The Swarm

So here we are: not so much a disaster movie, as a disastrous movie.

The Swarm (1978) is a film of such unspeakable awfulness that director Irwin Allen, scarred by the critical and commercial evisceration it received, banned anyone who worked with him from ever mentioning its name again.

Even The Swarm’s star Sir Michael Caine, one of the towering figures of bad cinema (and a man, incidentally, who makes no apology for Jaws 4: The Revenge), considers this the worst film he has ever made.

But before we speak about the disaster that is the film, what about the disaster it’s meant to depict?

As the film’s title suggests, the source of terrifying peril are bees. Not your honey-producing, flower-pollinating common or garden variety, but deadly African killer bees.

So, when a swarm of the lethal insects invades the USA, Caine’s top entomologist – or bug expert to the uneducated likes of you and me – is put in charge of saving the day.

Not a premise entirely without promise, you might think – especially with Irwin ‘Master of Disaster’ Allen, the producer of The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno at the helm. Well, you’d be wrong. Very, very, wrong.

The film barely begins before taking the first of many catastrophic mis-steps. We enter the story with the swarm having overwhelmed a nuclear missile base. The military personnel lie dead and America’s nuclear arsenal sits unguarded and unmanned.

The nadir of Caine's career. Not a lot of people know that.

Having seen the cutting edge of Uncle Sam’s weapons technology rendered useless by one blistering attack, the viewer giddily waits to find out how the drama will be escalated.

Will there be a nuclear meltdown? Will the bees head for Washington to continue their assault on the USA’s military infrastructure? Perhaps they’ll take over the White House and transform it into a massive hive from which they can busily – and buzzily – rule the country?

No. Instead, Allen has the bees – and all the action – lurch sideways to a small, white picket-fenced town that, with ill-timed misfortune, just happens to be holding a flower festival.

Rarely has tremulous expectation been scythed so swiftly. One minute we’re worrying about the readiness of the United States’ intercontinental ballistic missiles, the next it’s all about whether the town’s mayor will have to call off the begonia competition.

This non-development is symptomatic of the way the film blindly staggers about under Allen’s scattergun direction. His previous disaster epics had the sense to confine their drama within, respectively, the walls of a burning tower block and an upturned cruise ship.

In this movie, without the natural constraints of a tight location, Allen seems clueless as to whether he should be providing grand spectacle or keeping the danger up close and personal.

Such confusion results in a unholy hodge-podge of scenes, seemingly from entirely different films. The story jack-knifes from large-scale destruction at a nuclear power station and the ensuing deaths of thousands, to picnickers impotently trying to fight off the swarm with a can of fly spray they‘ve puzzlingly packed along with the cheese triangles.

"It's behind you!"

This ever changing kaleidoscope of calamity simply serves to emphasise how none of the action is either a) frightening or b) remotely believable.

The whole thing enters through-the-looking-glass territory when our heroes, not content with having the deadly bees to deal with, start to inflict entirely avoidable disaster upon themselves.

For example, take the scene where Henry Fonda’s saintly old Professor – the only man in the world who can develop an antidote to the bee venom – tests out an experimental cure on himself. And promptly dies. Wasn’t there something a little less irreplaceable – a hamster, maybe – they could have tested it on first?

Or how about when the bungling soldiers, trying to fight off a bee attack, set fire to their own headquarters by using flame-throwers indoors. Like, totally, duh!

The same dunderheaded idiocy again rears its head in the exploding helicopter sequence. This occurs early in the film, before the nature of the threat has been established, when a couple of military helicopters encounter the swarm.

Unsure what to make of the black, buzzing mass in front of them, the hapless pilots naturally decide against trying to ascertain the potential threat from a safe distance. No, instead the gung-ho aviators choose to fly headlong into the swirling unidentified phenomenon.

While this recklessness does indeed allow the pilots to correctly identify their enemy as bees, the manoeuvre predictably causes an unspecified aerodynamic problem for the helicopters. The pilots lose control and the choppers plummet from the sky, crash into the ground and burst into flame.

Artistic merit

If you ever wanted to see a Airfix helicopter kit blow up, then this is the film for you’ve been waiting for.

Without any CGI, the filmmakers had to rely on scale models to create their special effects.

So, as the small plastic chopper meets its fiery demise, one should spare a little sympathy for the poor bugger who must have spent painstaking hours intricately gluing together the flimsy model. His handiwork is only briefly seen before the special effects team to blow it all to smithereens.

Sadly, it’s one of the least convincing chopper explosions on record: even the ground and the plant-life looks totally wrong.

Exploding helicopter innovation

Without doubt, the first known apiary-related destruction of a helicopter.

Positives

The single positive aspect of The Swarm is that it is so epically bad. Such ripe terribleness has a richness that elevates the film’s copious failings to the level of high art.

The only way to truly appreciate what a Herculean achievement of appalling awfulness this film is to watch it.

Negatives

That thought that repeatedly nags away at the back of your mind for much of the film, as death and disaster lays waste to whole communities, is this: why didn’t people simply stay indoors and keep their windows closed? Amazingly, despite the presence of so many top scientists and military generals, no-one ever seems to have thought of this.

Favourite quote

In a film filled to brimming with lumpen dialogue, my favourite exchange comes right at the end of the film. Caine’s plan to stop the bees involves luring the swarm out to sea where the army intend to blow them up. (Please, don’t ask.)

To do this, Sir Michael fits out a couple of helicopters with megaphones through which he intends to broadcast a special frequency the bees will be helplessly drawn to. Aware of the ridiculousness of such cod-science, the scriptwriters try to make a lame apology and have Caine’s helper say: “Won’t the noise of the helicopter drown out your sound?”

Caine’s reply is majestic: “No, it’s on an entirely different sonic level.”

Oh, okay. That’s alright then.

Interesting fact

Real bees were used to film The Swarm. Legend has it that Sir Michael, upon finding small yellow blobs on his clothes during filming assumed it was honey and began eating it, unaware that it was actually bee excrement.

Having inflicted this cack on the world, it’s probably only fitting that he had to eat some too.

Review by: Jafo

Still want more? Then listen to the Exploding Helicopter podcast on The Swarm. Listen on iTunes, Podomatic or YourListen. 

Austin Powers in Goldmember

As Skyfall, the third Daniel Craig Bond film, provides a chopper fireball fix for cinemagoers, it seems an appropriate time to revisit the third of the 007 spoofing Austin Powers’ franchise.

Too tenuous a link? Perhaps. But the film does have the only ingredient necessary for a review on this hallowed website - the warming orange glow of a helicopter explosion.

We all remember Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997). The series debut was hilarious, lampooning the sexual innuendo, contrived plots and simplistic henchmen of the Bond franchise.

With the public hungry for more, a sequel seemed an obvious winner. However, with the best gags used up, The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999) quickly descended into puerile joke-making. They may have doubled the budget, but unfortunately they halved the humour.

It's against this unpromising backdrop that we arrive at the third installment, Goldmember (2002) which was presumably made for no other reason than a desire by creator/producer/writer/actor Mike Myers to have a final, pocket-lining, payday.

The story is simple. Blofeld parody Dr Evil (Mike Myers) hatches a plan to take over the world by using a "tractor beam" to crash a meteorite into the Earth, melting the icecaps and causing a global catastrophe of a scale normally only seen in Kevin Costner films (Waterworld, The Postman, et al).

To do this, he needs a key ingredient (that shares a name with popular Hemorrhoids treatment "Preparation H") from a Dutch scientist from the past, Johan van der Smut AKA "Goldmember" (Mike Myers again). However, Evil's plan is foiled early doors by British agent Austin Powers (take a guess, his initials are MM). Or so it would seem.

M equivalent, Basil Exposition, cock-blocks a potential threesome with Japanese twins to inform the newly-knighted Powers that his father, Nigel (played by the actually-knighted Michael Caine), has been mysteriously kidnapped. The only clue to go on is the Golden Members the kidnapper has painted on the overpowered guards. Can you guess who's behind this?

As the convolution reaches breaking point, Powers travels back in time (been there, done that in the preceding film), picks up Beyoncé as easily as she picks up the pay cheque for her role as Foxy Cleopatra, jumps back to the future, and after following a lead provided by Fat Bastard (played by, yes, you guessed it, Mike Myers) tracks down the recently-escaped Evil, Goldmember, and his Dad in order to save the day.

And if all that sounds exhausting you’d be right. Indeed, by the end, trying to follow the plot had become such a pain in the proverbial that I felt in dire need of Dr Smut’s Preparation H myself.

But you have to rewind to the opening scenes for the airborne explosive action. The film begins with what initially looks like an over-the-top action sequence. Actually it’s a fake trailer to "Austinpussy", a pretend Austin Powers biopic directed by Steven Spielberg.

It's a great moment of self-parody, with some brief but hilarious cameos from Tom Cruise as Powers, Gwyneth Paltrow as Powers-girl Dixie Normous, Kevin Spacey as Evil and Danny DeVito as Mini-Me.

As part of the sequence we see a chopper in pursuit of the motorbike-riding Dixie. Powers skydives out of a plane into his car, the Shaguar, in order to take care of the chopper and save Dixie.

Powers lines up the Shaguar to charge at the onrushing chopper, and then as it nears, launches into an acrobatic somersault - clearing the chopper and enabling him to fire at the bearded pilot, causing the helicopter to burst into flames.

Powers casually lands on the road by the rubble, before Cruise removes the glasses and utters the franchise catchphrase “Yeah Baby!”

Exploding helicopter innovation

Nothing special about the explosion, but the ridiculously implausible stunt does merit appreciation - the leap, somersault, gunfire combo, over an in-flight chopper. We know absolutely nothing about the reason why the helicopter pilot deserves to fall to a fiery end - we just know it's right, and bask in the resultant warm glow.

Positives

The opening trailer featuring the explosion is a genuinely enjoyable scene. I'm also sure I'm not the only one that has a soft spot for the shadow scenes from all three of these films. Simple. Childish. Hilarious.

Negatives

While a step up from The Spy Who Shagged Me, by the end you're left with the question of 'wouldn't it have just been better for everyone (other than Mike Myers) if this hadn't been made?' - the answer being a decisive 'Yeah Baby!'

Favourite quote

Nigel Powers: "There are only two things I can't stand in this world. People who are intolerant of other people's cultures... and the Dutch."

Review by: Joseph Clift

Still want more? Then check out the Exploding Helicopter podcast episode on Austin Powers In Goldmember. Find it on iTunes, YourListen, Acast, Stitcher, or Podomatic.

On Deadly Ground

On Deadly Ground (1994) is the film which brought Steven Seagal’s career to a juddering halt. He’d graduated from martial arts thrillers to box office star courtesy of Under Siege. He could have consolidated his new-found status by churning out a few conventional cop thrillers. Instead he chose to save the planet.

It’s easy to mock Seagal for this. But you know what? You can’t knock the cause. We are damaging the planet. And what have any of Seagal’s peers in action cinema – Stallone, Van Damme, Schwarzenegger – done to help?

There is, though, plenty you can mock in this film. For starters there’s Seagal’s bizarre over-identification with Eskimo culture, which sees him wander through the film wearing an eccentrically fringed, animal skin jacket.

This culminates in a surreal dream sequence where Seagal becomes the Eskimos’ spiritual warrior. He uundergoes a hallucinatory rite of passage where topless women gyrate in front of him, before he’s required to kill a bear in hand-to-paw combat, and be ‘reborn’ in a lake.

This is all before the film’s closing scene where Big Steve delivers a five-minute monologue on the evils of the oil industry, and outlines a conspiracy to prevent the development of renewable energy.

Yes, it’s bonkers. But it’s also brave and ballsy, with enough demented energy and over-the-top brio to make it one of my favourite Seagal films.

And while Seagal’s primary concern with this film is protecting the environment, he still finds time to deliver on the conventions of the action film – including a helicopter explosion.

A team of mercenaries fly in to eliminate Seagal and stop him interfering with the oil-drilling operation. However, like a deranged survivalist, Steve keeps a remote cave in the wilderness chock full of explosives and weaponry.

The mercenaries track Seagal to his armoury. But having grabbed the equipment he needs, Whispering Steve blows up the cave – and the helicopter gets caught in the blast.

Artistic merit

A crackerjack chopper fireball. In the time-honoured tradition of exploding helicopter movies, the chopper pilot hovers at just the right distance to allow the copter to be consumed in the explosion.

And as the explosion goes off behind Seagal, we get to see him dive away in slow motion, in vintage, action movie fashion.

Exploding helicopter innovation

First known use of a cave to blow up a helicopter.

Positives

In keeping with the extraordinary over-the-top quality of the film, there’s a fantastic, scenery-chewing performance from Michael Caine.

With a bizarre slicked back, black hairstyle, Caine’s every third word consists of “sonofabitch” as he erratically attempts an American accent. And, in one particularly memorable scene, he leaves us with an extraordinary image, raging: “I’m gonna have Eskimos and environmentalists probing every orifice of my body for the next two weeks.”

Negatives

Sadly, On Deadly Ground remains the only film Seagal has ever directed. Today Steve concentrates on the routine cop thrillers his agent was probably always telling him to do. We can only hope that Seagal will one day go behind the camera again, and gift the world a further classic.

Favourite quote

The film delivers a conveyor belt of classic dialogue. Corking lines are scattered throughout the script like confetti.

There’s the bizarre from Seagal: “You tell your father I’m nothing but a mouse hiding from the hawks in the house of a raven.”

The crude from the henchmen: “I want you to protect this rig like it was your sister’s cherry.”

And, of course, mind-blowing, epic, mouthfuls of bollocks. [Talking about Seagal]: “He's the kind of guy that would drink a gallon of gasoline so he could piss on your campfire! You could drop this guy off at the Arctic Circle wearing a pair of bikini underwear, without his toothbrush, and tomorrow afternoon he's going to show up at your pool side with a million dollar smile and fist full of pesos. This guy's a professional, you got me?“

Interesting fact

Empire Strikes Back director Irvin Kershner cameos as the director of a cheesy TV advert that Michael Caine films to highlight his green credentials.

Review by: Jafo

Still want more? Then check out the Exploding Helicopter podcast episode on On Deadly Ground. Download the episode from iTunes, Podomatic, YourListen, Stitcher, or acast.