The Swarm as Eco-disaster

The Swarm (1978) includes an all-star cast and a disaster film director and storyline but focuses on the consequences of killer bees and multiple ways to eradicate them. Despite its environmental opening, however, it falls back on cliched plot points drawn from the typical disaster films of the period.

The film's attempts at bringing in an environmental message when two contrasting characters are introduced, General Thompson (Richard Widmark), the commanding officer on a military base, and Dr. Bradford Crane (Michael Cain), a PhD from Princeton and Cambridge and an entomologist. Something has killed almost everyone in a military outpost, and Crane wants to help discover and combat the culprit. When a huge swarm of bees attacks air search planes, they come closer to discovering the truth. Although General Thompson opposes the plan, the President authorizes Crane to put together a team to thwart the bee invasion.

A family picnicking serves as the next test case. The two parents are killed, but Paul, the son, survives and is taken to the nearest town hospital in Maryville, which is planning a Flower Festival. Here the narrative gets off track with the mayor (Fred MacMurray) and Felix (Ben Johnson) fighting for Maureen’s (Olivia de Havilland) affections.

But the story gets back on point when Paul drives into town blowing the car horn as he crashes into flowers: “They got my mom and my dad!” As if in answer, Dr. Crane declares, “The war that I always talked about has finally started” and assembles a team to discover a method to eradicate the bees without destroying other life with pesticides and prepare an antidote for their venom. 

Before ultimate victory, however, more townspeople are terrorized by the bees, especially after Paul and his friends blow up their hives and scatter them toward Marysville. The bees even attack school children unable to make it into the building. The bees strike a nuclear power plant and shut down electricity throughout the area, as well.

The bees eventually reach Houston, as well, but now the people have been evacuated in time. Only military personnel and Crane’s crew, including Helena (Katharine Ross), a doctor, remain. The general takes over the operation now because he thinks Crane has failed and orders men to burn the bees with flamethrowers. Many of the men are killed, and then they bring the bees into the Houston compound, so Crane tries one more experiment. He uses sound to entice the bees to leave the city and fly out to sea where they are bombed and presumably destroyed. In The Swarm, however, the killer bees carry deadly levels of venom, a major deviation from reality that moves the film from eco-message to traditional disaster film.