Cathardincu Surprisingly incoherent and boring

AniInterview Sorry, this movie sucks

Matrixiole Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

Sarita Rafferty There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

dzizwheel One of the worst movies I have seen in my lifetime. And I really love bad movies. So stupid, this stinker provokes one to almost the point of anger for it's terrible writing, editing, cheese effects, ham acting and and zero tension.Characters appear and disappear as quickly as a scene changes never to be referenced again. The script is incoherent. The sense of time makes it appear as if it takes place over the course of a day.And then the alleged stars:Olivia de Havilland, perhaps the single most overrated actress in the history of movies giving her saccharine sweet First Lady Of The Silver Screen yet another gag worthy performance. After seeing half of It's Love I'm After and turning it off midway because of de Havilland and her interpretation of a love sick ingenue as a mentally challenged 12 year old girl and her nauseating turn in Gone With The Wind I was expecting maturity would meake her less sickening on screen. Time didn't dull that phony facade, but just added more layers. Grating and obnoxious. Gag worthy sweetness and lofty Grand Dame delivery of amateur night dialog free with every ticket.Henry Fonda acted like he was one one the zombies in Night Of The Living Dead.Don't blink you'll miss Patty Duke. And the always bitter and angry Lee Grant is on hand as a news reporter appears and promptly disappears in the face of a massive story about killer bees.Katherine Ross seemed only to care about hair and makeup as all the close ups suggest there was not a thing going on in her head during filming. Zero. No tension, fear, worry. Still a Stepford Wife all those years later.Richard Widmark plays Hollywood's favorite bombastic military stereotype without stepping out of the narrow confines of the script's likely description of the character and comes off worse than even Henry Fonda.Michael Caine managed to keep his dignity, sort of.Stupid and insulting to the viewer. No real special effect except bee hallucinations. No make up to shock and wake up the viewer. People are totally pristine after getting savaged by thousands of bees. No chilling shots of swelling, or even redness to add fear and dread for the viewer. And what sort of idiots use flame throwers inside a building to kill bees ? MIA: Richard Chamberlain, Bradford Dillman, Fred MacMurray, Ben Johnson and Cameron Mitchell. You know some celebrity was on the screen, but after they leave a scene it's hard to remember who it was, the characters are so thinly drawn, dialog so stupid and purpose so ill defined.Cynical audience insulting garbage from start to finish. On the level of Wet Hot American Summer and I'll take Sweden: sub standard wastes of time.Warning: do not allow children under the age of 18 to watch. Great chunks of IQ will be destroyed never to be seen again.By the end of it I was rooting for the bees to wipe out these weapons grade stupid humans.All I wanted to say by the end of it was up every one of the participants in this zero grade schlock. Should have been called The Snore. Wasp Woman was a better bee movie. Except, wasps.

Raymond I saw this at a local arthouse cinema that was showing a curated "Dystopia" series. This was a bit of a tongue in cheek selection. I kinda like 70's disaster movies and decided to see this even tho I was aware of it's bad reputation. I went in with open mind and was prepared to be positively surprised as I even own movies like Airport (all four), Towering Inferno, Rolleroaster, Earthquake etc, so I genuinely was prepared to like it.So, there was something good about it. It looks good, I saw an original 35mm copy. There are slow-mo shots that really look pretty good and the fx are really good. All of the bee shots are extremely well made, be it close ups or wides with the whole swarm. I guess they used real bees and a lot of them and the swarm was some kind of super imposed thing, but they really did look good. Music was ok, but nothing remarkable by Jerry Goldsmith.And the bad, almost everything else. The script is amazingly dumb. From dialog to anything that happens really. There were so many face palm moments that it makes no sense listing them. It's also very much politically incorrect with the "africans" as villains and all white cast, that alone would make this a bomb. I can't imagine it being ok even in the late seventies.Acting was bad, but that is mostly due to the dumb script and characters. Michael Caines character must be one of the worst protagonists ever. He's not very likable and he doesn't even make very good decisions in the movie.What bugged me a bit tho while watching this film was that part of the audience was clearly laughing because they thought this is a movie you have to laugh at every scene. To me it wasn't a movie that is bad enough to be laughable for the most part, it was just bad. Sure there were a few scenes which did spark a non intended smile, but some people were laughing their asses off when kids were dying in slow motion.Difficult movie to judge. They clearly knew that killer bees might be a bit hard to accept as a real threat, but there were scenes that had tension. It was mostly everything that happened between those scenes that made the movie bad. I saw the original "short" version and it felt really long. Glad they didn't show the longer cut as I would've surely fell asleep.

Takeshi-K This was the last of the disaster films produced by crowd panic expert Irwin Allen, his most famous being The Towering Inferno. When I was watching this again recently I realized the plot was almost identical to Outbreak, the mid nineties disaster film centered around disease control experts dealing with much the same issue; namely how do you contain the risk to public health while gun ho military nuts want to just nuke everything instead? In the end this film splits the difference. I do like how it points out how keenly important bees are to human existence.The acting is good. Michael Caine is his usual gravelly best, while Katherine Ross is the one weak point although to be fair, she didn't have much of a role to work with. Her character should have been the moral force fighting against military insanity. This subplot is handled by Caine's character. I wonder if his agent forced a change there. Either way it renders Ross' character into being just the walk on love interest, although admittedly this was made in the seventies so what else do you expect for that time period. Speaking of which the swarm of African bees eventually start being called "The Africans" continually. The Africans are coming to get us etc. A tad uncomfortable to hear. Owing to the time it was made too, its pace may be slower for today's taste. It also includes notable aging stars; Slim Pickens (the yahooing nutcase riding the bomb down in Dr. Strangelove), Henry Ford, Jose Ferrer, Richard Widmark, Richard Chamberlain and legendary centarian Olivia de Havilland.

jmillerdp Such an incredible trainwreck! And, yes, there is a trainwreck in the movie! You can say that it is at that point in the movie where the movie goes off the rails. (Get it?)First, I have to tell you perhaps the funniest story of my movie-going life. It was summer 1978. Our family had rented an RV, and were about to go to Colorado. I loved disaster movies, and still do! Well, back then, with a truly great movie like "The Poseidon Adventure," and recent silly, but still likable ones like "Airport '77," I was ready for Irwin Allen's latest! Like, really ready!Now, I couldn't just see it. I had to see it on the BIG SCREEN! That meant the Grandview II, with two 550-seat auditoriums, in St. Louis' North County, 30 or so minutes away. So, I basically dragged my mother and brother up on the opening day afternoon to see "The Swarm!" And, it is as delightfully awful as you know!So, instead of getting ready for our trip, I had the three of us spending hours in going up and back and seeing this crazy movie! You can bet that I didn't hear the end of it for a while. And, the thing is? I didn't care! I loved it. It's awful, it's gloriously insane! It all-but-immediately ended Irwin Allen's career!Plus, I got to read the terrible one-star (at best!) reviews all during our vacation!Everything else you know, if you've seen it. The hilarious actor's reactions to being killed by bees. The endless disasters within disasters: the aforementioned trainwreck, the nuclear plant magically blowing up (!) because bees got into the control room (what?!). It goes on and on.Plus, introducing all these characters, just to kill them off for the heck of it! And, the only-here-for-the-paycheck actors of the requisite "All-Star Cast." Lastly, you have to LOVE the way they deal with the bees at the end! The one thing I can unequivocally endorse is Jerry Goldsmith's score. 1978 was his greatest year, with one great score after another (plus, another Oscar nomination for "The Boys from Brazil") Here, Goldsmith again provides a score as if he is providing music for the greatest film ever! I love this movie, as impossibly bad as it is! Please, please, remaster this and release it on Blu-ray. After all, we could all use a good laugh these days!******* (7 Out of 10 Stars)