Posted Jul 13, 09 02:37 PM
Buzz Words
Chocolate would have been too obvious. As guilty pleasures go, mine is an obsession: Irwin Allen's The Swarm.
If you thought this blog couldn't get nuttier - sur-prise, sur-prise, sur-prise! Truth is, I've probably wallowed through this delectable all-star unintentional campfest somewhere between 50 to 60 times. 'Cuz, man, it keeps getting fuuuuuunnier. Especially when you slop in those 40 extra minutes on the DVD version for a grand total of 156 minutes of your life. African killer bees invade Texas? I'll bring the popcorn.
I can quote dialogue here the way Rocky Horror fans know their shtick. Ooh. And I've got the Arthur Herzog paperback and an early draft of the screenplay. The Jerry Goldsmith soundtrack. The poster. And even a promotional "The Swarm is coming!" pin (courtesy casting director Linda Phillips-Palo). Whenever friends and relatives gather to play charades, The Swarm always goes on the list - just remember to run around, swatting your hands around your head. It was even the name of my fantasy football team. The helmet design: yellow and black rings alternating, naturally. A friend and I once shot ourselves on video and cut the footage into the train wreck sequence. We also did a scene that involved throwing buckets of cereal at each other, but I digress.
As Ed (The Blair Witch Project) Sanchez said back in our University of Central Florida days, "That's some good cheese!" And camp is a delicate creature. Anyone deliberately setting out to make a bad movie ends up making an unwatchable one, the kind of junk that Bill Maher disowned from his early career. A good bad movie doesn't know it's a bad movie. Its aspirations to greatness and complete conviction in delivery make the downward spiral even more enthralling - see also Mommie Dearest. If that entry seems out of place for horror, you obviously haven't seen Faye Dunaway in cold cream, wielding wire hangers.
It's too bad no one asked Hitchcock what he thought of all of The Birds' rip-offs over the years. Nature suddenly turning on mankind had Ray Milland getting slimed by Frogs, Joan Collins on the run from killer rear-screen projections in Empire of the Ants, even poor Christopher Atkins surviving a title like Beaks: The Movie. That doesn't count assaults (and insults) by ants, worms, snakes, spiders, slugs, wild dogs, pigs, crocs, big bunnies and various grizzly bears the size of your local Sears Automotive Center.
On the cart blanche heels of The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno, Warner Bros. handed the keys to master of disaster Irwin Allen, who essentially car-crashed his own genre in one fatal step on the gas. It's shocking the talent onboard - perhaps due in equal measure to TTI's box office crown in 1974 and cutesy Helen Hayes' suspect Best Supporting Oscar for Airport. There's my favorite actor, Michael Caine. Due to this dreck, Beyond the Poseidon Adventure, Victory, and The Island, his career in America was seriously in jeopardy until saved by Brian De Palma's Dressed to Kill. Sign on Katharine Ross, Richard Widmark, Richard Chamberlain, Henry Fonda, Oliva de Havilland, Ben Johnson, Fred MacMurray, Jose Ferrer, Lee Grant, Bradford Dillman, Slim Pickens and Patty Duke Astin. The above careers collectively shared nine Academy Awards...many giving the most unfortunate performances of their resumes.
Don't forget the Oscar vets behind the Panavisions: Screenwriter Stirling (In the Heat of the Night) Silliphant, cinematographer Fred J. Koenekamp, editor Harold Kress, composer Jerry Goldsmith, special effects artist L.B. Abbott. Somehow, The Swarm, which barely ran two weeks in most theaters, got enough of a studio push to warrant one Academy nod - Best Costume Design for Paul Zastupnevich. Must've been all those bee suits.
The main problem - besides letting Irwin Allen run amuck (that's the MAJOR problem) - is that, onscreen, bees simply lack the ability to scare. In close-up, it's like old frames from physical science class. In longshot, they resemble dust on the camera lens. Or you end up with scenes like the one described by a critic as "Jose Ferrer and Richard Chamberlain running from a flurry of puffed wheat."
A gaff or two will distract the audience. The Swarm keeps 'em coming. The train wreck sequence alone contains at least 22 mistakes (Where are the bees in long shot? Get a load of the guy in the last seat: As passengers are standing up and screaming, luggage is tumbling, the camera is canted...he's looking around...SMILING!!!). Jose Ferrer's nuclear reactor - complete with bubbly tubes and a glowing orb - looks like it pre-dated SATURN 3. During the fiery Houston finale, a stuntman is all lined up - fire gel visible on his back - ready to bump into his burning counterpart.
And that's not taking into account the BAD ideas. A camera angle flipping upside down to stress the ferocity of a helicopter under attack. The hilarious tape playback of "the mystery" behind what killed the soldiers at the missile silo. Katharine Ross, on death's door, having a nightmare that a giant bee is lurking in her closet. Bradford Dillman and Widmark, toe to toe, competing for who gets the most ludicrous dying gasp. Slow-mo shots of little kids getting fatally stung while school principal Olivia de Havilland bemoans in one of the most nauseated reaction shots in cinematic history.
So why is all of this such comfort food? Sometimes I crave steak. Sometimes a bologna sandwich will hit the spot. Seeing nothing but good or great films can knock the luster off of their magic. It takes a bad film, once in a while, to help us realize what it takes to make something truly lasting.
Yet good people still work just as hard on movies that go wrong. And movies can go very wrong when the powers that be, for fear of losing their jobs and livelihood, stop saying no and start yes-sing a project moving along with support, gaining momentum like a freight train. Talented people survive these debacles; some do not. But in quietly building a cult fan base, The Swarm endures as a big, bad lesson learned in front of an audience that never showed up.
And I'm lovin' it.
Posted by Mike Kalvoda at 02:37 PM