I love this film! I know it's implausable but thats the point of movies...if they didn't they wouldn't be fun! In my opinion anything Irwin Allen did was fantastic. I know that people say "killer bees? get real" and laugh at the idea but if they actually sat down and watched the film from start to finish they will see its very good. What do you think?
(and be honest lol)
It's pretty silly, but I watched it as a kid and it scared me!
Girls call it 'bringing you to reason', I call it 'kicking your ass'.
When i saw it for the first time it scared me! The scene where the bees kill the school children and the shot of bees on a lollipop gave me nightmares for weeks!
shareMost fun I've had with a disaster movie in years! I laughed, I cried, and I absolutely love it! Before I started watching I decided not to take it seriously at all and I had a GREAT time. This ranks up there with some of the best of them, in my opinion!
shareI'd say Amen.
~In my ear it blew it's name, it sounded strange, but I heard it plain, Mistral, Mistral Wind. ~
I Loved It!
I was expecting a horrible film when I rented it. And then when I found out it goes for almost 3 Hours, I wasn't going to watch it.
I'm glad I did.
It's Scary. Sad. Funny. Smart. Scientific.
It had an amazing script. It had wonderful directing. Brilliant Cast. Passable acting!
The saddest moment in any movie was in The Swarm, when...
SPOILERS!!! >>>>
The death of Dr. Walter Krim. I was almost crying and would've if I was watching it alone.
Great Picture! And 3.7 Is Just sad! It should be 6.5 on IMDB, even though I gave it 7.0.
Doctor Hubbard??? I hated that charecter, all he did was stand around talking nonsense, but i have to admit i felt sorry for him when he blew up in the power plant...after he offered to go as well....
shareOoops! I was meant Dr. Walter Krim. The one in the wheel chair.
SPOILERS>>>
When he injected himself with what-the-stuff.
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Short answer: it isn't. Long answer: I was very, very disappointed when the film came out. Being a HUGE fan of both "The Poseidon Adventure" as well as "The Towering Inferno", I had high hopes for "The Swarm". Despite its huge budget, it ended up looking like a cheap made-for-TV movie (which were quite popular at the time). The only thing I thought succeded was the great score by Jerry Goldsmith. As time has passed, I cannot help but look at it as a campy misfire. I've always said that this and "Valley of the Dolls" (1968) are perfect films to pop in when I am feeling down. They are both utterly inept and cheerfully and gleefully unaware of their respective awfulness, which in turn, makes them very, very funny.
"Thus, we began our longest journey together."
Adult Scout, 'To Kill A Mockingbird'
The Swarm is so bad, it's good! I am a proud owner of the CD soundtrack from Prometheus. Jerry Goldsmith's tour de force, energetic music score is the best thing about this cinematic train wreck! The Swarm is, as another reviewer already pointed out, "quality crap"!
shareI have never seen it before untill yesterday for the first time on DVD. My reason to buy this movie: Olivia De Havilland, Bradford Dillman, Morgan Paull (as Dr. Newman).
My mind:
Jerry Goldsmith score is great.
It has very very good scenes (bees attacks + fire scenes in the building) and terrible / stubid and not logical scenes.
And my mind: Richard Widmark hasn't played good. His scenes between him and Michael Caine are boring.
But Caine's and Fonda's (his dead) scenes are great. Did he love him?
The Making-Of Documentary on the DVD is very interesting.!!
This isn't a good movie really, but when viewed within the context of a genre I think it's terrific. Halloween II is crap but slasher fans love it. Irwin got a lot out of his formula with the Swarm...train wreck, city on fire, nuclear explosion, etc...an all star cast of bee fodder...what's not to love?
"The Swarm" is firmly in the category of movies that are so bad they're good. I ran across it by accident and couldn't stop watching because I just had to see the next ridiculous scene or hear the next hilariously bad line.
shareThe badness of this film IMO can be attributed to a couple points.
1-Irwin Allen is a terrible director. It is no coincidence that "Poseidon Adventure" and "Towering Inferno" are much better movies in part because you had directors like Ronald Neame and John Guillermin handling the actors who could make the material better.
2-Stirling Silliphant was likely purposefully tanking the script in terms of writing something deliberately campy but Irwin was clearly not in on the joke when directing this script and chose to treat it so seriously leading to even more lethal results.
It's somewhat hard to believe that this was taken from a serious thriller novel which I remember reading once and some of the plot points did make it into the movie (the attack on the family at the picnic, a town called Maryville, Dr. Krim's death scene where he injects himself with an experimental vaccine, though in the book it was not the Krim character but another doctor. The characters of Michael Caine, Katharine Ross etc. aren't in the book and General Slater is just a minor character). Silliphant probably thought it was ridiculous from the get-go as cinematic material whereas Irwin was on another wavelength completely.