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The Month of Horror Day 22: The Swarm

Basement contributor Matt Bellamy has taken it upon himself to watch and review at least one horror movie a day for the month of October . . . because he's awesome that way! And Bellamy has The Basement buzzing with his latest entry.

It's my site. I can make all the bad puns I want. Wanna fight about it!?! 

A movie that would make Nicolas Cage in 'The Wicker Man' proud--"NO!! NOT THE BEES!!!". 'The Swarm' is easily the worst entry this month as just about everything in this "Man vs. Bee" horror flick is wall-to-wall atrocious. What were they even thinking!? Actually, for a time in the 70's, the threat of Africanized killer bees migrating to the U.S. was a very real possibility and people freaked out about it. Yes, killer bees can be found in some of the southern states but it was not anywhere near the apocalyptic scenario many feared however before the public realized that, filmmakers decided to capitalize on it!

'The Swarm' is directed by "Mr. Disaster" Irwin Allen who was responsible for 'The Poseiden Adventure', 'Earthquake', and 'The Towering Inferno'. There is no doubt that this is the worst one of those films although 'Earthquake' is no great shakes either. Heh. One thing all of those movies have in common is that somehow they were all able to attract massive casts of big name actors and 'The Swarm' is no different with Michael Caine, Richard Widmark, Katherine Ross, Henry Fonda, Slim Pickens, Patty Duke, and Richard Chamberlain filling out the ranks--did any of them read the script?? I'm not even kidding you when I say that the bulk of the movie is just people running away from horribly visualized swarms of "bees", it's almost as bad (almost) as Mark Wahlberg and company fleeing in terror from A GENTLE BREEZE in 'The Happening'.

There is one thing I did heartily enjoy about this movie though and I don't mind that it makes me sound like a horrible person for gleefully laughing at it: thousands of people die! Yeah, the body count here is fairly impressive although it's all mostly non-violent; how crazy can bee stings be, right? Also, lots of kids die which is cool because you just don't see that very often in movies these days. An elementary school is wiped right out, children dying everywhere, and I chuckled through all of it because obviously it's SUPPOSED to be terrible but it's so cheesy and idiotic that it's impossible to keep a straight face!

Ugh, don't watch this movie, go lick your toilet seat clean instead.





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