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April 02, 2009

The Swarm

Insect Warfare

By Casey

This was posted as part of the Third Annual White Elephant Film Blogathon.

On its surface, Irwin Allen's The Swarm is a run-of-the-mill disaster film. Prone to almost every aesthetic excess symptomatic of American Science Fiction produced in the 1970's, (see: thousands of flashing push-buttons to indicate a very advanced control room, emergency jumbotron correspondence with Washington, etc.) the movie looks about as dated as possible. At its core, The Swarm serves as a ham-fisted comment on monogamy and gender relations in the regressive modern South. While the film grants the majority of its time to its disaster scenario, for our intents and purposes, I will focus primarily on the romantic subplot, its relation to the swarm and the theoretical implications contained therein.

We open at the entrance of a below-ground military installation, orange and white storm-troopers pile out of an armored personnel carrier and enter the base with weapons drawn. In a command center littered with dead soldiers, we meet renegade entomologist Dr. Bradford Crane (Michael Caine) who has an interesting theory on the attack: African killer bees. (Incidentally, later in the film, the enemy is identified as simply Africans, or The Africans. Resulting in unfortunate quotes like, “From now on the war against the Africans will be under military direction” and “Dr. Hubbard has been out collecting live Africans, he's brought them back to the complex”) After a black mass takes down two choppers, Crane's credentials are authenticated and he goes to work assembling a crack-team of the nation's scientists.

Outside nearby Marysville, the nuclear family sits down to a picnic. Annoyed by a handful of bees surrounding their food, the matriarch makes the grave mistake of spraying the insects with a conventional repellent. The parents are then attacked and killed by the giant swarm, the child narrowly escaping in an American muscle car. We then cut to the quaint Texas town in preparation for its annual Flower Festival, where our romantic subplot is introduced.

Clarence Tuttle, the town's Mayor, and a retired mechanic simply named Felix are both desperately trying to win the affection of school superintendent, Maureen Schuster. They bicker and antagonize one another to the same degree they shower Maureen with hokey compliments. Felix is intimidated by Clarence's history and standing in Marysville and Tuttle perceives Felix's outsider status as a threat and as an unattainable mystique. Felix criticizes Tuttle's festival banner as corny and outdated. He explains, “it makes us all look like a bunch of hicks.” An offended Tuttle responds, “No one asked you to leave Houston and come here to retire, you know?” In order to continue to receive the unabashed praise from both men, Maurine remains neutral. She concedes, “Well actually, the sign is rather hicky, but that's what people expect from us.” The trio's adolescent courting ritual exemplifies the stunted progress of Marysville. And the insecurity that reduces these 60-year-old men to jealous teenagers is a social one. Falling into all applicable regional stereotypes prescribed to a Southern town, when Maurine delivers the line, “that's what people expect from us,” she is admitting defeat. She is at once recognizing the town's outmoded aesthetics and at the same time rejecting growth. We are soon shown the punishment for mindlessly conceding to antiquated ideals.

Early the next morning, Felix surprises Maurine on her way to work with a bouquet of roses and elucidates his childlike feelings for her. When pressed for even the slightest bit of honesty, the school superintendent remains non-committal, babbling something about being mindful. Outside of town, in an idiotic attempt to avenge the death of his parents, the young survivor of the picnic attack and two cohorts throw Molotov cocktails at the massive nest outside of town. An obvious nod to revolutionary action and protest, the boys act in an effort to usher in a new era of modernization through the destruction of Marysville. Minutes later Mayor Tuttle enters Maurine's office with a handful of yellow flowers and proceeds to beg Maurine for her hand in marriage. Sensing that her time of stringing these two men along may be coming to an end, Maurine commits to giving her answer by the end of the school term, presumably months away.

When the enraged swarm takes Marysville hours later, the initial shot of the attack is of the school. From the safety of a panicked classroom, Maureen looks on in horror as the bees attack and kill several screaming children. The camera lingers on the aged woman as if coming to terms with the cost of inaction and the selfish manipulation of her two suitors. The swarm subsides after having killed over 200 citizens and the call is made to evacuate the town.

“I have the sudden feeling I'll never see Marysville again” mutters a dazed Maureen, staring through the window of an out-bound train. Encased by her bickering callers, she is wracked with guilt. Felix and Tuttle attempt consolation and eventually Maureen's panic wanes. The calm is short-lived as bees descend upon the locomotive. The train breaks apart and tumbles down the hillside, bursting into flames. The end result of generations of voluntary stagnation; the swarm's final siege on the people of Marysville is an overdue attack in the name of progress. Washington confirms that among the hundreds of citizens evacuated, there are but seventeen survivors. The swarm advances to Houston.

(As a brief but unavoidable aside: Houston-based grindcore band incidentally named Insect Warfare broke up a little less than a year ago. In four short years, IW solidified themselves at the forefront of the oft-overlooked genre. At once channeling the spirit of elder-statesmen Napalm Death, Siege and Terrorizer, IW also embraced radical elements of harsh noise and glitch by way of their Warfare Noise incarnation. Insect Warfare were a credit to the genre and a prime example of forward-thinking in the face of stagnation.)

Predictably, Dr. Crane eventually destroys the bees by recreating the sound of their mating patterns over the Gulf of Mexico, granting the army enough time to set the swarm ablaze. Basked in red light from the burning gulf, Crane's newfound love interest asks, “Did we finally beat them, or is this just a temporary victory?” A thoughtful Crane responds, “I don't know, but we did gain time. And if we use it wisely, and if we're lucky, the world might just survive.” The team halted the current and thus preserved a way of life. A temporary victory for regression and fear, a small victory for a despicable group of luddites.

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