Corona | Coming Attractions

It's 1978 and you want to go see a movie. Because of the tremendous success of Jaws, a whole sub-genre of thrillers about animals attacking people have been greenlighted by the movie studios. In theaters now is one of these pictures, produced by the king of disaster movies, Irwin Allen. It's got Michael Caine in it. Sure, it may be about killer bees, but how bad could it be?

If you've seen The Swarm, then you may believe that Michael Caine did make a movie worse than Jaws: The Revenge (but not as bad as The Hand.)

Steven Schneider (Paranormal Activity) and Roy Lee (The Ring) want to remake The Swarm. I say let them, the new movie probably couldn't wind up being as cheesy as the original!

In the '78 picture Caine plays an expert in African killer bees. There's a deadly swarm making their way up from South America. If this picture was to be taken at face value, these bees are so bad that they can cause a nuclear power plant to go into critical meltdown. They can run a passenger train off its rails, killing hundreds of travellers. These bees are so bad, so mean, that they make Machete's Danny Trejo look like a kids' camp counselor.

The original Swarm movie was terrible but enjoyable if you like watching cinematic train wrecks with major motion picture budgets. The Swarm came out at a time in the late 1970s when event pictures, usually showcasing disasters, had large ensemble casts. The posters of these movies would be painted and at the bottom there would be a dozen boxes showing headshots of the actors that starred in the film. And when the name Irwin Allen was on that one-sheet, you knew that you were guaranteed to witness a disaster.

A commercials director named Ash Bolland is attached to earn the paycheck for this remake. A screenwriter has yet to be found, or at least drunk enough to agree to take on this job.

Enjoy the slo-mo below. The bees really do take out a nuclear power plant. There's your proof in the trailer!