The Swarm (1978)

★ 5.0 1h 56m 195 votes IMDb
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Scientist Dr. Bradford Crane and army general Thalius Slater join forces to fight an almost invisible enemy threatening America; killer bees that have deadly venom and attack without reason. Disaster movie-master Irwin Allen's film contains spectacular special effects, including a train crash caused by the eponymous swarm.

The Swarm

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Cast

Michael Caine
Michael Caine as Brad Crane Age 93 · Rotherhithe, London, England, UK Sir Michael Caine CBE (born Maurice Joseph Micklewhite Jr.; 14 March 1933) is a retired English actor. Known for his distinctive South London accent, he has appeared in more than 160 films in a career...
Katharine Ross
Katharine Ross as Capt. Helena Anderson Age 86 · Los Angeles, California, USA Katharine Juliet Ross (born January 29, 1940) is a retired American actress and author. Trained at the San Francisco Workshop, she is perhaps best known for her role as Elaine Robinson in the 1967 fil...
Richard Widmark
Richard Widmark as Gen. Thaddeus Slater Died 2008 · Sunrise Township, Minnesota, USA Richard Widmark (December 26, 1914 – March 24, 2008) was an American actor of films, stage, radio and television. He was nominated for an Academy Award for his role as the villainous Tommy Udo in his...
Richard Chamberlain
Richard Chamberlain as Dr. Hubbard Died 2025 · Beverly Hills, California, USA George Richard Chamberlain (March 31, 1934 – March 29, 2025) was an American actor of stage and screen who became a teen idol in the title role of the television show Dr. Kildare (1961–1966). He subse...
Olivia de Havilland
Olivia de Havilland as Maureen Schuester Died 2020 · Tokyo, Japan Dame Olivia Mary de Havilland DBE (July 1, 1916 - July 25, 2020) was a British-American actress, whose career spanned from 1935 to 1988. She appeared in 49 feature films, and was one of the leading mo...
Ben Johnson
Ben Johnson as Felix Died 1996 · Foraker, Shidler, Oklahoma, USA From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.   Ben "Son" Johnson, Jr. (June 13, 1918 – April 8, 1996) was an American motion picture actor who was mainly cast in Westerns.

Audience Reviews

Ragnar_Danneskjöld Feb 10, 2021
Before we had Murder Hornets...We had THE SWARM!!!!

In the 70s, this was one of the media's tools to terrify the populace. Unbelievably as it may seem, when released this movie scared the pants off of America in the same way that Jaws did when it made it to the theaters. The Killer Bee swarms in South America, created in cross-breeding African and Western Honeybees, of course had to share the stage with the other big threats of the day: The Upcoming Global Ice Age and Nuclear Power Plant disasters, both of which also made minor appearances in this film. Nevertheless, the fashionable fear in 1978 was bees and Hollywood was there to make sure YOU got the message that Man was bad and Nature would soon kick his ass.

That asides, the movie in itself now is laughable, no better than the Global Warming Fear Films that the SyFy channel (AKA NBC) churns out today. The movie passes well beyond the level of believable when train passenger cars explode as they roll down a hill, the nuclear plant explodes like an atomic bomb killing 36 thousand people or when the military decides to burn Houston like Sherman did Atlanta, even though the bee swarms are not inside buildings or cars. The over-the-top fiction that even 2 stings from these bees will kill you, even though Science (oh, doesn't the Left like to laud that term up on a pedestal when it suits their agenda) knew at the time that the level of toxin in this new strain of bee was no more lethal than that of the average Honeybee. Rather, it was their aggressiveness in tracking threats and ruthlessness of their attack, compared to normal bees, that was the true fact of concern.

The movie does bring a grade A cast to the table and most of the performances are respectable, although I did find the fact that Michael Caine liked to explode and shout through scenes rather disconcerting and over-dramatic. There are plenty of other situations that make no sense, like Henry Fonda's character using himself for a guinea pig when he's the only one who can work on a serum or Michael Caine breaking out a pane of glass to gain entry to a locked building, when people were already inside who could have opened the door, when the bees were attacking the town (and now had easy access to all the people in the building via the broken glass). Unlike the other disaster films of that decade, The Swarm doesn't even come close to being a serious threat and is little more than an inconvenient buzzing in the ear of the audience.

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