The Swarm (1978) - Newspaper Ad

San Francisco Examiner - July 14, 1978

For those that might not be paying all that much attention to the posting pattern of these clippings, I switch back and forth between the San Francisco Examiner and the Oakland Tribune for the sake of variety. If I were to post by the when or the where I lived at the time I first saw a particular movie, then the corresponding clipping should be one taken from the Oakland Tribune.

Irwin Allen's Production of The Swarm, as I love to refer to it, was one of the most anticipated movies of 1978 for me. That its release just so happened to coincide with my 12th birthday was just icing on the cake.

I had skimmed Arthur Herzog's source novel, but would not actually read it from start-to-finish for another year or two, and studied the tie-in edition's collection of black and white stills from the upcoming movie. Some of those stills were from scenes that were ultimately trimmed from the theatrical prints.

While I enjoyed The Swarm's bombastic silliness and over-the-top cartoonish style, my parents did not. At all. This movie lived in infamy within our household.

But I still enjoyed The Swarm enough to see it an additional two times on the big screen that month. I think it only lasted a mere two weeks in general release before being yanked from most theaters by its humiliated distributor, Warner Brothers.