Swarmin' my childhood

Today I found a video from MIT about an automated oil collection "Swarm" made up of individual robots.  It's a pretty cool concept, if functional...at least until they become self-aware and plan the overall downfall of humanity. (like ya do) Nothing was said about what happened to the oil once it was collected, but these things are automated, so surely there's some "find/replace & return to sender" command that could be worked out.  Here's the video:


However, the term Swarm always triggers things from my childhood, the first is of course, that staple of Saturday Morning 80s Cartoons: Spiderman and His Amazing Friends. Every saturday morning I was glued to the television for Spiderman, Superfriends, Dungeons & Dragons, Thundarr...all the great cartoons that formed my childhood and got me hooked on fantasy and sci-fi. (i'm not sure what Muppet Babies, Gummie Bears or Smurfs got me hooked on, but I watched them too.) Anywhoo, here's one of the Spiderman episodes called SWARM that kinda wigged me out. Maybe it was just the baddy....



Or maybe it was the fact that I saw a film named The Swarm at waaaay too young an age. Here's the trailer (is that Michael Caine? You bet it is):


It came out in 78, and I saw it sometime in the early 80s. My parents would sometimes have people over on Fridays and my brother and I would always find Something Awesome to watch in my parents bedroom.  It was a different age then, lock-key kids and whatnot, they were having their fun, we were having ours. I can't image parents today not knowing what their kids are watching, but hey, we were young and free... and then had nightmares about it:  The Swarm, Piranha, The Andromeda Strain, Logan's Run....these are some of the films I remember from my early youth, edited for TV sure, but still pretty intense for a 6-10 year old.  Then in '85 I met Caspall and he introduced me to all the horror films  I had been missing.  I think I was probably 12 or 13 when I saw Night of the Living Dead and the original Godzilla...about the same age with Nightmare on Elm Street, Critters and probably around 15-16 when we saw The Serpent and The Rainbow.  Sometimes I forget how much films shaped my childhood....or warped it. I'm not quite sure, but I still really love the magic of the cinema and I'm quite sure that will never change.