Crew
Director – David Jackson, Screenplay – Doug Prochilo, Producers – Christopher Morgan & Randy Sutter, Photography – Derick Underschultz, Music – Joseph LoDuca, Visual Effects Supervisor – Craig Weiss, Visual Effects – CBD Digital, Production Design – Chester Kaczenski. Production Company – Frank & Bob Films II Violet Blue Productions/von Zerneck-Sernter Films.
Cast
Lucy Lawless (Maddy Reardon), John Heard (Dr Peter Axelrod), Dylan Neal (Dan Dryer), GregAllan Williams (General Miller), Mike Farrell (Lyle Reardon), Natalia Nogulich (Lorelei Wentworth), Mike Gomez (Secretary Morales), Mark Costello (Director Rusk), Caroline McKinley (Terry Axelrod), Jenna Lynn Hildebrand (Sofia Axelrod)
Plot
Maddy Reardon, the Undersecretary to Agriculture, a specialist in noxious pests, is visiting the laboratory of her old professor Peter Axelrod at the Virginia Institute of Agriculture. He proudly shows her that he has genetically-engineered a species of super-locust that is invulnerable to all pesticides. Maddy immediately orders the project shut down, Axelrod terminated and the locusts destroyed. However, several of the locusts make an escape as samples are taken away by the Department of Defense. Within a matter of months, the entire country is overcome as the locusts breed a massive swarm miles wide that devours everything in its path.
There has been a long line of bug and giant bug films ever since the 1950s. This was the heyday that produced the likes of the killer ant film The Naked Jungle (1954) and then the giant atomic ant film Them! (1954). This was followed by the likes of Tarantula (1955), Beginning of the End (1957), The Black Scorpion (1957), The Deadly Mantis (1957) and Earth vs the Spider (1958) to belated stragglers like The Giant Spider Invasion (1975), Empire of the Ants (1977) and The Swarm (1978). The 2000s brought a return of the low-budget bug film, usually made for cable with CGI effects, with the likes of Mansquito (2005), Swarmed (2005), Big Ass Spider! (2013), Spiders (2013), Lavalantula (2015) and Stung (2015), among others. (For a more detailed listing see Bugs).
The plot of Locusts is fairly predictable formula for this type of fare and/or the Syfy Channel disaster movie of around this period – genetic tinkering with an innocuous creature; their accidentally being released from the lab and going on a rampage (in this case a swarm miles wide); the scientists racing to implement a solution before the military take a drastic step that will affect innocent lives.
There is the odd amusement – “I am pregnant, hormonal and you don’t want to mess with this mother,” Lucy Lawless proclaims as she prepares to stop the helicopter on its mission to deliver the poison. Not to mention a climactic solution that involves rigging power pylons up into a giant bug zapper.
The effects are generally competent for this type of production, although what we end up with is lots of CGI locusts buzzing around in the foreground and rarely the sense that the swarm extends in any three-dimensional depth than immediately beyond the camera.
The headline name among the cast is Lucy Lawless, just coming off the cult fame of tv’s Xena: Warrior Princess (1995-2001). She looks tough and in charge in a role that could have been filled by anybody. Mike Farrell, B.J. in tv’s M.A.S.H. (1972-83), plays Lucy’s aging father.
Full film available here