mianom I wanted to jam pencils into my ears and rip my eyeballs out. Amazingly bad screenplay. Incredibly bad acting. Two hours of my life, lost forever. How could so many top-drawer actors have agreed to be in this mess? Don't actors read screenplays anymore? Was this even scary in 1978?

GL84 After escaping into the wild, an entomologist joins up with an Air Force captain to track down and destroy a ravenous swarm of bees flying around in the southwest United States before they consume the entire country.This was quite a decent if flawed effort. One of the film's few bright spots here is the rather fine action scenes, which is quite fun with some great scenes along the way here of their initial attack on the helicopters and managing to take them down, the thrilling attack on the picnicking family in the woods as the son observes this from the car and the attack on the friends who came back to seek revenge on them which is all quite fine action scenes here while setting the stage here for the big action scenes from their general swarming found on the small-town which is all highly fun and enjoyable here with the different attacks on the populace through the town, from schools, fairs, diners and more in a frantic, absolutely enjoyable sequence. Others include the big train attack, the power station destruction and their appearance in the control room where the need to spray the area with a flamethrower gives this a really impressive feel, while the film's big action scene here is the containment attempt in the big city as the flamethrowers spitting streams of flames on the buildings, blowing things up and generally making everything feel quite grand and epic gives the film quite a large number of positives against a few flaws. The biggest flaw here is the absolute overkill here in terms of allowing scenes to go on for way too long or are just unnecessary being here, starting with the introductions of his credentials from the very beginning, the romance between the elderly townsfolk, the father taking his dead son home or the continuous scientific minds sitting around debating everything which grind the film to a literal halt at times while effectively exploiting the other problem apparent in this section here in making the film seem overlong and purposefully epic for no reason. The other flaw here is some rather lame special effects for the swarm here, never seeming like the bees are there but rather just a mess clumsily inserted with buzzing noises thrown in to make it seem like that's bees. These here lower this one somewhat.Rated PG: Violence and Language.

kapelusznik18 ****SPOILERS*** What turned out to be the last of the 1970's big budget disaster movies turned out to be a total disaster in the box-office making back just half of it's costs. The movie has Michael Caine as bee expert Dr. Bradford Crane trying to save the South-West of the USA from a massive killer bee attack that nothing, even the US military, seems to be unable to stop. Called throughout the movie as "The Africans" the bees end up killing off almost the entire cast of the movie until, when all hope is gone, Dr. Crane and his doctor girlfriend Helena Anderson, Katharine Ross, discover a way to prevent the killer bees from overrunning the city of Huston. Not with fire power, including nuclear weapons, or thousands of spry cans of DDT but but love! The bees mating call that's mistakenly being used in local computers of military bases and local atomic power plants that has set the killer bees into a frenzy looking for action, or love, in all the wrong places! Thus resulting in the death, by deadly bee stings as well as bee related accidents, of hundreds if not thousands of people.It's US Air Force General Thaddeus, Richard Widmark, who's given the thankless task by the President himself, Jimmy Carter?,to prevent the bees from overrunning or overflying the entire USA. Which almost causes the general, in him not being unable to prevent it, to suffer a complete nervous as well as physical breakdown. In the end when Gen. Thaddeus just about gave up it was the bees that finally did him in together with his entire staff. Thers's also the eminent and wheel-chair bound immunologist Dr. Walter Krim, Henry Fonda, who to save the world put his life on the line. That by Dr. Krim injecting himself with bee venom that if successful can cure the many bee sting victims only to fall victim, yes it didn't work, himself.The big moment in the movie, before the bees were finally did in, was when a frantic Dr. Hubard-not Dr. Kildare-played by Richard Chamberlain looking like the Wolf-Man of London tries to get nuclear plant manager Jose Ferrer,Dr. Andrews, to shut his plant down before the bees, by swarming into it, do it for him. Not listening to reason and just doing his job ended up costing Dr.Andrews his life together with everyone , including Dr. Hubbard, within 10 miles of the plant. As it soon detonated in an nuclear explosion that wiped out half the state of Texas.Considered by it's star Michael Caine to be the worst movie that he ever was in "The Swarm" still has it's high points that as crazy as they are keeps the audience interested in watching it. The film is so unintentionally funny that despite all the deaths that the killer or "African" bees cause you just don't work up enough emotion to miss or feel sorry for any of them. The explosive ending of the movie came so suddenly that it looked forced as if the movie makers and what seems like the last two survivors, Caine & Ross, of the movie were happy as hell to see it was finally over and then try to forget as much as they can that they were ever in it!

ThatMOVIENut The last major offering from Disaster Master Irwin Allen (Poseidon Adventure, Towering Inferno), The Swarm deals with an invasion of killer bees that threaten to wipe out humanity. Lots of stuff gets destroyed, plenty of people die and well, the Bees evolve, ready for the next attack.Overlong and incredibly padded, Allen's infamous 1978 'bee' movie earns its reputation via a story that keeps protracting via cheap contrivances and idiotic characters (you could make a drinking game out of how long it takes for these guys to come up with obvious solution to killing the bees, as well as what kind of deus ex machina the bees will magically pull to somehow survive the next attack), as well as a preachy and undercooked environmental message that does not deserve my attention when you've pulled every trick to drag this trainwreck out longer than needed, and given me nothing but dimwits to watch.Furthermore, we also have very hit-or-miss special effects (shocking, considering Allen's experience, and that this was released the same year as Donner's first Superman), with the bees ranging from fairly well done to pathetically tacky, with the model work and bits of bluescreen suffering similarly. However, the all star cast of actors do try, with special note going to Slim Pickens and Henry Fonda who do bring some emotional weight to their roles, even if Caine just comes off as really whiny, and the late great Jerry Goldsmith's unsettling yet effective score adds more tension and atmosphere than the film would have otherwise.Beyond a noted curio of bad cinema, you have other so, so, so many options for your monster and disaster movie fixes, so why really bother here?