Customer Reviews

Savage Bees, the [VHS]

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This has to be the one of the best, if not the best, of the bee-sploitation films, a genre that experienced it's golden age in the summer of '76 through fall of '76. Compared to other bee-sploitation classics such as "A Bee For All Seasons," "The Swarm," and "Bees," "The Savage Bees" gets my vote. Starring the effeminate Ben Johnson, no, not that Ben Johnson, the one of such notable TV movies "Where the Sun Sets" and Danielle Steele's "Ladyfingers, the movie takes us on a whirlwind ride through the throngs of revelers at Mardi Gras as unsuspecting partygoes are delt the ultimate buzzkill- a swarm of bloodthirsty bees that descend with the voracity of a whirlwind. The ending left me in awe. The Astrodome scene became an instant classic and is still heavily referenced in certain circles today. Truly a masterstroke of a genius at work, the director Bruce Geller. You will definitely love this movie. Prepare to cream your jeans.

The Savage Bees (Bruce Geller, 1976)

As much as Guerdon Trueblood's movies were off-the-cuff disaster-of-the-week junk, I have to admit that the guy was capable of crafting scenes that stayed with me for decades after I first saw the movies. With It Happened at Lakewood Manor, it was the kid in the dumpster. With The Savage Bees, it was the little girl with the horn skipping on her way to church. I'd gone through just about every other killer bee movie I could find looking for that scene. Then I found out Guerdon Trueblood had written one. I popped it in. Ten minutes later, there it was, in front of me.

Mr. Trueblood, I bow to your superior firepower. You can assault me with killer insects any time. (You should probably not do the shark thing again, though-- Jaws III was an unmitigated disaster.)

In any case, the Trueblood-trademark Paper-Thin-Plot involves killer bees, a town with a big shindig coming up, and a couple of people who are desperately trying to stop the celebration, because if they don't, people will get killed. Sound familiar? Of course it does. You've seen at least a dozen movies with this exact plot, from Jaws to Piranha to Alligator to Kingdom of the Spiders. Trueblood himself recycled this plot for It Happened at Lakewood Manor. The moral: you can make this movie with just about anything, all you need to do is change the bad guy. It's the Dame Barbara Cartland of horror movie plots. (And these days, you don't even have to change the bad guy; killer-bees-attack-town movies have found something of a revival in the last decade, as unfortunate as that is.) Do you need to know more than that? As (surprisingly) usual for these outings, director Geller assembled a pretty solid cast of B-listers, headed up this time by Ben Johnson (Breakheart Pass, Angels in the Outfield), to act out Trueblood's awful, yet somehow still compelling, script. Geller himself, while no small talent as a writer (he was responsible for the Mission: Impossible TV series), was a complete washout as a director; this was his final film behind the camera. The best part? This turkey actually won a Primetime Emmy. For sound mixing, I grant you, but still.

Great if you're a nostalgia junkie who caught this on TV the first time around. Granted, I'm not sure how many people who will read this were actually born the first time around. You lot can just ignore its very existence. *

Most killer-bee movies are real stingers(sic)but this modest
and well produced film is a exception. The ever-reliable Johnson
is a Louisiana sheriff investigating a child's bizarre death
that turns out to be the work of a swarm of African killer bees
that eventually attack the New Orleans Mardi Gras. The attack
scenes are surprisingly potent and includes some GRISLY makeup.
This movie manages to build suspense quite well and provides
a clever off-beat ending. Worth a look if you have the honey
I-I mean money.