. Walter Krim is another character, not that it makes any sense. When Crane leaves the room, Dr. Anderson confirms the "attacked by bees" story, although General Slater is still somehow disbelieving. I can't decide if that's because this situation is insane (and thus good for him) or he's just being contrarian.

MEANWHILE

Bees loom over a family of happy picnickers. There is a sinister camera pull in on one bee, and we get a POV compound-eye shot of it looking at the family.


The changing face of evil.

The kid, Paul, is dispatched back to the car to get something as bees investigate the picnic. The mom goes full union carbide immediately, spraying bug repellent over her food. Then, the bees spew forth from the tree, and the mom and dad are sandblasted, except instead of sand, bees. The kid hides in the family car, a green mustang. As it is the late 1970s, the bees are just stinging people to death - about the best they can do is to have people struggle with the swarm in slow motion. You may wonder why people are dying from being stung, and the movie will get to that. The kid knows where the backup keys are stored, and rolls off, the car covered in bees.

Back at the silo, they have a video teleconference with the Pentagon, who are annoyed with all the bee talk. The magical teleconference abilities of movies and TV are so much more glamorous than the real thing.

MEANWHILE, IN IDEAL SMALL TOWN AMERICA

Marysville is a town where they grow flowers, we're told. Come to think of it, that's a weird missed opportunity for visuals, since the town otherwise is that small town set where they'd later shoot Back to the Future, and outside of town is just California countryside. A love triangle is established with Olivia de Havilland, Fred Macmurray, and Ben Johnson. This is something the movie does. Except for a single example I'll mention later, the movie has a bunch of characters who have various melodrama that completely fail to connect to the plot. The result is the melodrama is just wasting everybody's time - brownian motion melodrama. For example, I think this go nowhere love triangle of old people is just so we know somebody later in the train crash.

Back at the silo, not only does Dr. Crane get his credentials certified, he's put in command, basically having war powers for dealing with the bees. This is vindication from orbit. Dr. Crane orders the General to get these people (list) and this equipment (list) airlifted here to the silo, because it's going to be their new base. General Slater, of course, is still suspicious. Meanwhile plot threads entangle as Dr. Andersen knows Paul Durant and his family, Paul being the kid who's the survivor of the bee swarm. Soon, Dr. Andersen, Dr. Crane, and a USAF major detached to spy on Crane arrive in the American small town.

Paul is in a hospital bed, hallucinating about bees. Big ones.

This doesn't phase Prof. Crane who talks Paul through the bee hallucination. The bee hallucination was caused by two (2) bee stings. Next scene, we learn that the bees are smart enough and strong enough to bite through plastic cups to shred plastic to "line their nests" with it, and what the fuck, screenplay, bees have hives? Which are explicitly about surviving the winter?

Back at the silo, Dr. Walter Krim arrives, played by Henry Fonda. Krim is in a wheelchair. General Slater wants a "knockout punch" against the bees - he doesn't really specify what that would be. Dr. Krim examines the patients. The fact that bees normally do not cause intense hallucinations when they sting you does not come up.

They wheel doc to the mortuary (I know somebody was probably thinking of the Andromeda strain, but it just reminds me of Black Mesa now) where the immunologist is going to - find something in these bodies?The Missile base is getting the dead from the bees. We establish Doc and Crane have a warm relationship. That's a slightly odd sentence, but let me tell you that's about all the time the movie spends establishing it.

Holy Shit, speaking of the Cold War, Slim Pickins is in this movie as a Sheriff? Wait, no, they've just dressed him like a Sheriff. Deeply confusing. If you know the actor, especially his voice, you kind of expect him to be a small town sheriff no matter what's going on. He's the county engineer and is threatening to cut off the Missile Bases water supply, something that a missile base should be even less vulnerable to than bees. He wants to find out if his son, an airman on the missile base, is dead. He is! That's the last we see of this character, although we learn the dead airman had a pregnant girlfriend.

Our scientists get some bad news: African killer bees now carry a venom more...envenoming? than the Australian box jellyfish. In non fatal doses [1-2 stings] it blasts your mind with bee hallucinations. 3 or more, death. Doc Krim says to Crane "well, looks like your nightmare has come true." We don't have time for that absurdity to sink in, because Prof. Crane says:

"We've been fighting a losing battle against the insects for 15 years. But I'd never thought I'd see the final face off in my lifetime -- and I never dreamed it would turn out to be the bees! They've always been our friends."

A meeting has been arranged in the Missile silo...conference room. Dr Crane with all due gravity announces the African Bees have invaded. Richard Chamberlain, rival entomologist, denies such a thing could happen. I mean, he just arrived, but I wish he'd at least get up to speed on current events - not only was Crane proven correct about this, he now is in command of this USAF base. Chamberlain wants to argue about the species of deadly bees. Given everything that's happened thus far, this is like the mayor radioing the boys in the final act of Jaws to argue it is actually a giant tiger shark. Then Dr. Krim says "yeah not only they are killer bees, they carry a venom that'd kill a horse in five stings" to no reaction from Chamberlain at all, he just goes back to arguing species. Prof. Crane anticipated this, then presents proof - from the single dead bee they recovered - that he is right about the species. Suck it, rival brilliant entomologist!

MEANWHILE

Paul has recovered from the mind shredding hallucinations (and the death of his parents) and leaves the clinic with two friends. They have a plan. The film does a bad job conveying this, but I think it is supposed to be the next day. Ben Johnson is having coffee in a diner where the dead airman's pregnant wife is a waitress. Ben Johnson asks the diner owner why she is still working, being 8 months along and a widow, but the Diner owner says the wife was feeling suicidal, and wants to keep busy. They switch topics to that love triangle again, which everybody in town is invested in?

The three kids meanwhile locate a swarm. They have a plan.

Back at the ranch, the set is doing things that make me actually angry:

Right in case we forgot this is a missile base, THERE IS THE MISSILE.

Have I mentioned this film cost more to make than Star Wars?

General Slater wants to kill the bees with air dropped pesticides. Dr. Crane objects, because it will harm the other insect life. Actually it's even dumber than that, because Crane treats Slater like he's going to murder all the bugs in the continental United States, instead of the killer bee swarm moving toward Huston. Having forbade literally any action, Crane then figures something out, listening to a recording of the last moments of the pre-bee attack missile base. This will pay off later, IE bring the movie to an end.

MEANWHILE

As I said, the kids have a plan: Molotov cocktails. I shit you not, these kids each have one, which they fling at the swarm nest, then flee ---- to three empty metal trash cans, which they invert over themselves.

Nice, wholesome gasoline.

This works. So far three kids (one of them ill) have out performed Dr. Crane and the USAF.

Cut to: Dr. Crane's bitchin' entomologist van. He's out with Dr. Andersen looking for Paul.

Dr. Crane wonders if this is something someone else could have handled.

Oy, luv, time to roll up those windows...!

They encounter bees. Specifically a big swarm heading toward Marysville.

Meanwhile the dorky sitcom love triangle continues. I had the weirdly specific wish that a insect swarm would kill the lot of them.

The Entomologist van tears past the Media RV, a cool GMC RV.

About the best shot we see of it. According to IMDBC, it's an early 70s Ford, somewhat unusual in that it is the short wheelbase model.

Dr. Anderson and Crane arrive, warn the police station, (god, how does that van not have a CB?) and then Dr. Crane runs, screaming "The bees are coming! The bees are coming!" The warning comes too late, as the bees scythe through the kids outside the school. It seems like the bees should be able to get in (Missile silo, etc) but apparently the school is better built. The Media RV starts filming, and they deserve to be in this movie, because:

Guys, you came to do a story on deadly killer bees, you knew this, and your car is a British convertible, and your camera men are just ontop of your RV.


I think it is bees.

What follows slow motion footage of people being swarmed by bees. Meanwhile, Dr. Crane and Andersen attempt to hide in the cafe freezer, but the cowardly Cafe owner got in first, then locked the door. Dr. Anderson is also stung once. She begins to have mind-shredding hallucinations about bees. The Doctors escape bees because the AC is on high enough to make a bee sluggish. Dr. Andersen was one of the lucky ones; later Dr Crane says 263 were killed, with 33 hallucinating giant bees. While Dr. Crane is called away, Paul sneaks in and says to Dr. Andersen he's to blame for the swarm attack because of his cheeky firebombing earlier. Dr Andersen does not say "no, they're bees" to Paul. While it's been creeping up on us, the Film assumes that the bees will seek out and kill humans who kill them. The bees, in short, have a hive mind.

General Slater explicitly assumes the same thing (IE intelligent "vengeance seeking" bees) but Dr. Crane seems be incredulous of the notion despite anticipating the 'final insect war'. They also have a little discussion as to what to do now (evacuate Marysville but not the bunker, the one all the bees penetrated at the start) and Dr. Crane again shoots down attacking the deadly bees with pesticide. He yells "give it [IE Team Science] a chance!" before leaving in a huff.

Paul then confesses his sin to Dr. Crane, and his response is to give an amazingly unhelpful speech about how he too is an orphan, and he "doesn't recommend it."

Back at the silo, the scientists have set up a lab and even a bee-clean room in one of the Missile Silo's many empty sections. Richard Chamberlain and Dr. Krim have set up several electrical bee-annoyers to collect bee venom. (Sidebar, they say the electrical charge is 3-5 volts @ 0.5 amps, which seems like a lot to pester a bee. Maybe that's split up among all the bees being annoyed.) They also manage to undermine the bee threat again. They leave the clean room, and just brush themselves free of bees with wooden cleaning brushes.

The bee annoyer. it's a series of slats that I'm guessing have a low electrical charge running through it. When the bee bridges two slats, the electricity runs through the bee, annoying it and causing it to produce venom, which drips down below the slats to be collected. As this seems fairly reasonable, I suspect this might be one of the very few times the movie is referencing something in real life.

They also evacuate the town on a train.

We see Drs Crane and Andersen walking around the abandoned town at night - which I guess makes sense since bees are not active at night - although these are bees that have developed a hive mind (if you pardon the pun) and have spontaneously developed incredibly deadly venom. I wouldn't take the risk, but I guess those two haven't killed any bees lately.

NEXT DAY

The town of Marysville is on the train still...and that night scene was a mistake. It implies they've been on the train all night, because it was still fully light out when the train left. That doesn't matter, though, because the movie/train is about to go off the rails. I immediately knew the train was doomed when they showed a model of the train instead of the real thing.

Up in the locomotive, one of the engineers spots a bee, and it lands on his hand. The other engineer says "don't get him [IE the bee] mad." The first engineer kills the bee, and the train is instantly swarmed by a billion bees. The train then goes out of control and crashes, and burns, and the old love triangle is killed. Like guys, if you didn't have this love triangle, would this scene even be needed?

Oh, and the bees took instant vengeance when a single bee was killed, they really do have a hive mind. (This film is too poorly written to use the term hive mind.)

The scientists have finally done something: concocted specialist "african killer bee" pellets, and begin air dropping them between the swarm and Huston. These don't work. Dr. Crane says "[the bees] seem to sense it is something that will kill them." So the swarm hive mind is intelligent, can...read people's minds...

Paul dies of bee complications - which is to set up that Dr. Andersen isn't out of the woods yet. That would require us to care about Dr. Andersen, so that fails and is later forgotten.

The bees are making a beeline (again, sorry about the pun) to Huston. One of the scientists actually says "you should always expect the unexpected" when the bees do exactly what they've been expecting. The boys in the bunker are now calmly discussing evacuating Huston and its environs. This of course means shutting down the factories - and for some reason the nuclear power plant is going to resist shutdown. The Richard Chamberlain character is going to fly to Huston to...personally argue with the power company to shut down the plant. Now everything is riding on Dr. Krim to develop a -- well, they say 'antidote' but I thought we were talking venom, so antivenom I guess. This leads to a long scene where Dr. Krim tests the antivenom he's developed on himself and, guess what, dies.

The comical thing here in this tragic death scene is this is the last time the antivenom is mentioned. So either it didn't work, or it did and they (the movie makers or possibly Dr. Crane and the silo krew) just forgot about it?

Meanwhile we see this nuclear plant, and it is like they are recycling a set from Forbidden Planet. Like Richard Chamberlain and the bearded Plant Director are on a catwalk 200 ft high looking into the exposed core of the plant. It is wild.

In the middle of all this, Nuclear Power Administrator says "but why would bees even come here? This plant has nothing they want." A good point, Chamberlain objects that infra-red rays the plant puts out could act like a beacon to the bees. He also asks "but do your emergency procedures cover what to do if the plant is attacked by killer bees?" Alas, they do not.

Not to worry, 'critical' means the plant is working normally. Now if it was flashing SUPER-critical--

---Oh. Venom antidote ain't gonna help with that

Back at the silo, this latest disaster (killing, as the text tv tells us, ~36,000 people) gets Dr. Crane fired. Now General Slater, USAF, is in charge. In an odd move, he will refer to the killer bees as "the Africans" which makes some lines from here on out weirdly racist sounding. Dr. Crane - - just keeps doing what he is doing, specifically sending another scientist to Huston with "the oscilloscopes." General Slater is fine with that.

The action moves to Huston, where soldiers in NBC gear guard the streets. Dr Crane and Dr. Andersen have ditched Crane's bitchin' Entomology van for a navy blue Ford Torino. Our white USAF flamer squads are back, as well as our orange dudes in flight helmets. For some reason, General Slater has set up in downtown Huston, and this is a stupid idea; if Miami was about to be thrashed by a Hurricane, you wouldn't set up your base to respond to it there, especially as you have that missile silo/Best Western already. Slater's plan is powerful aircraft dispersed insecticides, which Crane has the temerity to complain about.

This fails completely, because, as Dr. Crane says, "[the bees] have become immune to any pesticide." Which is about the fifth time the bees manifested an impossible power. Of course now our remaining characters are in a skyscraper about to be attacked by bees. This is also the place with the film's only good character moment: The General, just as defeated as Prof. Crane, sits down next to him and asks if he has any sunflower seeds left. Winmark and Caine I think make it work by being excellent actors, but the two respect each other now.

But first the flamethrower units are deployed. These are a bunch of guys, firing into large swarms of bees, at night. (I mean they can now ignore chemistry, I don't see why the bees can't swarm at night.) The problem here is that it makes the bees basically impossible to see, so the battle of flamethrowers vs. bees has no logic or weight. We apparently get a time jump here, it's 24 hours later and Slater is still prosecuting operation FLAME ON. Dr. Crane isn't optimistic, although this is literally the first time the US government is trying a tactic that at least kills bees. Dr. Crane imagines the bees taking over the world, having finally vanquished its foe, humanity. The humming of the bees is omnipresent.

Dr. Crane says to Dr. Andersen "Listen, listen..."

Dr Andersen asks "what" and Dr. Crane says "bees."

It a better written movie, Dr. Anderson would smack him for that

But it's more than just a missed joke, a new tone has appeared. Dr. Crane says it is the hunger tone. We cut to a speeding ambulance getting swarmed and exploding---

Back to the Doctors, Dr. Andersen has taken ill again, that sword of damobees the plot created earlier. Meanwhile, the dudes with the flamethrowers are trying to radio through the damn bees that they need more dudes with flamethrowers. Meanwhile, Dr. Andersen wakes up to an unpleasant rasping sound. It is of course a giant hallucinatory bee.

Hello.

Meanwhile, the men with flamethrowers are somehow losing the fight versus the bees. This is possibly what happens when you use the air force as chemical warfare troops instead of carpet bombing Huston with napalm with your F4 Phantoms. Meanwhile, General Slater looks at Huston in flames through a window that is covered in bees.

I dunno, maybe the lesson is everybody in this movie is bad at their job.

The Scientists finally get a break: they've discovered control frequencies for the bees. Audio signals that can trigger basic bee behaviour. Suddenly, this completely normal office building gets compromised by bees, and the human response is...not great. The bees are swarming into the offices and labs, and the only anti-bee weapon they have is flamethrowers. So its a bunch of panicking air force guys, spraying their flamethrowers wildly in a Huston office building constructed of 1970s materials. I'm surprised this isn't the end of the movie. Dr. Crane runs for Dr. Andersen, and General Slater picks a flamethrower out of a literal pile of bees to continue the fight. Considering they just found out how to defeat the bees (spoiler) it's a tad irresponsible on the part of Dr. Crane, but whatev. Both Doctors get away wrapping themselves in blankets. The General, the major, and nameless third scientist guy are stung by bees.

The ability to cut in film is great: we go from "escaping the doomed City of Huston" to "later, on the Gulf coast". It's the next day, Dr. Crane and Andersen are at an airfield. There's doin's afoot. Dr. Crane orders the big oil slick to be spread over the gulf. A C-119, the bitchin' van of the aircraft world, prepares to take off. It's four minutes to flame! Dr. Andersen asks if the noise of the helicopter will drown out the sound the loudspeakers are giving, and Dr. Crane says "no, it's at a completely different sonic level." Helicopters are tossing sound floats into the gulf. The sound draws the Bees, then the bees are lit on fire. Mission accomplished!