User Reviews

Reading an old issue of UK film mag Empire,I Checked the "archive" pages,and spotted a review for William Castle's final "shock Horror." Previously having only seen his famous House on Haunted Hill,I decided that it was the perfect time to see Castle build his ant (bug) kingdom.

The plot:

Shaken by being caught in the middle of an earthquake, a town finds itself surrounded by mutant bugs,who can unleash fire that murders animals and people.Thanks to the low air pressure on the Earth's surface most of the bugs die. Wanting to learn more about the bugs, Prof. James Parmiter keeps some of them alive in storage units. Taking them to an isolated location for research, Parmiter begins to find his own mind bugging him.

View on the film:

Sliding out of Thomas Page's book,the screenplay by Page and producer/cameo actor William Castle slime's between a Disaster Movie and a creepy Sci-Fi Creature Feature. Setting the bed bugs on fire,the writers send the critters flying into a deliciously bonkers atmosphere,where the stupidity folks usually show in this genre is given an extra push by the people of the town getting in situations with the bugs that is all their own fault! Leaving behind some of Castle's famous "shock & awe" antics for the second half,the writers lock James Parmiter in for an unexpectedly eerie,slow-burn Sci-Fi Horror,that takes advantage of the "last man on earth" setting to turn the bugs (who are given sex scenes!) into objects of paranoia,closing in on James Parmiter

Grabbing handfuls of the bugs, director Jeannot Szwarc and cinematographer Michel Hugo wrap the film in Charles Fox's nerve- shredding synch score moving in time with the brash primary colours of the bug attacks. Biting into everything (including a poor cat) Szwarc makes everyone be hilariously stupid,with even the most basic safety options (no gloves!) being something that does distract from the unfolding disaster. Stuck in a small room on his own, Bradford Dillman gives an excellent performance as James Parmiter,whose closeness with the bugs Dillman uses to sink Parmiter into a pit of madness,as he becomes a bug for the bugs.

BUG is a truly awful film.

The "story" is a about a scientist who studies some underground bugs who turn up after an earthquake opens a small fissure in the desert. The scientist studies them and realizes that they're intelligent and can also burn people. A few (and I really mean a "few") people fall victim to these bugs. When a "queen" ends up in the fissure, the bugs start flying, burns the scientist who conveniently ends up in the fissure, which subsequently gets covered up again, leaving no trace of the bugs behind. That's it.

It spends a slow 99 minutes to expand on a not so complex story (one man vs big pyro-cockroaches) and then effectively doesn't go anywhere with a climax that kills its only main character and the potentially cool idea of killer incendiary bugs. You basically spend 99 minutes with a single unlikeable character, in a grubby surrounding along with some not too convincing insects, all for nothing. Not scary, not suspenseful, not fascinating in any way, shape or form.

Had this been a 30 minutes Twilight Zone episode, it would have been fine but for a feature film, it's painfully flat and dreadful. I can barely describe it as a movie. It's a micro-movie.

If you want to see a fantastic "man vs bug" story, check out PHASE IV. Now that's a brilliant movie to be reckon with.

If memory serves, there were a number of these "insect" type movies made in the 70's - an attempt at returning, perhaps, to the 50's "creature feature" concept. I like a lot of the 50's stuff. It was usually fun in a campy sort of way, with decent (if outrageous) plots and generally OK acting. I don't remember having watched a lot of the 70's stuff, so decided to give this one a try when I ran across it. I'll stick with the 50's.

Where the earlier movies were what I described above (campy fun) this was anything but. The idea seemed to have promise as the genre goes - with some sort of fire-breathing beetles or cockroaches being released from the bowels of the earth after an earthquake to wreak havoc - but in fact it just didn't work. Unlike those earlier movies from the 50's, this one wasn't fun. The acting was sub-par, the characters were poorly developed and the story didn't flow at all. In the end, it seemed not so much a "creature-feature" as it was a psychological study of obsession - Dr. Parmiter (played by Bradford Dillman) having become obsessed with these creatures to the point at which everyone and everything around him is destroyed by them - as he himself ultimately is. It could also be seen as a warning against playing God - it was, after all, Parmiter who actually bred a new, hybrid creature. The strangest part of this is that it left me wondering whether any of the story about the bugs was actually true. Parmiter was writing a book, apparently. I wondered if the bugs were a sort of imaginary plot device to trace his obsessiveness about the book - a depiction of a sort of writer's block gone totally crazy. That makes every bit as much sense (to me) as bugs that are able to spell out words on walls!

I would give a wee bit of credit to director Jeannot Szwarc for the opening minute or so. Everything began in complete and utter silence (and while there was no action on the screen, the silence - no opening musical score; nothing - did create an eerie and suspenseful feel.) The very opening scenes were also a bit ironic - a "fire-breathing" preacher speaking about the moral destruction of America, with fire-breathing bugs soon to follow to give physical form to his prophecy. Still - the bugs should have burned this! It's not good.

This had potential, but in the end it is just not all that good. This is like two movies though. In movie 1 these bugs come out of the ground after an earthquake. They have the ability to start fires and stuff like that. Some guy's wife is killed by the killer bugs fire ability and this ticks him off. The bugs actually start to die off as they aren't used to the pressure and they just explode. This starts movie 2 which finds the guy whose wife is killed hanging on to one of the bugs and using some pressure thing to keep it alive. He proceeds to mate it with an everyday bug and makes mutant bugs. Why you ask? Cause he can. The bugs are for reasons unknown seem to be intelligent. The ending to this one is pretty weird too. All in all it would have been better with more deaths or something, as is it isn't anything special.

This movie seems to go on forever. The script starts off promisingly enough, but the writer never seems to know when to stop. He has included enough material for two or three films – not two or three interesting films, mind you, but two rather dull (if shocking and even gruesome on occasions) and basically small-budget shockers. The players, led by Mr. Dillman (I call him, "Mr. Dullman") are an uninteresting lot, and as for the bugs themselves –yuk! True, director Jeannot Szwarc (don't ask me how to pronounce that one!) has worked a whole lot in TV and obviously knows how to shoot fast and with economy, but the film outstays its welcome by a long chalk. I'll admit the bugs themselves are mildly convincing, but even for ardent horror lovers, this sluggish, talky, unconvincing and even rather dull at times scenario out-stays its welcome by a long chalk.

Back in the 70's there were several insect gone wild type movies. There was "Giant Spider Invasion, Squirm, Killer Bees, Kingdom of the Spiders and all kinds of other insect films. "BUG!" was a movie I saw on T.V. when I was still in High School. Like others who've seen it, it freaked me out back then. I had a chance to read the book "The Hephaestus Plague" and then watch the movie again. The book was far better of course and included a lot more details. There are a bunch of discrepancies between the book and the movie. For one, Pros. Parmiter didn't have a wife in the book. I think she was included in the film so she could be killed off and help push Parmiter even further into madness against the bugs. In the film when Prof Parmiter is teaching a class, the classroom looks like a grammar or high school classroom and not a college class room which is where he teaches. In the book Metbaum is burned by the bug, just like in the film. The difference, in the book is Metbaum has to be admitted to the hospital due to the strange bacteria the bugs are carry. He becomes very ill, but survives. With the Tackers, they owned a orchard right next to where the hole opens. You don't see that in the movie. The orchard and the barn is burned to the ground due to the bugs. In the movie, it shows how the bugs travel inside the tailpipes of cars. Same thing in the book, but the book tells of how the bugs travel to other cities and states. They start fires all over the east coast. There is also news about it on T.V. Also in the book, they were able to kill the bugs using a certain sound wave. Most of them are contain, but that's when Parmiter breeds his own species of the bugs. First he breeds it with a Praying Mantis and then a roach. In the movie he breeds it with a roach and then breed it again with the pre-historic bug. Even though the bug does get wings in the book, the bugs are to heavy to fly. In the book, Parmiter does all his research at his home and not the Tacker's place. The film ending is whacked. The bugs are as big as birds (not true in the book) and they burn up Prof. Parmiter before he runs into the hole followed by all the giant flying bugs. Then the hole closes and that's the end. In the book, Parmiter doesn't get set on fire. The bugs do crawl on him and force him to jump into the hole, but it doesn't close up. Months later Parmiter emerges from the hole like a zombie and the bugs are all over him.

Parmiter does try to kill the bugs eventually, but after seeing them spell lots of things on the wall and tells him they must return to the hole due to the pressure, Parmiter would rather study them more. The bugs don't want that however. The book is just more vast in telling the story. Even the government gets involved for a little bit. Whoever wrote the script for the movie striped away a lot of the elements that made the book so great. The people who died in the movie didn't even die in the book. The movie is like a shell of what the book was. It's probably about 15% accurate and is missing many characters. The movie is also kind of slow and could have been more exciting if they had show the havoc that was happening in other cities.

If bugs creep you out, you may want to stay away from this movie. There are a few shocking moments in the film. The bug on the phone (as seen on the poster) is probably one of the most shocking scenes in the film. I really didn't care for the ending much. I would love to see someone do a remake of this movie, but also continue it further. I still enjoyed this movie. Mainly because it was completely different from other insect horror films. The acting wasn't anything special, but the bugs were.

I give this film 6/10.

Despite the lurid exploitation title, this is for the most part a grim and weird semi-art-house sci fi movie, more akin to PHASE IV than something like THEM or even THE BIRDS.

BUG benefits greatly from the intense and nervously twitchy central performance of BRADFORD DILLMAN as the scientist who goes off the deep end after his wife is set ablaze by the title critters. The insect photography is well-done and the soundtrack whenever the bugs make an appearance is a prototypically 70's art-house exploitation hybrid--a series of scratches and electronic pops--but it becomes unnervingly effective. The scenes near the end where Bradford Dillman starts performing bizarre experiments upon the BUGs and establishing some sort of contact with them remain potent and eerie and all of the scenes where he finds them crawling loose in his farmhouse are disturbing; If you are willing to forgive some poor special effects near the climax you wont be disappointed by Bug. It is a genuinely creepy movie, one which manages to conjure up a disturbing atmosphere of heat and paranoia and eventually crumbling insanity. Worth a look.

I watched this movie for two main reasons--it was the last film written by the amazing showman, William Castle AND because the movie sounded completely awful! As I like to see bad films on occasion (they're great for a laugh), I decided to give this one a try.

After an earthquake in a god-accursed town in the desert, hoards of insanely silly fire-cockroaches invade the town. These amazing creatures can shoot flames out of their butts and start fires---burning down cars, houses and a soon-to-be-insane professor's wife's head! This goof-ball scientist (Bradford Dillman--who I assume was trying to commit career suicide with this film) at first mourns his wife's death--then becomes obsessed with the creatures and eventually fills his house with the things. Then, out of the blue, the movie has an ending that just boggles the mind....it's THAT dumb (I loved the new super-bug with its glowing eyes and wires supporting it)! I guess, like in the case of "Willard", the new-found friends eventually turn on you.

The film is chock full of goofy moments. Not only do you see one woman's head catch fire (and I loved how the male stuntman looked nothing like her physically), but another woman writhe about with a giant Hissing Cockroach on her eyelid! There are so many terrible moments like this that it is worth seeing just for these goofy portions if you are in need of a laugh. Sadly, however, these goofy moments are few and far between--with a lot of full moments in between. The ending, especially, was just too long in coming and seemed way overdue.

By the way, look for Patty McCormack as 'Sylvia'. This cute actress is the same one who as a child starred in "The Bad Seed"--a mega-cool film about an evil kid that you just have to see! As for "Bug", however, it's probably not a film you should rush to watch.