Review of The Savage Bees (1976) by Paul F — 24 Feb 2007

Why the hell were we so afraid of bees in the '70s? I'm sure there's some sort of reason, like reports of killer bee attacks somewhere that resulted in the sudden declaration by various media factions that KILLER BEES ARE ON THEIR WAY TO YOUR TOWN AND CANNOT BE STOPPED UNLESS YOU WATCH THE KTEL NEWS AT 10, but like more recent reports of rampant child molestations, Bird Flu or rainbow parties, they just proved to be random news occurances that spiraled out of control. While the killer bee film has situated itself nicely now as an occasional Sci-Fi channel staple, the '70s made them into a subgenre of their own, ranging from the low budget [i]The Bees[/i] to Irwin Allen's amazingly overblown [i]The Swarm[/i] to the TV-movie [i]The Savage Bees[/i], which fits nicely into this week's New Orleans theme.

Yes, years before real New Orleans was hit by a real natural disaster, fictional New Orleans was plagued by a much sillier fictional natural disaster that only the combined forces of small town sheriff Ben Johnson and subtitute coroner Michael Parks can handle. It all begins as Johnson discovers his dog Zif (?) dead in the yard of his small towny home, located a ways away from The Big Easy. Thinking he was poisoned, as he's apparently got loads of enemies, he takes the dog to the big city for an autopsy (he's got lots of time on his hands as well, apparently) despite hitting the city just in time for Mardi Gras. Dr. DuRand (Michael Parks) discovers that it's not poison at all that killed the dog, but rather bees, as evidenced by the dog having a stomach full of the the little buggers. (If I ever get the chance to use the line, "Your dog's stomach is full of bees," I'll die happy.).

Fortunately for the plot, DuRand's ex is a bee expert in the form of "Rockford Files" regular Gretchen Corbett, and she and her cohort soon figure out that these are African Honeybees, the same type of bees that would cause problems for Henry Fonda two years later in [i]The Swarm[/i]. This particular group seems to be headed to New Orleans, but the police commissioner can't do anything as, hey, it's Mardi Gras.

It gets pretty talk from here, as the bee team rounds up some bumbling small town cops and a South American expert (Horst Buchholz) who barks orders and has a plan about switching queens on them so they breed into nice, normal little bees that pollenate flowers and [i]don't[/i] kill the entire United States population within six months. Meanwhile, Parks and Corbett have chemistry-lacking "romantic" sequences where they debate whether or not it was the bees that brought them back together.

What's missing in all this? For a movie called [i]The Savage Bees[/i], it's kind of lacking in, well, savage bees. A couple bodies turn up (including a little girl, which, while off-screen, is still impressive for a TV-movie) but mostly we just see the bees minding their own business in cutaways that show them swarming somewhere vague. Maybe writer Guerdon Trueblood, scripting the first of four killer bug TV-movies, felt that he was replicating [i]Jaws[/i] in spirit so much that he copied the film's idea to not show the beast until late in the film, so as to build up tension. It doesn't really work, and it just makes things plod along like the mediocre '70s TV-movie it is.

Fortunately, things pick up at the two-thirds mark, when Buchholz and Corbett manage to track the swarm down to a hot dog stand. (Look, I don't know, okay? Bees love hot dogs, I guess.) After some fine bits where Buchholz sweeps away bees looking for the queen, a joyriding couple dressed as pirates show up and get attacked by bees, leading to the awesome moment as Buchholz in a silver beekkeeper's outfit and two pirates flail around fending off bees [i]in slow motion[/i].

This is the sort of thing '70s TV-movies are all about.

From there, the pace is kept up as the requisite final-last-ditch-this-has-to-work-even-if-it-seems-like-its-not-going-to-at-the-last-moment plan goes into effect, as Corbett drives her red Volkswagon Beetle covered in bees to the Superdome in an attempt to freeze them off. It's an amazingly stupid plan, but the driving to the Superdome scenes are strangely effective as Corbett begins freaking out as she has to drive down the deserted French Quarter without being able to see out of her bee-covered windows. Okay, so the actual climax of the film basically involves watching the digital temperature readout slowly go down, but the lead-up to this point works in an odd sort of way.

Unless you're not afraid of bees at all. Then it's just silly.

[i]The Savage Bees[/i] may be the best killer bee movie ever made, mostly due to the severe lack of competition. It only occasionally gets completely goofy, and even then it's goofy enough to be enjoyable. The cast of likeable character actors helps, as do psuedo-scientific explantions that don't seem over-involved. Sure, the middle bits are pretty dull with the severe lacking in bee attacks, but the ending pay-off is worth it.

Heck, it even has one of those great cappers where-shock!-a lone bee escapes, threatening a sequel. That sequel would be 1978's[i] Terror Out of the Sky[/i], written by Guerdon Trueblood, by then well-practiced in the arty of killer buggery from his work on[i] Ants![/i] and [i]Tarantulas: The Deadly Cargo*[/i].

[size=1]* -- He also directed the grindhouse classic The Candy Snatchers, which involves no killer bugs at a[/size]ll.