It’s 1978 and America is a mess. Government is clueless, cities are burning, and economists have decided to trot out a heretofore unused term – “stagflation” – to describe this uniquely awful moment in time. Jonestown and the Iranian hostage crisis are still in the future, but that future is coming fast. In sum, there’s not a goddamn thing left to believe in. Even the President has resorted to calling the American people to account. For the first time ever, the powers that be see no other way: they’re blaming us for a change. We, the people, innocent victims no more. And it stands to reason that Mother Nature has also been pushed to the brink. Between the toxins, extinctions, and supreme carelessness passing as an economic theory, animal, vegetable, and mineral alike have had enough. It’s time. Cue the bees. Killer bees, to be precise. From Africa, as if whitey wasn’t getting the message.
And if we’re going to have a massive influx of bees – billions, per the screams of at least three different sources – we’ve got to have a Gibraltar standing in their way. A human being, yes, but also part DDT, part neutron bomb, and all man. Preferably one wearing a turtleneck. Because if the late 70’s stood for anything, it was the need to make a fashion statement while the nation slipped into anarchy. Michael Caine is just such a figure. Playing the Princeton-educated entomologist Brad Crane, Caine inhabits his second skin much like fellow Master of Disaster Charlton Heston, only he never bothers to leave the ground. That said, Crane is after bigger game. No mere 747 teeming with flailing B-listers, this rescue mission. No, his involves the entire city of Houston. And let’s face it: if the bees aren’t stopped there, they’re moving on to Chicago, perhaps Washington. These are African bees, I remind you, and they have nothing less than three centuries of colonization to avenge.
Because Crane is an unapologetic intellectual, believing research, evidence, and sound data are the only weapons worthy of the name, he’s inherently suspect; especially to the military minds who immediately want to crank up the engines and send in ground troops. Leave it to them, and half the country would be engulfed in mushroom clouds. Sure, the bees would be no more, but so would half of humanity. No, Crane must stifle such a callous, disproportionate response. But you’re going to have to trust him. Admittedly, that trust has a shaky start, and within hours of Crane assuming what passes for command, over 200 are killed during one of those small-town festivals that seem designed solely to have people running around, shrieking in terror. Soon, body bags are everywhere. And after the two helicopter crashes and the family swallowed whole while having a picnic, it’s not looking good for the eggheads. Maybe Richard Widmark channeling Curtis LeMay is the better bet after all.
But Crane isn’t finished. He flies in his long-time colleague Dr. Walter Krim (Henry Fonda) to help develop an anti-venom, a process which is bound to involve groans, teeth-gritting, and a level of perspiration unseen until Robert Hays landed the big bird in Airplane! The self-test works, but it ultimately kills the good doctor (having your heart race to 175 bpm a good dozen times in 90 seconds rarely ends well), and who on earth thought we could mass produce eight billion vials of the stuff to save us all anyway? These fancy-pants scientists and their kooky ideas seem good in theory, but what about our need for drama? Action? Tinkering with beakers and test tubes is great when the cameras aren’t rolling, but when box office is the ultimate consideration, maybe we should send up the F-16’s and get this shit over with. As one would expect, a good 75% of the film’s running time involves ramrod, crisply uniformed generals arguing with tweed-clad milquetoasts with elbow patches. Maybe it’s the great American battle playing out per usual.
Before any grand resolution, it’s important to remember that while Crane consults his textbooks, grand maestro Irwin Allen insists on side stories that wouldn’t pass muster on a low rent soap opera. Given that seven Oscar winners are aboard (which has to be a record), one might think the results would be positively Shakespearean. Instead, we’ll have to settle for Patty Duke going into labor, Jose Ferrer presiding over a nuclear power plant explosion (which is quickly forgotten, despite killing infinitely more people than the bees), and both Ben Johnson and Fred MacMurray fighting for Olivia de Havilland’s hand in marriage. Lee Grant is also on hand to literally stand around.
None of it matters, and registers even less, but because Allen, in addition to being a supreme hack from the old school, was also a glorious sadist, we are allowed a rare opportunity to watch a good portion of Hollywood royalty die in a passenger train that not only derails, but rolls, burns, and explodes in a fireball. The sequence was one of two genuine laughs in the picture, the other being the closeup of the hand of a dead youngster who was so obnoxious, we rooted for him to be stung. And stung he was, repeatedly until he puffed up like a balloon. He’s even holding the lollipop we saw earlier to make sure we know that he, specifically, has been sacrificed. Whatever you want to say about the disaster era, they spared no one. When judgment day comes, we’re all equally guilty. Especially the kids.
The final invasion of Houston is undoubtedly a hoot, even if the film assumes we’re a bunch of dolts who require a drive-by of the Astrodome to get our bearings. Casually, without much by way of debate, it’s decided that the entire city must be torched to kill the bees. Not via the air, mind you, but street by street with flamethrowers. Logistically ridiculous, of course, but the only way to ensure that we, the viewers, would get no fewer than a dozen shots of people on fire (firemen, soldiers, ambulance drivers, even a few civilians), screaming, waving their hands, and jumping through windows. A few even fall from high places. Curiously, this very image, especially when portrayed in slow-motion, has remained a personal favorite since at least 1985, showing that the dumber I get as I age, I still manage to retain a modicum of good taste. And it’s yet another reason why I revere the Me Decade. Pound for pound, no cinematic era featured human conflagration with greater frequency.
Okay, so we know the bees must be vanquished, but in an unusual cop-out, both brain and brawn get a say. Crane is standing tall at the end, taking full credit (and walking off with Katharine Ross for his trouble), but the extermination required much more than a serum or effete talk in a lab. We needed missiles – lots of ’em – along with sonar equipment and oil slicks. The bees will think the sounds are the mating calls of the queen, gather in the Gulf, and the missiles will hit the oil, causing a delightful blast. Billions reduced to zero in a matter of seconds. And sure, Crane couldn’t have done a lick of this without the Pentagon, but he can live with it. He’s about results, after all, and he never said he opposed a show of force. He just wanted to direct the show. Sure, we’ll never know how he helped evacuate a city of millions over a long weekend, or how many actually remained in the buildings they deliberately set on fire, but that’s for the inquest. Which Allen wisely chose not to film. With atypical restraint.
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