S&A DOUBLE: SPIDERS AND BEES OH MY

S&A DOUBLE: 
ARACHNOPHOBIA ( DIR FRANK MARSHALL, 1990) &
THE SWARM (DIR IRWIN ALLEN, 1978)

    I remember as a kid, many a scary movie moments would have me running from the room.  But there was also two movie trailers (or ads for TV) that would have the same effect on me.  One mintue I was sitting on the floor by the TV the next there was a only a cartoon puff of smoke in the shape of my general person.  These were  Arachnophobia from 1990 and The Swarm from 1978.  I think the notion of being covered in bees with the constant screaming gave me anxiety nightmares.  Watching both of these movies last week was a first for me, because with all the creepy crawlies it makes me itchy.  Inscets, Bugs and Spiders have always made great Monster Movies, Crawley Features if you will.  Whether they are radio actively giant like in Them! or Tarantua, more experimental like Phase IV or Creature Freature like Cronenber's The Fly or Mimic.  

    Insects and Spiders in horror are their own genre with their own colours and flavours.  Even with the difference in size, and their importantce to the eco-system our relationships with the creepy crawlies of the world is a strained one.  In a lot of creepy crawlie movies, they are often an invading forgin force, like Monster Movies in Gernal they are representations of the other.  In this respect Spiders are on the same footing as Godzilla.  In both Arachnophobia and The Swarm can be considered metaphores for xenophobia, the invasion of the other.  

    Frank Marshall's Ararchnopobia is very much your classic Monster Movie.  We start off in the jungles of Venezula, a photographer is following an always delightful Julian Sands as he is tracking a new specis of Spider that seems to have bigger teeth than the rest.  And as what usually happens, Photographer is bitten.   We then cut to small town mortuary where a Moritian is recomending a closed casket.  Though the fictional California town of Canaima also has another visitor, a new town Doctor played by Jeff Daniels.  Or he is tring to be the new town Doctor, his new paitents keep dropping like flies.  A lot of the mystery has been taken away with the sudden mysterious deaths, but also we are on Daniels' side as he starts digging into the reasons behind the deaths.  But it means for a chunk of Arachnophoba it is a waiting game for the movie to catch up.  If the Spiders are meant to be a dangerous forgien element, Daniels is meant to be the new and modern coming into town.  The immigrant and the eleate if you will.  The town of Canaimia isn't as open and welcoming as Jeff Daniles had hoped.  And it does take a while for the town in Arachnophia to actually start listening to the experts.  But once they the movie and Spider action really starts kicking up to high gear.

 

    But apart from these werid xenophobic undertones that usually come with this kind o specificq Monster Movie.  It's a great a movie small town.  And  I gernerally love a small town horror movies.  There is something creepy and comforting at the same time.  I love the host of of eccentric characters  each as individual as the rest, especially John Goodman who's going for Gold in the catagory of eccentric characters.  There's such an easy bombasty to Goodman's Extermintor Delbert McClinton, every single thing he says is wrong but he will shake the hand of arachnolgist as a colleage.  I like it's sweet.  As usual it's Goodman that really delivers the engery Arachnophbia needs.  

Overall Arachnophia feels like the movie that is trying to do too many things at once.  It's trying to be a fun family romp, but at the same time a terrifying horror movie.  Because it's killer Spiders (actually harmless Avandale Spiders from New Zealand )with it's seemingly extra legs is still  a terrifying presence.  It's no suprise it's the shower scene that is one iconic moments from Arachnophbia.  Marshall doesn't have to get fancy, the spider does all the work.  Even just thinking about the Spider crawling along the skin makes me itchy.  You're at your most vulenderable when your in the shower.  There have been many a bloody murder when I've ever found a spider in the shower.  The movie around this scene is not intense or as scary.  Arachnopobia is almost a small town comedy, alittle like The Burbs, maybe, but unlike The Burbs, Arachnophibia doesn't blend the decenting elements together.  So  when the movie starts to feel dangerous, you want to run from the room, because it doesn't exactly fit.  However,  I still kinda love Arachnopobia because it's the kind movie I tend to love.  And it's because it's inconsistancy the terrifying moments really do pop, even if I and scratching while hightailing it out of the room.

    Irwin Allen's The Swarm from 1978 is, well it's The Swarm.  Irwin Allen in the 1970s was the king of The Disaster movie, he produced the likes of The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno.  These movies were the Blockbusters of the 1970s.  The cast were always A List.  In The Towering Inferno Paul Newman and Steve McQueen were contracted to have the same amount of screen time and maybe the exact amount of lines.  Though some how McQueen got the second half hero Fire Fighter role. Both The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno were number two at the box office in their respective years.  Only behind The Godfather and Blazing Sadles.  

    The Swarm on the other hand is often sighted for being The Worst Movie Of All Time.  Though,  I mean what is worst movie anyway.  I'm more of the opinon that how do you fully call a movie the worst where people are hallcinanting giant Bees.  Okay, yes, The Swarm doesn't work the way of The Poseidon Adventure or The Towering Infero, though it tries.   Michael Caine in a stunning Sarafi suit that looks like it was chossen specificly to match his hair, leads the likes of Katherine Ross, Henry Fonda, Olivia De Havilland, Fred Mac Murrary, Silm Pickens, Jose Ferrer and Richard Chamberline, who are trying to stop the onslaught of the African Killer Bees.  The invasion theme of monster movies, feels much more obvious in The Swarm, mainly because you have Michael Caine yelling constantly about the difference between the Killer Bee and the gentle Honey Bee.  But more than anything, The Swarm is really playing with the notion of the fear of the other.  It's The Swarm that feels like an invasion, it's very similar to something like Independance Day - which generals and scientists activiely retreating and defending Houston.  As really defined by Caine's rants, it's a true invasion, it's not the sweet Honey Bee that in invading it's an forign creature.  Much like the Aliens in Independence Day they are coming to destroy - The Swarm it's not as Jingoistic as Independence Day, Allen does step around it, but he step in the Jingo puddle, alot.

    The Swarm is a werid movie.  And if it was a tighter Ninety minutes, it would be this amazing berserk gem.  Because you cannot cut any of Caine's rants.  But since Allen was trying to make an epic Disaster Movie.  It had to have the big cast, sweeping action, grand romance, Michael Caine still yelling about the humble Honey Bee - the whole kick and kaboodle.  Like other movies of it's ilk, Allen is trying to convey the Bee Invasion from all sides.  But in The Swarm a lot of these threads go no where, even the giant hallucinogenic giant Bees.  Character's are killed off or just meander and dispear from the movie.  This means there can be a lot of dead air in The Swarm.  Though the biggest thing that hurts The Swarm is that even though they're dangerous and Killer Bees, it's not the most filmic danger.   In The Swarm's predecessors the dangers are often more imediate and large, Allen has to film a swarming cloud with people falling down.  There are some effective shots of people covered in actual Bees - again another itchy inducing moment.  But also the actors really have to do a lot of heavy lifting, in a time when acting next to a tennis ball wasn't common, unless you were acting with an angry Marlon Brando.  In The Swarm you get of moment mosts like the infamous Olivia De Havilland groan wail as she watches The Killer Bees murders her students.

     Arachnoppbia and The Swarm are examples of a specfic genre and are both a creature crawlie movies.  A great double feature even if you will be constantly scratching through it.  Monster Movies have usually been about the other, and invading presence.  It's a very obvious, with Venezuelan Spiders and African Killer Bees invading into traditional small towns, that are predominantly and causing havoc.   Neither are them are blunt, both movies are trying invoke the unknown, exotic and dangerous.