So many questions, so few answers.
The on-screen talent for this film, as of 2011, has ten Oscars. Why did they do this film? Michael Caine might have been early in his career, but Olivia de Havilland? Irwin Allen's resume consists mostly of Lost in Space, Land of the Giants, Time Tunnel and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. How do you go from Gone With The Wind to The Swarm?.....
Why would passenger cars on a train explode when they rolled down a cliff? The cars are being dragged by the locomotive up front. Are all the passengers carrying thermoses full of nitroglycerine and napalm?.....
Why would the school principal allow the children to play outside when they knew that there's a swarm of bees who can kill with a single sting? Okay, I know the answer to this one: so that Olivia de Havilland can smash herself against the window and moan piteously......
Why would the two doctors in the room, when a teen-aged boy who's hooked up to monitoring equipment flatlines, respond by wailing rather than initiating CPR? On a related note, why, when the doctor who's vital to the project goes into cardiac arrest, would the other doctor leave the room for five minutes?.....
Why do Michael Caine and Richard Widmark, in every scene where they're together, yell at each other with three seconds of silence between alternate outbursts?.....
Setting aside the larger question of why you would decide to burn down an entire city to kill some bees - WHO CAN JUST FLY AWAY - why would you send flame-thrower teams to ride up and down the elevators in highrises, torching floors at random with no escape plan and no face coverings to keep the bees off? Okay, I know the answer to this one, too: after a while, it gets pretty boring watching people stung to death, so Irwin Allen decided that he should set them all on fire for the last 20 minutes of the film......
Why didn't Richard Chamberlain have a bigger career?.....
Did Irwin Allen slip LSD to the actors to get the interviews in the 'Making Of' special? Because both Michael Caine and Olivia de Havilland carry on a bit about how this film is really a public service documentary sort of thing because killer bees are real!!! And Olivia really sells it. Ben Jonson, on the other hand, actually says, "Bees is bees.".....
The Swarm is by far the most entertaining piece of inexplicable schlock that I've watched this year.
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