Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #26971 in DVD
• Released on: 2003-02-17
• Rating: Suitable for 12 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: PAL
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 149 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
Legendarily chintzy "event" producer Irwin Allen (The Towering Inferno) went out with a gargantuan buzz-on with this jaw-droppingly goofy disaster flick. No cliché is left unturned, as a hyperactive strain of hallucination-inducing killer bees get it into their microscopic brains to derail a commuter train, destroy a nuclear power plant and otherwise decimate a veritable cornucopia of washed-up actors (Fred MacMurray, Henry Fonda, Richard Widmark, Patty Duke, Slim Pickens and narcoleptic dreamboat Richard Chamberlain are just a few of the legendary has-beens to get fatally stung by what appears to be airborne coffee grounds). Be sure to stay tuned through the closing credits for a (lawsuit-preventing?) coda absolving the good ol' hardworking American honeybee of any and all sinister charges depicted herein. The Swarm is an irresistibly hilarious chunk of honey-roasted cheese--70s style. --Andrew Wright

Amazon.co.uk Review
The Swarm was one of many 1970s disaster epics masterminded by producer Irwin Allen. Unfortunately, it comes from the tail end of the public's fascination with the genre, a fact not unreasonably attributed at the time to this also being Allen's first full-length directorial debut. In retrospect, it's perhaps understandable that the threat of killer bees was never going to seem as spectacular as The Towering Inferno or The Poseidon Adventure. Nevertheless, there's plenty to admire in the concept, which at least went so far as to research its subject matter, even if the explanation for how the bad-tempered little critters came to be in the vicinity of Houston is a little shaky.

Michael Caine heads a typically all-star cast. Ironically, the first thing Richard Chamberlain's character says is that he's arrived under protest. In fact, he along with Henry Fonda, Olivia de Havilland and several others do look rather reluctant to plough through their roles, especially when that involves being bombarded with forcefully blown bee replica debris. At least the effects go some way to redress the lack of punch in the performances (or sense in the plot). Cheesy and clichéd by today's standards it may be, but in the mutant insect sub-genre, The Swarm remains one of the best, helped along by a fine Jerry Goldsmith score.

On the DVD: The Swarm arrives on DVD in a surprisingly clean transfer that picks out both the primary colours and great swathes of beige in the 1970s fashions and decorations. 2.35:1 anamorphic is perfect for capturing the scale of the bees' attack, although the merely stereo soundtrack is a let down considering what fun effects could be achieved mixing the humming drone through various channels. There's a trailer and information on key cast and crew, but the real treat is the 22-minute "Inside the Swarm" documentary. Clearly this was aired on TV at the time of release, but puts to shame the uninformative equivalent promos of today. All the cast are animated in their descriptions of what's being shot around them. And naturally Allen the Showman is the most animated of all. --Paul Tonks

Special Features
English
Region 2

Customer Reviews

The epitome of 70s star-filled disaster movies

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

So said a bemused Michael Caine in The Swarm, one of the last of the 70s disaster movies, that forgotten genre which crammed as many fading stars as possible into a large supporting cast and then wreaked havoc upon them. In this case, the great and good (Caine, Katherine Ross, Richard Chamberlain, Olivia de Havilland, Henry Fonda, Fred MacMurray) are up against a particularly violent swarm of killer bees.

Director Irwin Allen was the undisputed king of the disaster movies, producing both The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno, the two most enduring examples of stars-in-danger, but his fortunes were going downhill by the time he directed The Swarm. Unfairly panned at its time of release, it's actually an enjoyable Sunday-afternoon film, perfect for a couple of hours mindless entertainment. The older cast members are a particular delight, and only Richard Chamberlain really lets the side down, overplaying his role to the hilt.

Highly recommended.

"Will history blame me or the bees?"
There's delusion on an epic scale on display in Irwin Allen's infamous The Swarm. It's not the worst of his oeuvre by a long way - Beyond the Poseidon Adventure and When Time Ran Out are both much, much worse - but it's become the poster child for all the absurdities of the disaster genre at it's hokeyest. But then capsized ships with atom bombs aboard or volcanoes threatening hotel complexes can't compare to killer bees destroying nuclear power plants and causing train wrecks on the Richter Scale of movie absurdity. And it's a curiously second- and third-hand construction too - structurally Stirling Silliphant's script is surprisingly similar to his script for In the Heat of the Night. Okay, there weren't any bees in that one, but from the beginning where big city cop Sidney Poitier is discovered at a murder scene and immediately treated as a suspect by hard-assed racist cop Rod Steiger until he gradually learns to respect his expertise, it's being used as a template, with sunflower seed munching entomologist Michael Caine discovered in a missile silo full of dead bodies by hard-assed xenophobic general Richard Widmark, who immediately suspects him of their deaths until he gradually learns to respect his expertise (how can you not love a film where Bradford Dillman asks "Can we count on a scientist who prays?" only for Widmark to respond "I wouldn't count on one that didn't"?).

But this isn't a film about trust or even narrative, it's about miscast and affordable stars getting stung to death in slow-motion by what look like bits of oatmeal painted black and fired at them by air-cannons. It's a film about hallucinating patients being menaced by imaginary giant bees. It's a film about military complexes with lots of flashing lights. It's a film about bad acting in the face of insurmountably inane dialogue ("Are you endowing these bees with human motives? Like saving their fellow bees from captivity, or seeking revenge on Mankind?" "I always credit my enemy, no matter what he may be, with equal intelligence." and "Billions of dollars have been spent to make these nuclear plants safe. Fail-safe! The odds against anything going wrong are astronomical, Doctor!" "I appreciate that, Doctor. But let me ask you. In all your fail-safe techniques, is there a provision for an attack by killer bees?" are just the tip of the iceberg). It's about bad fashion sense - this being the 70s, the decade that taste forgot, amid a preponderance of trouser flairs there are a lot of earth tones and oranges amid the costumes, so it's entirely possible that the bees simply mistook the actors for flowers waiting to be pollinated. And it's all done with a gloriously straight face and even, on a few rare occasions, some technical competence - Irwin Allen may have loved schmaltz, but he had a great visual sense when dealing with military hardware and there are some genuinely impressive shots in the picture when he gets to play with the toys. Unfortunately his handling of the actors is much more mechanical, with the old guard (Widmark, Olivia DeHavilland, Henry Fonda, Ben Johnson) faring better than poor old Caine and Katherine Ross. And, like many bad films, it's topped off by a superb score, one of Jerry Goldsmith's very best from his golden period. Much more fun than it's good to admit, the proposed remake has a lot to live up to.

The DVD is a fairly good value package - the extended two-and-a-half hour cut from the laserdisc release, a hokey 22-minute making of documentary and the original trailer ("It's more than speculation - it's a prediction!"). The 2.35:1 widescreen transfer is good, though the sound range is not quite as good as it could be.

This movie is unBEElievable! (that was just a joke)
This film, directed by Irwin Allen (of the The Towering Inferno, The Poseidon Adventure fame)is an anti-classic of the highest order BEEcause (sorry, that's a stupid joke, I know) the acting (from a cast featuring 7 Oscar winners) is, on the whole, absolutely terrible and unintentionaly funny. Interestingly, the DVD also features a documentary which considers the story of thousands of bees attacking America some sort of prediction. It is really hard to keep a straight face with Michael Caine being enthusiastic about this film. (I suppose Ed Wood was very enthusiastic about Plan 9 From Outer Space) A must for all BEE-movie (I have really got to stop doing that) fans.