The movie was based on a book which was far better then this movie. Direction in this film is the fail. When people get attacked by the bugs they just scream and stand there, instead of grabbing bugs off theur body. It just looks phony. I had read the book before seeing the film and it was a classic scary scifi. The movie was too cheap to have careful direction. Same Directer ruined other books to film. Never uderstood why he was picked for some potentially good films.Can't blame actors when director is terrible.

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.

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 was a surprise: not only is it a solid entry in the monster animal cycle of the 1970s, but it eventually took a totally unexpected path which elevates the film above most of its kind (reminiscent of the well-regarded PHASE IV [1974]). Another big plus here is the excellent central performance by Bradford Dillman – his presence in any film is always welcome, but I've rarely seen him this good! I'm not squeamish about bugs, so I wasn't bothered by having to watch a film with hordes of them menacing a community (unlike snakes, for instance – which has kept me from checking out SSSSSSS [1973] during this Halloween challenge!); even so, it's not that the insects are used throughout for any overtly revolting effect. Like I said at the beginning – thanks also to the unenthusing write-ups on it by both Leslie Halliwell and Leonard Maltin (online assessment at the time of Paramount's DVD release, then, is split pretty much down the middle) – I had anticipated this to be a typical (read: low-brow) small-town-invaded-by-insects film a' la THE SWARM (1978), presenting a succession of contrived situations where various cast members meet a grisly death at the hands of the bugs.While it has a few scenes in this vein to cater to just that section of its intended audience – and the fact that they are combustible (their sudden emergence the direct cause of an impressively-staged earthquake) certainly provides a novel touch for this type of film! – the second half virtually revolves exclusively around Dillman's obsession with the insects (following the death of his wife, who fell victim to them). In fact, he isolates a number of bugs in a pressurized container for experimental purposes – the result of his endeavor is, however, far greater than he could have imagined: the concept of intelligent carnivorous bugs must have seemed like the height of silliness on paper, but there's no denying that its execution in cinematic terms is reasonably persuasive and downright scary (especially since they keep evolving into ever more diabolical creatures)! The film makes use of an electronic score for maximum unsettling effect; incidentally, this proved to be notorious showman producer William Castle's swan-song (he also co-wrote the script with Thomas Page, author of the novel on which it was based).