The Swarm * (1978, Michael Caine, Richard Widmark, Katharine Ross, Henry Fonda, Richard Chamberlain, Olivia de Havilland, Fred MacMurray) – Classic Movie Review 3099

The 1978 horror thriller The Swarm is a particularly silly disaster movie from the king of genre, producer-director Irwin Allen, that is a hoot to watch if you are in the right frame of mind.

It stars Michael Caine as Brad Crane, an entomologist who tries science to prevent an attack of killer African bees  in huge swarms on Houston, Texas, while an army general, General Slater (Richard Widmark), naturally favours a gung-ho military solution.

The Swarm is even dafter than several previous movies with the same theme (The Deadly Bees, The Bees, Killer Bees). And it is extremely poorly written by esteemed Stirling Silliphant (based on a novel by Arthur Herzog) and badly handled, with pathetic special effects, leaving the excellent all-star cast well and truly stung. Alas, some old-time stars are well and truly disrespected, though probably not intentionally. There are 13 stars on the poster, which might have proved an unlucky omen.

But, all-time bad movie though it is, you can’t help taking a sneaky pleasure in the absurd foolishness of it all. And so the search is still on for a decent bee film.

Also in the cast are Katharine Ross, Richard Chamberlain, Olivia de Havilland, Fred MacMurray, Henry Fonda, Ben Johnson, Lee Grant, Patty Duke, Slim Pickens, Bradford Dillman, Cameron Mitchell, José Ferrer, Alejandro Rey, Christian Juttner, Morgan Paull, Don Barry, Doria Cook, Arthur Space, John Williams, Mara Cook and Stephen Powers.

Caine reflected much later: ‘The picture was one of the worst I ever made but it got me to America and opened up all sorts of opportunities for me. The movie was doomed but we didn’t notice. Poor Irwin went from being a master of disaster movies to making movies that were a disaster.’

The next year, Caine paired again with Allen on the equally disastrous Beyond the Poseidon Adventure.

It is the last film of Fred MacMurray, who died on 5 November 1991, aged 83. He was the highest paid star in Hollywood at the turn of the Fifties and Sixties, thanks to a series of Disney movie, beginning with The Shaggy Dog.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 3099

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