YMMV / The Swarm (1978)

• Awesome Music: "Music by Jerry Goldsmith." The one credit on ANY movie with a "no-suck" guarantee. Here's proof.
• Narm:
  • While swarms of insects overpowering anything in their path is terrifying in concept, the execution of it is very outlandish and hammy. Which leads to many moments of drama just failing.
  • The illusions of the giant killer bees.
  • Multiple Oscar winner Olivia de Havilland's infamous slo-mo Big "NO!" scream/moan.
• Nightmare Retardant: The big problem with the "villain" of the film. Unless you're allergic to their stings, bees just aren't that scary.
• One-Scene Wonder:
  • Slim Pickens as Jud Hawkins. See here.
  • Then there's José Ferrer, who has about thirty seconds of screen time as the head of the nuclear plant.
• Special Effect Failure: And how. The train wreck is merely the most egregious example.
• Strawman Has a Point: Dr. Crane is clearly supposed to be the hero and General Slater the villain. The trouble is that all of the schemes for dealing with the bees suggested by Slater all seem eminently sensible but are shot down by Crane on the grounds of the "environmental damage" (even after the bees have already blown up a nuclear reactor, killing upwards of 30,000 people) whilst none of Crane's schemes actually work until the end. On top of that, Crane defeats the swarm of bees by setting an oil slick on fire, even though that is not exactly great for the environment, though the film does present it as Crane having run out of options by that point.
• Took the Bad Film Seriously: Possibly the defining example of such a thing in Jerry Goldsmith's career.
• Values Dissonance:
  • The film deals with trying to kill lots of Africanized bees. In The New '10s, with concerns about Colony collapse disorder, they'd probably be trying to save the bees instead. (Even in 1978, this movie's Mockbuster The Bees was nuanced enough to have a Green Aesop.)
  • In what may have been an attempt by the filmmakers to discourage viewers from assuming all bees are as dangerous as the ones in this movie, General Slater frequently refers to them as just "Africans", which results in dialogue like "From now on, the war against the Africans will be under military direction." Whoops! When Turner Classic Movies ran this as part of a one-night marathon of films mentioned in The Golden Turkey Awards in February 2021, viewers following along on Twitter quickly pointed this out — and those who had turned on captions reported that singular mentions of "African" or "Africans" had in fact been changed to "bees", suggesting that they weren't the only ones uncomfortable with this approach!

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