The Swarm
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Buy this! (Good luck)
The Swarm (1974), by Arthur Herzog
James Wood, Chief Staff Officer at the National Academy, is worried. There have been a growing number of incidents in the US of bees behaving in unusual, aggressive ways; and reports of the African Killer Bee’s swift take over of the Brazilian bee population are not reassuring. He begins compiling reports on bee attacks, and when the data is too large to ignore, he and his colleagues join together to try and stop a potentially disastrous new crop of evolved, giant African bees…
Ideally, when writing these reviews, I read the source material before seeing it on the screen. Trying to view a novel objectively after having watched its cinematic counterpart is a pain in the ass. For one thing, actors are automatically associated with the characters they played, and if I didn’t like ‘em the first time, it’ll be even harder for me to like their less tangible counterparts. Even worse, if a certain section of the movie stuck with me, appealed to me in a specific way, often times that section isn’t present in the text at all. Or if it is present, so overwhelming was the movie interpretation that the words on the page can’t help but come off poorly by comparison.
My point is, source before screen, if at all possible. Sometimes it isn’t, and today’s subject is one of those times. I wasn’t even aware Irwin Allen’s The Swarm was ever anything but a hideously bloated, wonderfully idiotic film. There it was, though plain as day, at the tail end of the opening credits:
adapted from the novel by Arthur Herzog
I immediately contacted my network of fellow Webbed Ones to get my hands on a copy ASAP. But to expect me to turn off the movie then and there, to not watch the train wreck I had heard some much goodness about, would be unimaginably cruel. Maybe a stronger soul could have held on. Not mine. (Even as we speak, my DVD of Prophecy sits on my living room floor, mere inches from the television. I just ordered the book today, if I’m lucky it will be here soon, but the DVD is calling to me, and I’m not sure I can wait that long.)
So my take on this novel might not be pure. I apologize. I’m weak. If you really want an unbiased opinion, stop reading this, and go get your own damn copy. Me, I’m not going to wait any longer. After spending two weeks of my life on these two, I need to get something down on paper or I’m gonna go nuts.
The first thing that strikes you with this novel (especially if you’ve only seen the movie) is that it is very, very well researched. This is one of the few fiction pieces I’ve read outside of Michael Crichton with actual footnotes, and while I didn’t go so far as to check the notes to see if they were for real, the magazines they reference (American Bee Journal, Journal of Apicultural Research) certainly are. There’s a ton of information thrown at you over the course of the story, but it’s done in easy to understand prose, and it serves to give an extra shade of realism to the fictional happenings. It’s also fascinating stuff.
Another trait this shares with Crichton’s work is that the protagonists are all scientists, and almost exclusively male. Characterization is limited, to the most part, to single defining traits: Hubbard, Wood’s boss, is “beetle-like,” Krim has a weird sounding voice, etc. Wood himself fares slightly better; by the end we know that a.) he was afraid of bees for a while and b.) he used to be a womanizer. Oh, and he’s in love with his work, but this is something everyone surrounding him shares so it’s not exactly a distinguishing mark.
If Herzog’s men are not exactly well-rounded, they practically leap off the page when compared to his women. The one prominent female character, Maria, should be as well equipped to deal with the situation as any of her male counterparts. Unfortunately, her major function in the novel is to serve as Wood’s romantic interest and to be leered at by everyone else. We first see her giving a talk at the American Entomological Association; she bursts into tears when the audience picks apart her theories. It doesn’t get much better from there.
One or two characters stand out as not entirely two-dimensional. Henry David, a civilian bee-keeper, has an attachment to his charges that makes him oddly likable, and his eventual death, if not tragic, is at least unusual enough to be haunting. (A mob of angry townspeople, incensed by media reports of bee attacks, destroy David’s wooden hives; most of the bees in those hives escape to the nearby forest, and when David goes to check on them, they “ball” him to death, smothering him in the same way they smother their unneeded queens.)
However, figures like David are few and far between here. If this bugs you (ha!), you’ll have a hard time enjoying the novel. It did get on my nerves, and certainly kept me from losing myself as much as I like to when reading good escapist fiction; but if you read a lot of this stuff (or watch a lot of b-movies, as I’m sure most of you have), stock characters are just one of things you learn to ignore. It’s not offensive, at least. Even the weak Maria shows the author trying to write a strong female character- that he fails is unfortunate, but the effort counts for something. Said the unpublished condescending hack.
The plot itself is remarkable if only for it’s consistently logical approach; again, this is more noticeable if you’re familiar with the film, but Herzog makes every attempt to ease our suspension of disbelief by backing up his ideas with hard data, and by having events proceed in a consistent, reasonable fashion.
To bring up Crichton yet again, this novel reminded me of nothing else more than The Andromeda Strain. There’s the same meticulous attention to detail, the same view of scientists as driven, obsessive men, and both novels center on a team of these scientists working in tandem to stop an unprecedented threat.
This isn’t entirely surprising; Andromeda was a hugely successful book which set the standard template for the science-based thriller that remains popular even today. Crichton’s book is clearly the better one- it moves quicker, and there’s a much stronger sense of urgency to pull you along. Herzog gets bogged down every so often, and his prose isn’t as snappy.
Even more damaging, though, is the lack of mystery. One of the most important parts of Andromeda is that there is always question that needs answering; each chapter solves an old puzzle and presents a new one, which insures your constant attention. The Swarm is just about bees, and once you know that, there aren’t a whole lot of surprises in store.
Still, it has it’s moments; all in all, a slightly above average pop novel.
SCREEN:
Buy this!
The Swarm (1978), directed by Irwin Allen
Nearly all personnel on an ICBM missile based has been eliminated by an enemy that leaves nothing but bodies in its wake. General Slater wants answers, and it seems like Bradford Crane, imminent entomologist and friend to the President’s Science Advisor, may have them. He believes this is the first step in a long building war between man and insect- in this case, a mutated strain of the African Killer Bee. Meanwhile, in nearby Marysville, preparations for the yearly Flower Festival are underway, and a family begins a picnic on an open field, unaware of the danger that lurks not twenty feet away…
Here’s a thought: get somebody to watch the first ten minutes of The Swarm, and they’ll resent you for a few months. Get them to watch the whole movie, and they’ll be a B-fan for life.
Or else they’ll be dead.
Maybe that’s not such a good thought after all. As enjoyably awful as The Swarm is, its a two and half hour movie, and watching it without any sort of advanced preparation is like climbing K2 without gloves. Best to start small, with something that will at worst leave you temporarily blind. Some of Allen’s other work, perhaps; none of his movies, not even his “classic” The Poseiden Adventure, are exactly good, but the others at least have some intentional entertainment value.
The Swarm doesn’t. There is not one actor better than tolerable, not one “action” sequence less than risible, not one spot of dialogue that isn’t clunky, if not entirely absurd- it’s a movie who’s badness is so comprehensive, so staggeringly pure, that you can’t help but be in awe of it. Ed Wood did fun junk, but a few of his faults can be attributed to his lack of resources. Not here. Allen had some of the decade’s best talent at his disposal, as well as a budget probably triple the budgets of all Wood’s movies combined. Quadruple, even. And he still manages to muck it up.
A full description of The Swarm’s idiocy would take a better writer than I to accomplish, so I’ll try and hit a few of the high points. Honestly, it’s the little things that got me the second time around; this movie’s badness extends beyond the obvious. Almost fractal-like in its repetition, you can go to smaller and smaller surfaces and still find something so stupid it takes your breath away:
-Michael Caine’s entrance, the first real sign of trouble ahead. Mere seconds after Major Baker (Bradford Dillman) informs his commanding officer that “everyone on the base is dead,” Caine wanders in through a nearby door. The soliders standing guard brandish their guns at him- Caine, with an expression of mild concern, turns back, only to have the door he just entered through slide shut in his face. When he turns forward again, the expression remains; if anything, he’s even calmer. I suppose it’s in character for him to react coolly to most anything, but the impression I got was of an actor who wanders onto the wrong set and, once he’s ascertained he can’t get out, decides to bluff his way through the rest of the picture.
-Speaking of which, Caine’s performance is one of the film’s comic highlights. He alternates between bland stoicism and raving lunacy, often within the same sentence. We’re supposed to be cheering for him, and booing for the paranoid general who dares suspect Our Hero’s shining integrity, but frankly, after watching Caine browbeating anyone with a contrary opinion, I’m siding with the
General. Not that the General is any smarter, mind you. He just doesn’t yell as much.
-Baker does a real swell job of checking out the “empty” base before calling his superior. Not only is Crane (Caine), a civilian, wandering around unnoticed, it turns out that the base doctor and four men are over in the infirmary, all very much alive. I guess Baker just poked his head in a few rooms and decided to risk it.
-We get a couple of shots of the bee’s P.O.V.: a rotating kaleidoscope lens. Are the bees drunk?
-Be (heh) warned: there’s a deeply odious Romance Subplot here that will take years off your life. We spend agonizing minutes watching Clarence (Fred MacMurray) and Felix (Ben Johnson) fight for the affection of the school principal, Maureen (Olivia de Havilland), only to have all three die in a “tragic” train crash an hour and a half into the picture. I’ll admit I was glad to see them gone; Fred MacMurray in particular was threatening to destroy all my love for Double Indemnity simply by his presence here. But why spend so much time on the this triangle, why bring up the question of “Who is Maureen going to choose?” if you never bother to answer it? No one in the audience will care, but it’s still sloppy story-telling.
-This must take place in an alternate universe. How else can you explain that Crane, after a minimum of fuss, is given command of the entire anti-bee operation, with no limits to his authority? Maybe Mom was right, maybe I should have been an entomologist.
-I have to wonder what the actors were thinking during the filming. One scene in particular, when Crane helps a stung boy shake off his fever-dream hallucinations ("There is no bee!"), seems impossible to get through with a straight face.
-Ah, there are so many wonderful lines here. The script is a treasure trove of howlers; if you are ever in need of a good sig file, look no further:
“The war I’ve always expect has arrived.”
“We’ve been fighting a losing battle with the insects for 15 years now, but I never thought we’d see a confrontation in my lifetime. And I never dreamed it would turn out to be the bees. They’ve always been our friends!”
-Even the blocking is weird. When Dr. Krim (Henry Fonda) arrives, he and Crane speak with their faces mere inches apart. (Altogether now: “Why don’t you kiss him instead of talking him to death?") When Slater joins the conversation, Krim and Crane keep their close distance, and keep exchanging long, meaningful looks. Either it’s Tweedledum and Tweedledee, or they’re in love.
-Um, why is it that people keep getting stung by bees and showing no visible injuries? Shouldn’t there be swelling?
And there’s more. Much more. Like the character touch of having a pregnant woman and her doctor fall in love, mere days after the woman’s husband dies on the military base. Or the fact that it takes Crane two and a half hours to figure out what a child would understand in thirty seconds- he listens to the tape of the initial attack over, and over, and over, you keep hearing the obvious relationship between the blaring siren and the arrival of the bees, and you think, “Oh, he must’ve gotten it by now, he’s just waiting for the right time.” In which you’d be partly right; Crane may not be waiting, but the script is, to keep the bees alive for a somehow-less-than-horrifying attack on Houston.
The best way to look at The Swarm, I think, is as an entirely unintentional parody of seventies disaster films. It’s all there, the forced “human interest” angle, the roll-call of embarrassed movie stars, the mass deaths. It’s as if someone put a bunch of clichés into the Plot-O-Matic machine and waited for a script- only, the machine was on acid that day and printed out this instead.
This is quality crap, folks.
COMPARE/CONTRAST:
It goes without saying that screenwriter Sterling Siliphant took some liberties when adapting Herzog’s novel. I even hesitate to use the word “adapting”; it’s more like Siliphant slept with the book under his pillow one night, and assumed all the important plot details would seep into his brain. Other than a few shared character names and a couple of scenes, there is remarkably little to connect the movie and its print counterpart- you have bees, and they kill people, and that’s about it.
The shared scenes are worth mentioning, if only because they provide some sort of evidence that this was more than a name-only adaptation. The novel opens with a picnicking family being set upon by bees, and we get the same set-up twenty or so minutes into the movie, with little change. Only major difference is, in the book, three children survive, two boys and a girl. In the movie, Paul Durant is an only child, and he escapes by driving his parents’ car away from the scene (hysterically shouting “Mom! Dad!” the whole way, like the horribly overwrought child-actor he is). That the attack is more chilling on print than on screen is a given, but there are a few shots of the parents covered with bees that are icky, if that sort of thing gets to you. Although we still have a complete lack of visible welts or injuries.
Another shared scene is the self-inflicted death of the immunologist, George Fine in the novel, Walter Krim in the movie. (Krim is the geneticist in the book, god knows why the names got moved around.) It’s a pretty stupid sequence either way. The doctor believes he has found an antidote to the bee venom. It has to be tested on a human being before they can release it to the public, though, , so instead of waiting to find a volunteer grunt, he tests the effects of the antidote on himself. The test fails. In both cases, the antidote seems to take effect briefly, before the doctor relapses and dies of heart failure.
It’s sorta suspenseful, I guess, if you can overlook the foolishness. I’ve said elswhere, and I stand by it: it’s awfully difficult to worry about a character who is dumb enough to put himself in such obvious mortal danger.
At least in the novel, this self-test is somewhat justified. Fine, not a well man even in the best of circumstances, is under considerable strain to get results quickly, and he also believes himself partially responsible for the death of a coworker. It’s understandable, if not entirely believable, that he’d make the fatal mistake of offering himself up for the test as a way of hastening his research and exculpating his guilt.
In the movie, Walter Krim is a friendly, spry old man with a warm relationship to Crane and a spunky outlook on life. (Honest. That’s what they want us to believe, anyway. Henry Fonda makes it almost work, but he still comes of as more “doddering idiot” then “wise mentor.") When the time comes for him to test on a human, his opting to test on himself is presented as some sort of supreme sacrifice instead of avoidable mistake. I don’t buy it. For one thing, he hasn’t even tested the drug on anything beyond rabbits; for another, he’s in his seventies, which makes his value as a “subject” somewhat limited. Also, his death is supposed to be a moving moment- but if his facial expression doesn’t give you the giggles, nothing will.
Weirdly enough, both versions stress that, with the immunologist gone, there is no further hope of finding a cure. I’m not sure I buy that. Surely these doctors kept notes, and even if they are in the top of their field, there has to be someone who can follow those notes and perhaps figure out a different way of approaching the problem.
Some of the major problems with the movie could have been corrected if they had stayed closer to the source. The novel follows a build of incidents all over the country, starting with a few deaths here and there and climaxing in the African bees domination of the American bee community, and an infestation of New York City. This makes the threat more credible, in that instead of a single, monstrous army, we have thousands of smaller, aggressive swarms working in biological tandem. The movie insists on viewing the swarm as one specific entity, making the danger less important; after all, once you’ve taken care of that one swarm, you’ve got the problem licked.
Also, you never get a real sense of the scientists in the movie doing anything to stop the bees, aside from yelling at generals and injecting themselves with dangerous chemicals. In the novel, a clear plan of attack is laid out and explained a few hundred pages in. Even better, we get to see each stage of the attack as it is developed and tried out. With Allen’s version, it’s more like Crane just wakes up each morning with some new damn fool idea, which he then proceeds to badger everyone into following.
The movie manages to botch the few ideas that are carried over. Hints are dropped in the novel about the evolution of insect life, and it’s complete alien-ness from our own- the film turns that into a ludicrous vision of a “war with the insects,” not bothering to site any examples or even explain the basic idea, just throwing it out in one or two laughably overwrought chunks of dialogue. Herzog writes about bees developing the ability to use man’s weapons against them for their own benefit, like taking Styrofoam to use as insulation in their nests and integrating pesticides into their venom. The movie has a scene where Crane mentions this to General Slater, but it’s understandable if you miss it, as it’s difficult to take anything coming out of his mouth seriously.
If the two share any faults, it’s that the bees, credible or not, are never as frightening as either writer or director wish them to be. With Allen, it’s obvious why: the special effects are laughable, and even if you could get past that, the humans are so daft and heavy-handed that you can’t imagine the bees being much of a worry to anyone with a whit more intelligence. With Herzog, the reasons are harder to pinpoint. The main reason for the digressionary apology at the start of this review was that I suspect my reaction to the novel was influenced by the goofiness of the movie- every time the story started to work it’s way under my skin, I’d get visions of thousands of golden foam pellets being blown around on a set, or the “tragic” deaths of Maryville’s finest, and I’d lose it. Even admitting that, though, there’s something lacking in the novel, a flattened narrative that can’t be entirely explained away by my own biases; it’s not a huge shock that it’s out of print.
As thrillers go, The Swarm makes a much better book than film. In terms of entertainment value, though, Allen’s movie is incomparable, existing in the same rarefied atmosphere as The Exorcist II and On Deadly Ground. I would hesitate in recommending the novel, as it takes a bit of effort to track down, and it’s debatable if that effort is worth it. Besides, Herzog wrote other novels, most which are more worth your time than this one. The movie, though, is required viewing, especially now that it’s readily available on DVD.
Maybe there’s a lesson in there, someplace. I’ll let you figure it out.
SOURCE: QQ.5
SCREEN: QQQ.5
Herzog also wrote the novelization of Orca. Was this guy cursed by gypsies or what?
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