One lazy, hot Sunday morning
Carrie Parmiter (Joanna
Miles) is dropped off by biologist husband James (Bradford Dillman)
at the local church just outside of their little, half-horse town. While listening to the Reverend Kern (James Greene)
give his usual impassioned homily, the ground begins to tremble. An earthquake tears up the small chapel and
sends the parishioners scurrying outside.
Henry and Kenny Tacker (Frederic Downs and
Jim Poyner,
respectively) take off back to their ranch to check on their family and any
property damage. But as they approach,
their pickup is suddenly engulfed in flames, killing the two right in front of
son Tom (Jesse Vint),
daughter Norma (Jamie
Smith-Jackson), and her beau Gerry (Richard Gilliland). While inspecting the large fissure which the
tremors opened up on the Tackers’ land, Gerry discovers some very large,
sluggish cockroaches. Picking one up,
he’s burned by heat from two abdominal antennae on the insect. Taking the animal to James, the older man becomes
fascinated with the creatures, while the surrounding area threatens to burn to
the ground from the little critters.
Jeannot Szwarc’s Bug (aka Invasion Infernal and based off the Thomas Page novel The Hephaestus Plague, a title I
personally love) is the last film which legendary mogul William Castle had
a hand in producing before his death in 1977.
To call the results a mixed bag would be, I think, an accurate
description. The very first thing you
notice about the film is its eerie sense of calm. The look of the surroundings always appears
as if a massive storm is about to break out at any second, but the area is in the
midst of a massive heat wave with no relief in sight. The filmmakers allow the story to build on
its own, and there’s never any overt feeling that the audience is being set up
for some massive, loud, explosive finale.
This is a film intended to get under your skin and give you chills. It half-succeeds. The idea of the bugs is intriguing, and as
each new aspect of them is discovered, we’re compelled to want to learn
more. Unfortunately, the same serene
development of the story also makes the film’s pace drag.
The characters are odd, too. They don’t really behave like people in their
situation likely would, and most of them seem to have an almost laissez faire
attitude to these potentially world-threatening animals. Plus, the way they interact with each other,
in spite of what we are shown about their relationships, comes off as aloof
much of the time. The friendships feel
scripted, and I’m not fully certain that the actors were instructed to bring
anything to the table other than a decent knack for memorization. So, despite the good things in the film (and
the more thought-provoking revelations are fascinating to some degree), the
film itself stays in first gear up until about the last five or ten
minutes. But personally I like the
payoff, so I can be counted as a fan of the movie.
The film evokes a sense of
isolation, and it’s an aspect which is consistent throughout. Szwarc composes much of the film in long
shots, and oftentimes the actors are filmed very small within the frame. They are tiny, insignificant, almost like how
the audience might look at a bug right before stepping on it. They are motes of dust in an incomprehensibly
nigh-infinite universe. But more than
that, this approach emphasizes how alone these characters are, even those in
relationships. When Szwarc does move the
camera (and he does it quite fluidly, I must say), it is usually to heighten
the space around which a character is surrounded. It’s sort of the cinematic equivalent of an
ant farm (but I guess that argument could probably be made for every film in
existence, couldn’t it?). The
relationships are as frosty as the dispassionate compositions, as well. James keeps up a pleasant demeanor with
friends and co-workers, but he shares very little screentime with his wife, and
what scenes he does have with her generally consist of him dropping her off somewhere
and then speeding away to go back to work.
Carrie is essentially a neglected wife, and this element culminates in
the scene where she’s thinking about what to make for dinner (while meandering
about in what I would swear was a slightly modified house set from The Brady Bunch). Not only does Carrie talk to herself (we all
do it sometimes, admit it), but she answers herself, to boot. Miles’s performance in this sequence is just
slightly unhinged. It’s as if the
reclusiveness this woman has been subjected to both in her marriage and in her
contact (or lack thereof) with her community has finally made her snap a band,
to use a medical term. Her eyes squint
and widen as she goes through the options available to her, and we in the
audience wouldn’t be shocked if the next scene had James signing the papers to
have her committed. Of course, this
theme of isolation continues right to the very end of the film, though it also
takes on a decidedly more macabre timbre.
**POSSIBLE SPOILERS AHEAD** Bug
is also, from my point of view, a kind of meditative apocalyptic (if we wish to
look at the film in a theological sense, and I do, so we are) film. Carrie believes in God. James doesn’t. The earthquake hits just as Kern hits his
stride in a fire-and-brimstone sermon.
The omnipresent heat of the film conjures thoughts of roasting in
hell. The pit the cockroaches emanate
from of is indicative of a gateway to Hell, replete with literally smoking denizens
(the hole even glows red at one point).
The town is turned into a virtual conflagration as the bugs go about
their business. Yet, when everything
starts to calm down a bit, it is James who is pushed past the breaking point,
and it is through James’s defiance of the laws of Nature (and, by extension,
God) that he will be pushed further still. Conversely, it can be argued that James is
not at fault for his actions. In effect,
he is acting in accordance with Nature’s (and, by extension, God’s) “wishes.” He is the catalyst for the bugs’ evolution. He is pushing the insects beyond their
limits, and it is this scientific quest which will aid them in reaching their
ultimate form, a quasi legion of angels/devils who eventually achieve the goal
it is faintly hinted was their absolute purpose from the very start.
Make Or Break: I love the
very first shot of this film. As the
credits fade in and out, Szwarc gives us a long shot of the lone church sitting
at, what appears to be, the end of a dirt road far outside of the town proper
(another indication of the community’s general dismissal of religion and what
that brings down upon them). The wind
whistles over the music-less soundtrack, and the camera slowly cranes up to
take in the full expanse of the big empty which makes up the majority of this
area. It evinces a godforsaken texture
that lasts the whole film, and it’s also some damn good-quality filmmaking.
MVT: With that in mind, it’s
this bleak, almost hopeless, purgatorial ambience first depicted in the film’s
opening that attracts me to the film.
It’s the same sort of tone you get from end-of-the-world films, when you
know there is no hope for salvation, there isn’t going to be some last minute
miracle save, but you feel somehow obliged to witness the characters’ end,
because in some bizarre way, it’s the honorable thing to do.
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