DRIVE-IN SATURDAY

Double Feature!

by

Edouard Dauphin

In The Swarm, zillions of killer bees try to wipe out the entire state of Texas—a worthy project if I ever heard one. The bees specialize in stinging people to a horrible death and they hail from Africa. That Idi Amin—what a kidder.

The Swarm comes to us from the people who brought us The Towering Inferno and then apparently forgot how to make a movie. As usual with this kind of film, there's a star-studded cast. Which means we get a look at just about every out-of-work actor in Hollywood.

In the lead, as a bee specialist, is Michael Caine, who has made a whole career out of acting without once opening his mouth. Here he's his usual tight-lipped self, even in a romantic scene opposite Katharine Ross. She plays (are you ready?) an Air Force captain. One look at her in uniform and all I could say was: "Where do I enlist?"

What's a disaster movie without some aging character actors? So we get Richard Widmark as a crusty but likeable general, Henry Fonda as a crusty but likeable scientist, and Olivia de Havilland as a Southern but likeable schoolmarm.

Olivia is being romantically pursued by a pair of decrepit suitors. Ben Johnson, whose face is beginning to resemble an over-cooked taco, and Fred MacMurry who looks as though all those Walt Disney movies have given him an incurable disease—probably Terminal Flubber.

Richard Chamberlain wanders around in a fog, Lee Grant appears for half a minute as a pushy TVnewslady, . and Jose Ferrer turns up just in time to be blown to shit along with most of Houston.

Despite all the melodrama, the bees just keep on a cornin'. They're not satisfied with obliterating Texas. They warit more. I was hoping they'd sweep up the Midwest, annihilate Detroit, then head for Canada, but no such luck.

See The Swarm and bring along the Black Flag.

If you've ever swallowed the myth of today's trucker as the modern day equivalent of a Wild West cowboy, you may like Conuoy, a Sam Peckinpah flick which celebrates that myth fiercely enough to send ex-Teamster boss Jimmy Hoffa into paroxysms of delight—provided anyone knows which cement block at the bottom of the river he happens to be buried in.

Script-wise, Conuoy is in trouble right away since it's based on nothing more substantial than a three-minute hit single. Actually, the movie would have been better at 45 r.p.m. than it is at 35 mm. At least with a record , you can melt it down and turn it into an ashtray.

Convoy ignores certain facts : that truck drivers generally are loud, obnoxious cretins who enjoy befouling the atmosphere, driving recklessly, intimidating motorists, overdosing on amphetamines, violating the speed limits, driving while drunk, damaging roadways, and squeezing the buns on % some of the homeliest waitresses in captivity.

Conuoy pits (and the word is appropriate) Kris Kristofferson and Ali MacGra w against most of the civilized world in the tale of a trucker rebellion that grows into a national cause. Kris looks like the same unkempt throwback to the 60's he's been playing all his life. And a ere wcut Ali looks like one of the Suicide Commandos on a bad night. So much for romance.

Ali gets mixed up in the trucker revolt purely by chance. See, she's a professional photographer on the way to an assignment when Kris catches her eye. By the time she's riding shotgun in the cab of his rig, roaring down the highway, crashing through police blockades, she probably wishes she was somewhere else, like dying of leukemia back in Love Story.

Also along for the ride are Ernest Borgnine as a pot-bellied sheriff (sets an eyeball-rolling record); Burt Young as a horny trucker called Pig Pen (good name—his performance stinks); and Franklyn Ajaye as a black driver who repeatedly gets beat on by the cops. About all you can say about Franklyn is that he was even worse in Car Wash. Look for him to forsake acting and be working in a real carwash before long.

Naturally, all the truckers are nuts about CB radios. Kris's own "handle" is Rubber Duck. "Rhymes with luck," he tells Ali, and that'll give you an idea of his personality.

Skip Conuoy, good buddy, and ram a trucker real soon. Ten-four.