Product Details

• Actors: Bradford Dillman, Joanna Miles, Richard Gilliland, Jamie Smith-Jackson, Alan Fudge
• Directors: Jeannot Szwarc
• Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Language: English
• Subtitles: English
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Studio: Paramount
• DVD Release Date: September 14, 2004
• Run Time: 99 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B0002I838G
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #98,118 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
• For more information about "Bug" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Editorial Reviews

No Description Available.
Genre: Horror
Rating: PG
Release Date: 14-SEP-2004
Media Type: DVD

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars different than your average attacking insect movie, August 20, 2006

By 

Raegan Butcher (Rain City, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Bug (DVD)

I saw this when I was ten or eleven when it was broadcast on network TV and i liked it; I was curious to see how it would stand up to the passage of time and i recently purchased it on DVD and--in spite of some poor spfx at the climax (screaming,goggle-eyed bug puppets being thrust directly into a camera with a wide-angle lens) 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 fried by the title critters. The insect ( or BUG, as the case may be) 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 that conclude the film of Bradford Dillman 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 yucky in the best possible way; i remember flipping thru some monster movie magazine when I was six or seven yr old and seeing Bradford Dillman staring at a kitchen counter full of big, fat roaches and being grossed out--and also wanting to get down to the local drive-in and see it as soon as possible!

If you are willing to forgive some poor special effects near the climax you wont be disappointed by what precedes it. BUG 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.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Thermal Ignition in wide screen format - You can't beat it!, February 15, 2008

By 

John Prothero - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Bug (DVD)

William Castle's production of "Bug" is based on the Thomas Page novel "The Hephaestus Plague" and is one of the great sci-fi horror movies form the 70's decade. It begins with an earthquake erupting in California causing some kind of prehistoric insects to emerge from underground. Entomologist Dr. James Parmiter (Bradford Dillman) soon discovers they are not only highly intelligent but are able to ignite fires by means of two strange antenna-like objects from their abdomen. But it turns out that the bugs are dying slowly and can't copulate due to the surface pressure is different from that underground. Obsessed with keeping them alive for study,he finds a way to make them breed and unleashes a super fire bug which turns out to be his undoing. Looks great on an HDTV.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Best. Soundtrack. Ever., January 25, 2007

By 

Robert P. Beveridge "xterminal" (Lakewood, OH) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Bug (DVD)

Bug (Jeannot Szwarc, 1975)

No Rod Serling devotee who was alive in the seventies will ever forget the name of Jeannot Szwarc, the man who directed some of Night Gallery's finest moments ("Class of '99" and "Cool Air" were two of his). Szwarc's been a TV guy forever, rarely doing work on the big screen; when he does, it's often reminiscent of TV movies anyway. Such is the case with Bug, Szwarc's entry into the big-bug subgenre of the seventies disaster flick, probably best remembered these days for its interiors being filmed in the Brady Bunch house.

Based on Thomas Page's unjustly-obscure novel The Hephaestus Plague, and produced by the legendary William Castle, Bug is about, well, bugs-- large cockroach-lookin' things that emerge from a large crevasse formed after an earthquake. We rapidly discover that these guys can start fires, and are quite happy to do just that, quickly devastating the small town near their point of origin. (Yet, oddly, leaving the house at the edge of the crevasse standing.) Professor James Parmiter (Bradford Dillman of, among many other things, The Mephisto Waltz), an entomologist at the local university, is approached by his student Gerald Metbaum (character actor Richard Gilliland), whose girlfriend's family owns the farm whence the bugs are coming. Parmiter quickly becomes obsessed with the bugs, moving into an outbuilding at the farm in order to study them more closely.

There are two things about this movie that raise it above the level of the everyday big-bug flick. One is that this movie refuses to go in the direction you expect, if you've seen enough big-bug movies to know the conventions of the genre. This isn't a movie as much about big bugs as it is about Thomas Parmiter's obsession with big bugs, and that tends to throw people off. The last half of the movie has been resoundingly criticized for a quarter century for not conforming to big-bug standards; as long as it's competently done, in my opinion, that's a point in its favor. (And, well, "competently done" is probably arguable, but I find the cheesiness endearing, the same way I do with Night of the Lepus or Kingdom of the Spiders.) The other thing, and about this there will be no discussion, thank you, is the awe-inspiring soundtrack. The closed-captioning, every few minutes, says "[atonal electronic theme]". Oh, yeah. Charles Fox composed in Hollywood for over forty years, but never did he come up with soundtrack like this. Way, way ahead of its time; this is something that no one was doing in 1975, with the exceptions of Lou Reed, Boyd Rice, and (maybe) The Residents. It creaks and skronks and flurrs and drones, and it was a gutsy move for a big-screen movie in the seventies that, to my knowledge, has never come close to being duplicated. It's absolutely amazing, and is well worth the price of a rental by itself-- the fact that you get a cheesy big-bug movie with it is just icing on the cake. ***