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Post by dem bones on Jul 29, 2009 9:19:49 GMT
Arthur Herzog - The Swarm (Pan, 1976: originally William Heinemann, 1974) Blurb Only a few scientists felt the first stirrings of terror. But then the death toll began to mount - and terror erupted into National panic when great swarms of savage bees, deadly killers, blotted out the sun as they spread across America.
Now with the Empire State Building black with bees, a crack team of scientists race desperately against time to fight an enemy they only partly comprehend.
A CHILLING MASTERPIECE OF TERROR THAT JUST MIGHT COME TRUE! Despite the ace peeping tom cover, i was wary of The Swarm having somehow got it into my head that it was an exercise in the dreaded brainy horror. Well, Mr. Herzog has clearly done his research - the text is interspersed with important-looking graphs and charts and there's even a glossary - but highbrow it ain't and our man makes plenty good use of the 200 or so pages at his disposal to bring us a minor 'When Insects Attack' masterpiece. We begin with an attack on a family picnic at Maryville on the outskirts of New York. The mutant African bees leave Ma, Pa and little Sis dead and the two surviving sons with a brilliant adventure to tell of marshmallow-size, hamburger-eating Kamikaze bees though hardly anyone will listen, the exceptions being the booze-addled local practitioner Dr. Zinac and his equally pissed-up neighbour Mr. Himmell, a semi-tramp who tends the town dump. Despite the scepticism of his colleague at the Natural Academy of Environmental Studies, our hero, super-boffin and all-round nice guy Dr. John Wood takes it upon himself to investigate the phenomena of the angry bees. This is a stroke of luck for him as, not only does he get to meet Mr. Himmell trying on a salvaged old boot ("Wood could smell the alcohol from four feet away") but also soon-to-be love of his life Maria Amaral, a gorgeous, unattached Brazilian who is also a top Epidemiologist. When the bees launch a second attack on Maryville killing close=on thirty people, the authorities are forced to act and Dr. Wood finds himself spearheading the crack B Group, a hand-picked team of scientists who take over the disused Top Secret Chemical Warfare Laboratory at Detrick. But they're an expert short. "Do you know a good Epidemiologist?" "I do. She's a Brazilian and she knows a lot about our African friends." What are the chances, eh? While the scientists are getting their act together, the Angry Bees are getting angrier and more daring in their attacks until it's clear they're in training for an assault on the cities. They've also learned to reinforce their hives with Styrofoam so winter will no longer kill off so many of them. With civilian casualties mounting and an anxious President demanding action, Dr. Wood is considering dousing the killer bees with LSD to confuse them to extinction. Sounds like a foolproof plan to me. The tension mounts ......
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Post by Steve on Jul 29, 2009 19:16:21 GMT
Saw the film of this with Michael Caine on TV a few weeks back. I'd forgotten how long it was - it's an epic. The swarm attacks are actually pretty well done (presumably jam-smeared extras covered head to toe) and there's some top hallucinatory giant bee action. I was big into Arthur Herzog back in the late seventies. Had quite a few of his; this one, Earthsound, Heat, and Orca of course. Good stuff. I'll tell you what though, the cover on this Swarm you've got is loads better than the tie-in one I had - basically a yellow cover with a load of black dots on it, as I remember.
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Post by dem bones on Jul 30, 2009 16:44:34 GMT
Haven't seen that particular cover, Steve, but a quick Google suggests there have been some really drab affairs. The novel deserves better - the last third is absolutely mental. My favourite bit concerns beehive keeper Perry Goodall who fronts a pro-Bee rally at Madison Square Gardens. Lots of convincing call-and-response chanting ("What's good?" "Saving the bees" "what's bad?" "Killing bees" "What do we like?" "Honey and flowers!" "What do we need?" "Beeeeeeeeeees!", etc.) before good old Perry performs his party piece and allows his friendly pals to cover his face 'cause, obviously, they've never stung him before, so they're not going to do so in front of a massive audience with the event being covered live on TV ... I also liked the signs posted in Bee-infested areas; Warning
Avoid bees Report wild hives The movie certainly veers away from the book, notably in how the situation is eventually resolved (in Herzog's original, the African bees could easily have won if they'd wanted it enough; in the film Michael Caine prevents America from being "stung back to the Dark Ages"). It's quite astonishing how, between them, The Rats and The Swarm provided so many of the 'When Animals Attack' cliches as early as 1974. Swarm has the old tramp by the swamp, the fatal tear in the protective clothing, the perpetually angry military general who takes it all personally, the scruffy old mad scientist who heroically injects himself with venom (Herzog helpfully provides Fig. IV. Dr. Fine's death chart for "authenticity") and best of all, the cover warning that it's "Horribly convincing ... Just might come true". Herzog even sets us up neatly for a sequel, though i don't think he ever published one?
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Post by killercrab on Jul 31, 2009 1:43:18 GMT
Avoid bees >>
Too late - I've been a fan of this sub genre since the 1970's ! 1966 saw Amicus' The Deadly Bees , followed by Killer Bees 1974 ( Gloria Swanson standing in for Bette Davis has a power over bees). Next it's Ben Johnson tackling hives in The Savage Bees , so good it spawned a sequel in 1978 Terror Out Of The Sky. Finally reliable John Saxon got out the insect net in 1978 to make simply The Bees.
Killerbee
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Post by Steve on Jul 31, 2009 11:48:07 GMT
Haven't seen that particular cover, Steve, but a quick Google suggests there have been some really drab affairs. Pan, 1978 This is the one I was referring to, dem - though looking at it again now I'm wondering if my description really did it justice. I mean, graphically it's quite striking. I suppose I just prefer something a bit more... 'pulpy'. Obviously it worked for me at the time though because I remember grabbing this one off the shelves all excited like. No sequel that I know of sadly, in fact Herzog seemed to go off the boil a bit after a great run in the 70s - or maybe it was just me.
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Post by vaughan on Sept 23, 2009 11:25:31 GMT
The first thing that occurred to me was the following: Michael Caine is no B actor.
The Swarm was first published in 1974, and four years later a movie from Irwin Allen graced screens across the nation. For a short time. For a time shorter than it takes a hive of Africans to outgrow their community and, well, swarm elsewhere (a month).
I was amused by two sets of comments on IMDB. The first is the following: “Irwin Allen was so disheartened by the amount of money he lost on The Swarm (1978) that he forbade any of his employees to ever mention it again. He even cut short an interview when a question was asked about it.”
And then there is a review posted by a viewer: “Contrary to popular opinion, THE SWARM is not the worst movie ever made, and anyone who says otherwise clearly hasn't seen the collected works of Jesùs Franco, Andy Milligan or Woody Allen.”
If that isn’t a must see I don’t know what is!
But I digress; my comments are about the novel, not the movie. The Swarm was published by Pan with a striking cover (a single beer poised over a keyhole). It’s a small book of only 220 pages.
It actually took me longer to read this than is normal. In fact it took three days. Under normal circumstances this would be read in a single day. And yes, life got in the way a bit. But mostly it’s the strange writing style of Mr. Herzog that caused me some issues. The thing is, the author doesn’t like to wallow. And you know, a good insect book needs a good deal of wallowing. It needs to wallow in death and gore, gratuitous sex, ridiculous occurrences and abstract plot diversions. Wallowing is good, nah, essential.
The Swarm doesn’t wallow nearly enough. In fact to me it reads almost like a treatment for a movie. You know the kind of movie I mean – one with a big name star slumming it for a pay check and a grandiose landscape of glass screen FX and poor animation.
On the other hand at times the novel gets quite technical. The book has graphics interspersed with the text giving us charts, diagrams, readings from computer print-outs and whatnot. I won’t mention all the chemical names (oh damn, just did). It even, dare I say it, wallows in all that for a bit. But if you’re going to wallow that’s hardly the place I’d have chosen. Was Herzog trying to prove he’d done his research?
As it is you never really get attached to the characters, and the deaths are recorded merely as figures on a spreadsheet. There’s not a single stinger to the eyeball sequence – and damn that would have been pretty good I’d have thought.
But no. Herzog seems to taking this very very seriously. And I tried to as well. But you know, I’ve recently been through Guy N. Smith’s Bats, Childers Worms, Herbert’s Rats, and Lewis’s Spiders – and as such The Swarm just didn’t stack up.
Which is a lesson. If you’re going to write about the end of civilisation, have fun with it. If the world is doomed, it might as well go out with a real toss, turn, and gnaw. We want spasms, madness, cooky stereotypes coming to grotesque ends. Look, the world is over, I don’t need all the details. If the world was going to end tomorrow I’d not bother with scientific journals, I’d bury my head in a Playboy, you know?
So, I’d say The Swarm is a middling little number. It’s alright. Nothing special. And nowhere near a match for the other insect books out there. A diversion then. Honestly though, it had me craving some Guy N. Smith.
Ziiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii
ps: Another IMDB gem: "Michael Caine stated in an interview that during filming he thought the little yellow spots left by the bees on his clothing was honey so he began to eat it, unaware he was eating bee poop." ;D
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Post by dem bones on Sept 23, 2009 18:42:26 GMT
I must admit, i'd more or less convinced myself i wouldn't like The Swarm and left it mouldering on the shelf for years, but once started i was hooked. And i love the diagrams and medical charts! It's a shame Richard Lewis didn't lift the idea for Night Killers! It does seem very old fashioned, though, quite fifties-ish when held up against the 'nasties'.
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Post by doomovertheworld on Apr 20, 2013 8:12:52 GMT
I just finished this one. I would agree with demonik's assessment that it doesn't feel particularly like a nasty. comparing this with something like The Rats, which was released the same year, is like comparing chalk and cheese. To be honest the book that it reminded me the most of was Michael Critchon's the andromeda strain with it's strong scientific basis. I enjoyed reading. Definitely the classiest When Animals Attack book I have read
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